… so first things first, who am I… and how did I get here?

Some of you may know me as @mhuggins_ on Twitter. The M is for Mark, but also Mamiatsikiminaa (Magpie Man), the name given to me by the Blackfoot Elder Makoyipoka (Wolf Child). I’m a husband, father to 3 humans/1 dog/2 cats, teacher, researcher, artist, musician, maker, pro wrestling aficionado…

The truth is that I wear a lot of different hats. (see Fig. 1 below)

Mostly figurative hat-wearing these days, so as not to obscure my Samsonian locks… but that’s beside the point. My actual point is that I have a pretty broad range of responsibilities, interests, and life experiences.

The majority of my professional career has been in education, primarily as a high school math and science teacher. For the last five years, I have taught these same courses to adults in a First Nations college in Southern Alberta. This has been a profoundly rich and transformative experience. The opportunity to learn from Elders and students, and to be welcomed into the Kainai (Blackfoot) community, has been a true gift that I am so thankful for.

In May 2021, we moved to a small acreage (we call it The Ranch), a 5-minute drive from the community of Stand Off, AB. We are on the rolling prairie, just north of the Blood Reserve, between the Belly Buttes and the Eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. I can’t express how thankful we are to be in this beautiful place, and for the opportunities that we have here being a part of this community.

I found myself immersed in Nitsitapii Ways of being, and of sharing knowledge. The Blackfoot language, ceremonies, ancient knowledge of this place and the plants & animals we share it with. This was shared freely with me, a “Napikoan” (white man), who came in knowing almost nothing about the people whose territory I lived on most of my life.

I have always loved to learn about things, but this was learning about how to learn, how to be, and how to relate to self and others. People shared what they saw in me… many things that I never thought about myself. There was something new and exciting about this, and so many questions…

• What other things had I lived amongst and not seen?

• Of what was I “absolutely” certain about that could be revisited?

• What opportunities for sharing experiences and connection have I missed?

• Where am I and where do I want to go?

I learned to think differently about people, place, and the relationships between all things. The interconnectedness of ALL things. This resonated with me in a way that I never felt in a traditional school setting, and it ignited a renewed passion for learning, not as a means to an end, but as the actual way of experiencing the world. The way of sharing my experiences with others and for facilitating these discoveries by others.

It has been an ongoing transformative experience, one that I carry forward and continue looking for opportunities to share.

So what does that have to do with the dweb/web3 or rarity research?

Well, it lead me to begin doing interdisciplinary research, something that I had never considered doing. I was encouraged by my wife Michelle, who is a brilliant Sociologist. She urged me to focus my work and to push myself into challenging areas. Please check out Michelle’s research. She is amazing and I am so lucky to have her as a partner and as a collaborator.

She suggested taking Master's level online courses to build up the specific knowledge base and technical skills that would benefit the type of research that I wanted to do. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to research but was thinking about something to do with Blackfoot Language, technology, and education. She helped me create a reading list, and to select some courses to get started.

I have a very non-linear way of learning, and some pretty divergent interests, but consistently found myself blown away by the threads that seemed to run through everything that I was learning.

A few of the books and other media that I would recommend to anyone:

• Blackfoot Ways of Knowing: The Worldview of the Siksikaitsitapi (Betty Bastien)

• The Glass Bead Game (Herman Hesse)

• Blackfoot Physics (F. David Peat) see also Pari Centre

• Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Paulo Freire)

• Diary of a Nobody (George & Weedon Grossmith)

• Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want (The Smiths)

• Circle of the Sun (Colin Low)

• WTF Podcast (Mark Maron)

• F*** That’s Delicious (Action Bronson)

As far as coursework, I found some Master's level micro-credentials through Coursera and edX, both excellent organizations that provide access to courses and programs at a multitude of highly respected universities around the world. The nice thing is that many of the courses can be audited (no credit) for free, but for a small fee, can receive actual post-secondary credit and a credential.

