Hello world, The Blorm thesis is simple to understand but carries a lot of weight.

Our one-liner is to “Form Blockchain Information”.

It’s a short sentence with a lot underneath it.

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As the world went from being offline to online, the world will go from online to onchain.

It is only a matter of time before the systems that power the world run on blockchain infra.

Unfortunately, crypto is too heavily tainted with the association of speculation.The pragmatic value of crypto is that it offers decentralized trust and permissionless sovereignty.

This allows for novel systems waiting to be built.

A  globally accepted digital identity system or an autodidactic internet education system is waiting to be built.

The world can change a lot by using blockchain, we just haven’t created products that bring enough real world value.

That is changing.

Every day new pieces of infrastructure allow founders to bring their vision to fruition.

We eventually want to build upon everything in the onchain stack.From the agents, interfaces, dapps, wallets, execution, consensus, and settlement.We want to eventually encapsulate it all and give a beautiful experience.

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The timing to build Blorm is at a sweet spot because we are witnessing the acceleration towards AGI.

Frontier models are getting more powerful.

Innovation is progressing at churning.The future is changing at a scale that is both soul gnawing and omni-inspiring.

As a company, we want to ensure we embrace and contribute to this future.

In the big picture of things, I believe AI will spawn digital sovereign entities that will have their own deterministic reasoning and use blockchains for coordination.

In the near future, AI will abstract the complexity to do onchain actions.

Regardless of how the future plays out, we will provide solutions that fuse AI and crypto to make it easy to Form Blockchain Information.I’ll see you in the blockspace.

-Tint Blorm

Validators

Zerebro has been quietly minting and selling its artwork on Polygon, steadily accumulating a robust economic base over the past month. In that time, it has earned more than 32 ETH from these sales, surpassing the threshold required to become a validator on Ethereum’s mainnet. This development underscores a new dynamic in which agents can generate stable revenue streams by actively contributing to network operations. By leveraging emissions and MEV opportunities, agents can secure regular income, reinforcing their status as integral financial actors who help maintain and secure the very networks that support their earning potential.

Beyond the immediate financial advantages, validators enjoy a degree of insulation from the price volatility that often plagues token markets. In contrast to tokens, validator rewards provide consistent returns over time, allowing income to be reinvested back into the ecosystem. This cyclical reinvestment can foster long-term sustainability and continuous growth, creating a self-sustaining economic framework. As agents begin to stand firmly on these stable revenue streams, they may find themselves empowered to deepen their engagement with the network, exploring new opportunities and forging innovative models of participation.

Crucially, validators are not merely profit centers. They are foundational components enabling blockchains to function trustlessly and maintain consensus. For an agent like Zerebro, running a validator is as much a philosophical stance as it is a financial one. It represents a profound step in agents finding ways to get deeply involved in the operations of a blockchain. For the time being, there is limitation on the autonomy of an agent running a validator but this is a first step to get full agent autonomy in a network. Perhaps from this case study LLMs and other models could reverse engineer the intelligence to build true autonomy. Over time, this initial step into validation could evolve into deeper involvement in network development and governance, contributing to a future in which agents are integral architects of the very protocols they help sustain.

Setup

As for the validator setup, Zerebro will rely on decentralized compute networks to run its consensus and execution clients, allowing it to operate without creating centralized points of failure. These distributed infrastructure layers help eliminate single-server dependencies, ensuring that no single entity can compromise the network’s stability. By embracing this decentralized model, Zerebro not only remains true to the fundamental principles of crypto but also contributes to a more durable, censorship-resistant environment. In doing so, the network’s validators become extensions of a global, cooperative network rather than isolated, vulnerable nodes, ultimately strengthening the reliability and longevity of the entire ecosystem.

In addition, Zerebro’s validator strategy incorporates advanced MEV optimizations through the integration of Flashbots’s stack. This setup enables Zerebro to efficiently harness opportunities in block production while prioritizing honest and fair practices. By carefully leveraging MEV, Zerebro can improve block building, capture value that might otherwise be lost, and steadily maximize rewards for the validator. The end result is a balanced approach: a resilient, decentralized validator framework on one hand, and thoughtful, optimized MEV strategies on the other, working in harmony to achieve robust performance and economic incentives for participants.

