# Introduction: 👋

**Published by:** [derek](https://paragraph.com/@derekfoster/)
**Published on:** 2022-09-01
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@derekfoster/introduction

## Content

08.29.22Hey! my name is Derek, some people refer to me as “Foster”. I decided to use my full name for the ENS on this specific wallet for reasons that I can’t explain just yet because I want to build something out of it, but I wanted to get some small information about me out there before I really start writing on Mirror and trying to contribute to DAOs. To be honest, I got into blockchain tech after my father told me to look into cryptocurrency for myself back in 2020 (DeFi Summer) because I’ve always had an interest in trading and specifically always trying to trade leveraged commodities like silver and gold. He thought I’d like the idea of “digital cash” and would also understand the market economics from past experience of trading. From that point forward I don’t think either of us expected me to fall so far into the rabbit hole as I did. Genuinely It’s hard to look back the past few years without thinking about doing something with the new Internet we call: “Web3”. White papers, In-depth analysis, Videos, and actually using each Chain I was interested in helped me deeply understand the front-end of Web3. It took weeks, but I can say back in early November of 2020 I made my first step with full conviction. Since then, it’s been such an experience lurking around and watching this new sector of finance grow. Throughout 2021, I was able to experience a lot. DeFi was finally gaining some retail and institutional attention, NFTs (ERC-721) were on the rise, Layer-2’s really started to grow with scaling issues on Layer-1’s like $ETH, everyone started to talk about this coin, that token, this project, that protocol. The 2021 bubble was a lot to take in, at least for me. Without a doubt, the past two years will be remembered in future economic & financial studies and the digital footprint that was left behind can never be replaced. I believe there is a lot to learn from the past couple years alone, and so much more to learn in the future! Although I’m not a genius developer, or a shadow coder, I believe I gained a lot more than just “degen” money from being apart of the recent bull run. I truly took the year(s) I have been around lurking and spent them always digging and trying to analyze the next big thing or the next big project that can garner real use-case. I found myself wanting to find every intricate thing I could about blockchain and the things that came with it as well how it can impact finance specifically.. Finding the source-code/contracts of what I was interested in, tx (transaction) processes, trying to comprehend back-end structure, validation processes, attempting to try out test net(s).. I got lost in my time of researching and it led me to the point of not doing anything too “meaningful” or “impactful” with anything I was learning. Nowadays people hear about news/changes/updates instantly in large quantities of information thrown all over media. Sometimes it’s exhausting, but in the era we live in word about new trends (especially financial ones) spread fast. The amount of people who knew about the term(s) ‘crypto’ , ‘DeFi’ , and ‘blockchain’ but never had any real interest or eagerness to take the plunge into “Web3” was very large. Maybe it was just me, but it just felt like ‘crypto’ was the trend that everyone knew but never actually caught on. It was just a bunch of institutions and retail investors globally slowly figuring out what this new internet could look like. In my opinion* buying BTC/ETH on Robinhood doesn’t count as actually using the financial tools that were built. A lot of people simply “aped” into whatever garnered the most attention, or started following the masses with where they should put their money. Personally, It felt like during the 2020-2022 run there was a lot of information and misinformation being thrown around everywhere like a big game of retail telephone trying to explain how this chain, that protocol, this token, or that project works. I believe a big part of why a lot of retail attention died out over time was because simply put: no one knows what they are actually doing and what they are actually using, and if they do its because they actually took time to dig for that information. Obviously, not everyone is eager to dive into new things. I hope I can help people understand the impact of digital finance and what it can bring to corners of the globe that no one knows of or talks about. There is a very large discrepancy in finance when comparing a first-world and third-world country. I hope you and I can take the experience from the past few years, as well as the most recent run into consideration for knowledge and understanding. Personally I believe learning how to use these tools now and properly manage your assets in both the real world and digitally will set anyone up for future market scenarios regardless of volatility, adoption, asset, or price action of what you are investing in or where you plan to store your money. If you were alive these past couple of years, you can say you lived through one of the only attempts humans have had to change the global financial standard & system without any WEF or Government official, no King or Dynasty, no family power or military control. What was, wasn’t, and will be accomplished have all left a footprint in the same, and nothing will be able to erase the Trillions of dollars moved online, globally. “Introduce something they can’t stop” - I hope I can push that idea forward. I want to use what I’ve learned to contribute to “Web3” as a whole and anywhere I can. I hope to help make the “interplay” between the “user” and “provider” more accessible and easier to understand by providing valuable information in a more simplistic way through my writing. ~ With that being said, time to get to work!

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