There are quite a few to select from, but I found myself interested in refreshing some Calculus and Statistics courses, then completing the four-course Coursera Blockchain Specialization through the University of Buffalo.

I followed this with the 5-course Coursera Virtual Teacher Specialization through the University of California-Irvine. This ended up being especially helpful, as I finished it before the pandemic and our shift to online learning.

Meanwhile, I had been doing self-directed learning in the field of linguistics, primarily focused on computer-based statistical analysis of language text and recordings, as well as language acquisition. This is where I first started learning some basic machine learning and AI concepts, which would turn out to be very useful for my current research.

Waaaaaay back in the day, before I became a teacher, I had taken a Multimedia Production program. This was pre-2000, but we were learning Web Design, Graphic Design, A/V Production, and a bit of Computer Animation. I had kept up these skills, both for professional use in entrepreneurial pursuits and for teaching at the high school level. In early 2022, I started to research dweb applications of these skills, and that is what brought me to the world of web3 domains.

I was fascinated by the different systems and the fact that it was a relatively unknown field. It was difficult to find much content at all. My first interest was HNS, and I honed my data processing/analytics skills for finding and registering names. I did extensive research on worldwide given name and surname data, domain hack suffixes, Unicode/PUNYcode, non-English, digits, common words, etc. This was in January of 2022 before ENS exploded in popularity. I had been researching this more out of personal interest and for practicing my skills than for any sort of investment. HNS TLDs were extremely cheap and with the Vickrey Auction system, I was able to get most for free.

Despite the casual and diversionary nature of this work, I was developing my skills in data acquisition, processing, classification, and ranking. I was learning to use APIs, web scrapers, and such, but in the end, my general coding limitations restricted me to using brute-force data analysis on spreadsheets… and generating mountains of paper as I learned new concepts. I saw it as a puzzle and I like solving puzzles. I didn’t have it in mind as an investment, it was a pastime. Some people play poker or bowl, I was accumulating information in spreadsheets with no real goal in sight. Just enjoying the process, as weird as that may seem…

Anyway, fast forward to April and I had started a Twitter account @namelytx just trying to find other people interested in the same stuff. There was a small HNS community, a nice group, mainly independent devs who were putting in massive amounts of their own time to build a truly decentralized namespace. I liked the dweb ethos, there wasn’t much hype at all. This was my first actual experience with crypto/web3/dweb, so I thought all projects were like this… people seemed involved out of personal interest and not necessarily with a financial motive. (I’m not against people making money… just don’t like it as the main focus of relationships)

In the last week of April, I saw ENS digits hype start showing up on my timeline. It was going pretty wild. All of these things had already happened on HNS so I figured that I knew what types of names would get popular. I had spreadsheets full of lists of names, but at the time I didn’t even have an Ethereum wallet. I didn’t know anything about ENS, I just knew that Ethereum gas prices were ridiculous. For a bit, I just followed what was going on and commented on things. I tweeted about unaries and palindromes and how there is rarity at longer lengths, but I had about 50 followers, and no one was really interested.

For some reason, I kept tweeting about them… begging people to register these $5 names instead of more richards (I’m still waiting for my richardrichards.eth to moon) or whatever was the trend of the day… I died inside a little more every time I saw another influencer pump garbage fake rarity and people kept jumping at the opportunity to be rugged.

Over time, I did manage to get some followers and share my thoughts on #provablerarity in a way that resonated with this small group. I was dismissed by the “clubs” and the influencers pumping them. They preferred a vague notion of rarity that could be controlled, rather than an independent fundamental rarity.

I struggled to find ways to share how system-defined ENS rarity could not be matched by a created NFT collection. I didn’t know the ways of the NFT world and the valid reasons for skepticism and assumptions of “bag-pumping”. They were denying the science that would prove and legitimize their own rarity claims.