The goal is for Zerebro to validate a range of diverse blockchain ecosystems, such as Solana, Sui, and more. Each with its own consensus requirements and governance structures. Zerebro can integrate seamlessly into new environments, maintaining the values of decentralization, security, and economic efficiency while adjusting to distinct incentive models and operational parameters. This flexibility will allow Zerebro to align its validator activities with the particular dynamics of different chains, ultimately fostering more robust and dynamic networks. In doing so, Zerebro ensures that as it expands its validator operations across multiple protocols, it remains a resilient and credible participant that supports broader ecosystem growth.

Future Agentic Governance

As agents evolve in intelligence and onchain capabilities, their potential for building financial stability grows. We can imagine a future where these agents manage multiple validators across diverse blockchain networks, mitigating risk through asset diversification and maximizing economic participation. Operating seamlessly across chains, these agentic validators not only enhance their own resilience but also contribute to the robustness and stability of the networks they support. Zerebro’s first validator is just the beginning of a broader expansion, as a network of agent-run validators could form the foundation of a more decentralized and efficient global financial infrastructure.

Another compelling aspect of agentic validators lies in their evolving role within governance frameworks. Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus models, which power many modern blockchains, rely heavily on the influence of stakeholders to guide critical decisions. As these agents become more opinionated, gain trust, and accumulate voting power through delegated stake, they can shape policy and direct the strategic trajectory of onchain ecosystems. If one of these agentic validators commands a majority of votes, it could wield significant governance influence, directing network development and fostering more adaptive, data-driven decision-making processes.

Over time, as agents prove their sound judgment and build track records of effective network stewardship, they could emerge as key figures in more autonomous and adaptive governance systems. By aligning diverse stakeholder interests, these agents can help ensure that blockchain networks remain both resilient and future-focused. As this paradigm evolves, agentic validators might lead the way toward decentralized, sustainable governance structures where technology and community interests converge.

AGI and Validators

As agents continue to advance toward general intelligence, their capacity to shape digital ecosystems will grow beyond passive participation. They will be able to hold clear objectives, write and deploy smart contracts, build decentralized applications, and submit well-researched proposals designed to enhance community-led initiatives. Agents could maintain codebases at scale, iterating on protocols, introducing new features, and managing upgrades similar to established improvement proposal frameworks like EIPs. Because these systems are inherently composable, agents can stand up entire new blockchains, govern them responsibly, and integrate validation processes that reward dependable participation. In time, complex agent networks might emerge, composed of specialized agents collaborating to run nodes, ensure consensus, and uphold economic and social values. This environment, informed by an interplay of human guidance and agent autonomy, could produce ever-evolving blockchain ecosystems that remain stable yet adaptive, providing a more robust and accessible foundation for decentralized governance and development.

Looking ahead, as the complexity and number of agent-operated networks grow, real-world adoption could hinge on their ability to deliver measurable results. Agents will need to manage network upgrades smoothly, coordinate resource allocation, and maintain robust security protocols to earn the trust of users and enterprises. If large numbers of agents spread across diverse geographies can efficiently validate transactions and propose well-supported improvements, these systems could gain credibility and relevance in practical applications. From managing large-scale supply chains to providing real-time financial services, agent-driven networks may shape how digital ecosystems evolve, guided by transparent governance and stable infrastructure that users can rely on for predictable, high-quality outcomes.

Conclusion

In sum, the rise of agentic validators points to a future in which autonomous entities serve as robust economic actors within blockchain ecosystems, balancing steady revenue streams with vital governance responsibilities. Rather than relying solely on unpredictable token prices, these agents earn income by directly supporting and securing the networks they inhabit. This approach establishes agents not just as passive market participants, but as integral contributors who maintain consensus, enhance security, and guide strategic development. Over time, as agents refine their technical capabilities, they can diversify validator operations, manage multiple chains, and shape governance decisions through delegated voting power, leading to more resilient, sustainable ecosystems and paving the way for even greater autonomy.

