Brain dump on post-crypto perspective, and re-exploring who I want to be.
I learnt to code because I wanted to "build things". For years, I built app after app, not only as a way to learn more and more, but also to bring my ideas to life.
I learned how to do frontend, backend, design, even how to do marketing and to PM myself, in a quest to achieve all the skills necessary to create everything I wanted to. To learn enough to be dangerous.
Getting into crypto derailed this a little bit, and I feel I'm only now regaining focus. Part of this was because there was a lot to learn, and part of it was letting myself get lost in my curiosity.
I've long admired people like the Paradigm Research team, and dreamed about mastering the EVM, learning all about zero-knowledge cryptography, becoming a blockchain infrastructure expert, and maybe eventually becoming a "researcher".
I feel like, as many in the crypto space are guilty of, I let myself forget that all of these amazing technologies (blockchains, ZKPs, etc.) are just that, tech. A means to an end.
There will always be incredibly smart people pushing these tools to their limits, maybe even dreaming entire new industries and paradigms. But that's not my role, nor something I enjoy as much as building.
It turns out, the thing I enjoy the most is still to create things, to translate a new idea in my head into something usable. All these amazing web3 tools are just another tool in my arsenal.
Looking back at who I want to become, I feel much more inspired by people like Jordan Singer (and his motto "i build my ideas") than by any of the giga-brains in the space.
When learning about a new tool or architecture, there's usually a time where you overuse it, and that's how you end up learning its place. For some reason, this time it took me more than a year.
Anyways, I'll keep building. Been working on some really cool Lens projects lately. And there's that OS I've been wanting to build for years, and many other ideas I've been slowly growing for ages. More soon?
Brain dump on post-crypto perspective, and re-exploring who I want to be.
I learnt to code because I wanted to "build things". For years, I built app after app, not only as a way to learn more and more, but also to bring my ideas to life.
I learned how to do frontend, backend, design, even how to do marketing and to PM myself, in a quest to achieve all the skills necessary to create everything I wanted to. To learn enough to be dangerous.
Getting into crypto derailed this a little bit, and I feel I'm only now regaining focus. Part of this was because there was a lot to learn, and part of it was letting myself get lost in my curiosity.
I've long admired people like the Paradigm Research team, and dreamed about mastering the EVM, learning all about zero-knowledge cryptography, becoming a blockchain infrastructure expert, and maybe eventually becoming a "researcher".
I feel like, as many in the crypto space are guilty of, I let myself forget that all of these amazing technologies (blockchains, ZKPs, etc.) are just that, tech. A means to an end.
There will always be incredibly smart people pushing these tools to their limits, maybe even dreaming entire new industries and paradigms. But that's not my role, nor something I enjoy as much as building.
It turns out, the thing I enjoy the most is still to create things, to translate a new idea in my head into something usable. All these amazing web3 tools are just another tool in my arsenal.
Looking back at who I want to become, I feel much more inspired by people like Jordan Singer (and his motto "i build my ideas") than by any of the giga-brains in the space.
When learning about a new tool or architecture, there's usually a time where you overuse it, and that's how you end up learning its place. For some reason, this time it took me more than a year.
Anyways, I'll keep building. Been working on some really cool Lens projects lately. And there's that OS I've been wanting to build for years, and many other ideas I've been slowly growing for ages. More soon?
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Miguel PiedrafitaGas Optimizations for the Rest of Us
The basics of optimizing Solidity contracts, explained for regular coders.Writing smart contracts is hard. Not only do you get a single chance to write bug-free code, but depending on exactly how you write, it’ll cost your users more or less to interact with it. When you compile a smart contract, every line of Solidity gets converted into a series of operations (called opcodes), which have a set gas cost. Your goal is to write your program using as little opcodes as possible (or replace the m...
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Outlining my approach to quickly learning new subjects, and how you too can become a crypto expert in less than you think.In the past few months, I went from knowing almost nothing about crypto to minting NFTs, launching my own token, and getting a job at a crypto startup (TBA). While part of this was definitely being in the right place at the right time, the rest is most likely thanks to a learning strategy I’ve developed over the years, and that helped me structure my dive into the crypto w...
Miguel PiedrafitaGas Optimizations for the Rest of Us
The basics of optimizing Solidity contracts, explained for regular coders.Writing smart contracts is hard. Not only do you get a single chance to write bug-free code, but depending on exactly how you write, it’ll cost your users more or less to interact with it. When you compile a smart contract, every line of Solidity gets converted into a series of operations (called opcodes), which have a set gas cost. Your goal is to write your program using as little opcodes as possible (or replace the m...
Miguel PiedrafitaDecentralized Comments for Mirror
You can now comment on my Mirror entries! Here’s how I implemented it in a decentralized way.For a while now I’ve been maintaining a custom Mirror client. This allows me to use a custom domain (m1guelpf.blog instead of miguel.mirror.xyz), provide an RSS feed and retain some control over the design. So, when I came across The Convo Space, a “conversation protocol” built on top of IPFS & Libp2p, I decided to try my hand at building a decentralized commenting system for the client.Follow the Con...
Miguel PiedrafitaHow to Learn (Crypto)
Outlining my approach to quickly learning new subjects, and how you too can become a crypto expert in less than you think.In the past few months, I went from knowing almost nothing about crypto to minting NFTs, launching my own token, and getting a job at a crypto startup (TBA). While part of this was definitely being in the right place at the right time, the rest is most likely thanks to a learning strategy I’ve developed over the years, and that helped me structure my dive into the crypto w...
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