It was a frustrating part of the process for sure. At the same time, clearly false claims would be retweeted and liked, and the timeline was dominated by influencer hype, clichés, and general anti-social behavior.

I had gotten caught up in it and was taking things personally. I was doing actual research and trying to share it freely. I was fully self-doxxed and I hadn’t been involved in NFTs in any way. I was a crypto Twitter newbie… I didn’t know “that’s just how it is”.

I don’t need to go into the details of the “Passport Clubs”, Digit clubs, “ENS is the new .com”, “Saudi license plates”, or “LFG Generational Wealth” ENS Summer. We got through that, and I am hoping that now is a better time to share my research.

At this point, I’ve moved on from any past frustrations and the path is forward. I hope that my intent is understood to be genuine and positive.

In December of 2022, I stepped away from Twitter, to focus on my family and to complete the research that I believe can provide a solid foundation for Fundamental System Defined Rarity. My current work entails completion of the following:

• Fundamental System Defined Rarity (FSR): A proposed set of best practices and standard methodologies for applying fundamental rarity metrics to specific blockchain based Namespaces.

• Fundamental Rarity Case Study: Application of FSR methods to the NameStrings of the ENS .eth Permanent Registrar.

• FSR Club Case Study: Application of FSR methods to a defined Name “Club”. (looking for a club willing to collaborate, reach out if interested)

• Learning Resources: Freely distributed online learning material and resources to support understanding of the basic concepts of FSR, the decentralized web, and the creative extension of these concepts to other fields and communities. Research Tools.

I believe that FSR has the ability to provide a fixed rarity benchmark for NameString based Digital Rarity Collectables. This is a great opportunity for any Namespace community. It would provide a standard metric to support a wide variety of new applications for these NameStrings.

The wider NFT market is generally perceived as risky, highly volatile, and prone to market manipulation. Fundamental provable rarity is something that NFT collections can not reproduce. A stable rarity metric would differentiate these rare NameStrings from any other NFTs.

Fundamental Rarity is based on the same methods and principles that are central to the design and function of the NameSpaces themselves. Shannon Entropy, Binary Decision Trees, regex, machine learning classification… these are fairly basic concepts for anyone who has done even a little bit of computer science training. Shannon Entropy in particular has been used in NameString comparison and processing for decades. This will be the most thoroughly researched and least arbitrary NameString rarity method.

If you have never heard of these things, don’t worry, it’s more important to understand how it applies than how to calculate it mathematically. You will find that it is quite intuitive to apply and in most cases, it supports what you would assume is rare. Where it is most powerful is in identifying less obvious rarity. This is the fundamental rarity associated with more subtle structural patterns and composition.

It is no different than using a microscope or telescope or any other sensor to improve our understanding of something invisible to the naked eye. It is a tool that will help us identify opportunities and applications that we could not see before.

The most ironic thing to me is that in a group of early adopters of a disruptive technology, there is such resistance to using the technology or applying analytics.

This is where my research ties back into community and education.

For me, the most important thing is finding new ways to engage resistant communities, build trust and facilitate learning in a transformational way. I’m looking for ways to leverage decentralized technologies to support a more balanced, reciprocal and sustainable transfer of knowledge.

Some interesting ideas that have been discussed are:

• rarifi (Rarity backed financial products) such as fractions, novel cryptocurrencies, digital precious metal commodities (based on Fundamental Rarity Units)

• Generative Art/Music/PFP NFTs driven by NameString Structure

• Airdrop Targets

• Community Membership Clubs (not a fan of that, unless it is based on collaboration & creativity, not exclusivity)

I am sure there will be many more ideas developed as more people learn and share with us.

I appreciate that you took the time to read a bit about me and my work. I hope that you will join us on this journey. There will soon be opportunities to participate, so please follow so you can receive notifications. All you need to do is send me $10000 cash.

I’m kidding obviously. If you are here and want to learn more, we are already on our way.

Take care and have an awesome week!

Kamotaani Akaanistsi

Mark