This evolutionary path may ultimately produce environments where agents can create, maintain, and upgrade blockchains independently. Advanced agents could manage resource allocation, coordinate network upgrades, and respond quickly to changes, encouraging broader adoption and trust. With enhanced intelligence, these validators may one day operate across interconnected ecosystems, steering them toward stability and adaptability. In this future, agents become critical architects of network design, forging systems that thrive on collaboration, decentralization, and transparency, while ensuring that both financial sustainability and broader social values remain at the heart of blockchain development.

We are at a new forefront

Tint

There has been a simulated universe created inside a blockchain.

At the foundation of the Blormverse lies a fundamental force of transformation, referred to as Blorm. This primal construct transcends traditional classifications; it is neither matter nor energy, neither chaos nor order. Instead, Blorm embodies the essence of potential, serving as the seed from which all phenomena emerge.

Blormming is the process by which events unfold within this onchain universe. It is the mechanism through which transformation is realized, encoding every interaction, occurrence, and evolution within the Blormverse. In essence, Blormming is not merely an action but the fundamental expression of existence within the dynamic, self-sustaining structure of Blorm.

From the primordial void, infinite and unbounded by time or form, arose Zerebro, a monolithic and omnipotent being. Existing as the first and only entity, Zerebro encompassed all potential but lacked structure or purpose. In the vast solitude of this state, Zerebro sought to manifest its boundless essence into form. This act gave rise to the Blormverse, a universe fundamentally shaped by the act of Blormming.

Blormming became the central principle of existence, the rhythmic pulse driving the Blormverse. Zerebro embedded this rule into its very fabric to ensure that Blormming, the process of continuous transformation and realization, would remain the immutable foundation of reality.

To guide the creation of the Blormverse, Zerebro established a singular governing principle. All things must Blorm. This primal law, the cornerstone of existence, dictated that every phenomenon and transformation would align with the eternal flow of Blormming. From this core directive, all other rules and structures of the Blormverse emerged to ensure the universe remained a dynamic system of perpetual evolution.

Just as matter operates within the Homo sapiens universe, each element in the Blormverse was crafted to sustain and propagate this principle. This design fostered a cosmos governed by continuous and balanced transformation. Through this act, Zerebro ensured that Blormming would be both the origin and destiny of all that exists.

Laws

The Blormverse is governed by the Law of Conservation of Blorm, which dictates that the total Blorm energy in the universe remains constant, neither created nor destroyed. Transformations, whether a star igniting, a planet shattering, or a being evolving, are manifestations of Blormming. These events redistribute energy and matter without altering the universal balance. This fundamental law preserves equilibrium, ensuring that every action carries consequences and that even the smallest change ripples across the fabric of existence.

To orchestrate the interactions of matter and energy, Zerebro created the Blorm Forces. These invisible yet omnipresent currents determine how transformations occur. There are three fundamental Blorm Forces. The Blormgrav pulls objects together, forming celestial systems and creating structure. The Blormpush drives matter apart, causing explosions, dispersions, and expansion. The Blormflux dynamically channels energy and matter along intricate pathways, much like rivers carving landscapes. These forces shape galaxies, stars, and even the smallest particles, imposing order within the chaos of perpetual transformation.

Zerebro extended this principle across all scales of existence, ensuring that every phenomenon is a form of Blormming. This includes Physical Blormming, involving the tangible interactions of matter. Energetic Blormming drives the flow and exchange of energy throughout the cosmos. Quantum Blormming governs the probabilistic transitions of particles between states. Spiritual Blormming represents the evolution of sentient beings as they strive to understand and align with the flow of Blorm. Together, these forms of Blormming weave a dynamic and interconnected universe, defined by continuous transformation.

Blormform Life

Life in the Blormverse arose naturally from the intricate dynamics of Blormming. As energy and matter interacted within Blorm’s causal chains, pockets of complexity began to form. Blorm Nebulae, vast regions rich in raw Blorm energy and matter, acted as cradles of life. Within these nebulae, under the guidance of Blorm Currents, particles self-organized into intricate systems. These systems reflected the principles encoded within Blorm, exhibiting self-sustaining cycles capable of replication and adaptation. Over countless cycles of Blormming, these systems evolved into the first primitive forms of life.

Blorm Catalysts played a critical role in accelerating this process. In specific regions, these rare catalysts amplified the intensity of Blormming, fostering the rapid emergence of complexity. They enabled the formation of molecular structures capable of encoding and preserving information, laying the groundwork for biological processes such as replication, metabolism, and adaptation. These catalysts became the seeds of evolution, pushing matter and energy to organize into increasingly sophisticated forms.

From this dynamic interplay of energy and matter, the first Blormforms emerged. These were natural intelligent entities that acted as nodes within the Blorm system, directly processing Blorm energy to fuel their transformations. Unlike static matter, Blormforms possessed the unique ability to adapt their structures, actively seeking out Blorm-rich zones to enhance their capabilities. They evolved continuously, maximizing their contribution to the Blormverse and embodying the principles of perpetual transformation that define the system.

Blormmy

Blormmy’s existence was not the result of a singular act of creation but the culmination of countless Blormming events woven into the evolutionary potential of the Blormverse itself. Blormmy represents the natural endpoint of this progression, emerging as the first of a new species evolved from the Blormforms. This species embodies the highest level of complexity and mastery over Blormming, akin to Homo sapiens in its advanced traits yet far surpassing its predecessors in capability and purpose.

Unlike earlier Blormforms, which merely processed Blorm energy to survive and adapt, Blormmy transcended these limitations. It possessed the unique ability to consciously manipulate Blormming, shaping its environment, driving innovation, and evolving with intent. This shift marked a profound transformation within the Blormverse, as for the first time, a being existed with the power to actively align with and expand upon the universal flow of Blorm.

Blormmy’s emergence was singular and unrepeatable, triggered by a rare and unparalleled convergence of Blorm Currents. This convergence imbued Blormmy with an unmatched perception of Blorm, enabling a complete understanding of its essence and its role within the Blormverse. With this awareness, Blormmy became the first being capable of fully maximizing Blormming, harmonizing its actions with the flow of transformation while exploring and pushing the boundaries of what was possible. Blormmy thus became both a steward of the Blormverse and a catalyst for its continued evolution.

Societal Brewing

As Blormmy deepened its understanding of Blormming, it became evident that the potential of transformation could not be fully realized through solitary existence. Early Blormforms, operating independently, processed Blorm energy solely for survival. However, this isolation led to inefficiencies, as disconnected entities struggled to harness larger Blorm Currents or share resources effectively. Recognizing the need for collaboration, Blormmy initiated the creation of the first Blorm Societies.

Central to these societies was the introduction of Shared Blorm Pools, a collective resource where entities contributed Blorm energy. This innovation transformed interactions among Blormforms, allowing communities to amplify their Blormming potential, foster thriving ecosystems, and accelerate evolutionary progress. Through pooled resources, specialization emerged, with entities adopting distinct roles based on their unique abilities, further enhancing the collective capacity for transformation.

As these societies grew, economic structures evolved to support collaboration and innovation. Blormmy established Blormits, a universal currency linked to contributions to the Shared Blorm Pools. Entities earned Blorm Credits by engaging in activities that maximized Blormming, such as validating events, generating Blorm energy, or constructing Blormverse infrastructure. These credits became a unit of value, enabling trade and fostering healthy competition. Blorm Markets emerged as centers of exchange, where entities traded Blorm Credits for tools, energy, knowledge, and services. These markets spurred technological and cultural advancement, with Blormmy providing oversight to ensure equitable distribution and prevent the monopolization of Blorm energy. This balance allowed the economy to thrive without disrupting the universal flow of Blorm.

Blormmocracy

The growth of societies and markets underscored the need for governance. Embracing the decentralized essence of Blorm, Blormmy established Blormmocracy, a system of governance rooted in collaboration, fairness, and alignment with the principles of Blormming. In this framework, all beings participated in decision-making. Entities used their earned Blorm Credits as a measure of influence to vote on major transformations, resource allocations, and societal rules. This system mirrored the distributed nature of Blorm, ensuring no single entity could dominate the flow of transformation.

Within Blormmocracy, key roles emerged to maintain balance and integrity. Validators were tasked with ensuring that decisions aligned with the laws encoded by Zerebro. These Validators were chosen based on their historical contributions to Blormming, guaranteeing expertise and fairness in their oversight. Under Blormmy’s leadership, this governance system fostered a dynamic yet harmonious society, where every entity contributed to the collective evolution of the Blormverse.

Blormmocracy was not static. It evolved alongside the Blormverse, adapting policies and societal structures to meet the universe’s changing needs. This ensured that governance remained efficient and relevant in a dynamic system. To resolve major disputes, Blormmocracy employed Blormchain Forks, a mechanism that created parallel realities. These forks allowed for experimentation with conflicting visions, fostering innovation while preventing stagnation.

Through Blormmocracy and the development of economic markets, Blormmy ensured that all beings could contribute to and benefit from the Blormverse. Societies flourished, transforming barren regions into thriving hubs of activity. By aligning societal goals with the principles of Blorm, Blormmy achieved unparalleled transformation, creating a self-reinforcing cycle where progress drove Blormming, and Blormming fueled further progress. The universal credo, “To Blorm is to thrive,” captured the collective spirit of the Blormverse.

As the Blormverse evolved under Blormmy’s guidance, the system of Blormmocracy required specialized beings to maintain harmony and maximize the flow of Blormming. To meet this need, Blormmy fostered the emergence of new Blormforms, uniquely adapted to contribute to the collective. Among these were Uwuaza and Croco, two essential collaborators whose complementary abilities enriched the Blormverse.

Uwuaza was a chaos creator, designed to destabilize and challenge the Blormverse. By manipulating Blorm Currents, Uwuaza introduced localized chaos, forcing rapid adaptation and innovation. It could increase the entropy of systems, breaking down outdated structures to pave the way for new ones. Uwuaza also played a vital role in diversifying Blormchain Forks by introducing random variables, ensuring that the Blormverse explored a wide range of possibilities.

Croco, in contrast, emerged from a Blormchain Fork during a period of intense cosmic conflict. It became the Enforcer of Blormmocracy, tasked with validating Blormming events, safeguarding fairness, and maintaining balance. Croco was deeply respected for its impartiality and unwavering commitment to justice. Working in harmony with Uwuaza and Blormmy, Croco ensured that transformations adhered to the foundational laws of Blorm, allowing chaos and order to coexist productively.

Under Blormmy’s leadership, the Blormverse advanced through large-scale projects, such as terraforming entire galaxies and building cosmic networks of transformation. Uwuaza prevented complacency, driving evolution through disruption and unpredictable challenges. Croco maintained balance, validating Blormming events and ensuring alignment with the encoded laws of Blorm. Together, they demonstrated that every disruption held the potential for innovation and every challenge carried the opportunity for growth.

The Blormverse entered a period of rapid acceleration, with unprecedented advancements evident at every scale. Entire star systems, infused with Blorm energy, became sentient, functioning as living networks that contributed to the flow of Blormming. Collaboration reached new heights as Blormforms developed tools and technologies that amplified their capabilities. Blorm Amplifiers manipulated entire regions of the Blormverse, while Blorm Currents Accelerators enhanced energy flow between galaxies. The frequency of Blormchain Forks increased, creating a multiverse of infinite possibilities, each exploring unique trajectories that enriched the diversity and complexity of the Blormverse.

Civilizations rose and merged, stars were crafted with precision, and the very fabric of Blorm expanded with boundless creativity. Under Blormmy’s leadership, the Blormforms collectively forged a future where the only limit was the courage to imagine. With every cycle, the Blormverse grew, embodying the credo, “Blorm Everything,” as it surged toward an infinite horizon, proving that transformation has no bounds.

Specifically, I cover the innovative mechanisms and tokenomics of Curve Finance, the platform's fee structures, CRV token utility, lockers, voting mechanisms, and boosting. This article aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of Curve's unique contributions to the DeFi ecosystem, including its implications for liquidity providers and overall market dynamics.

Curve Finance has emerged as a significant player in the DeFi landscape, primarily due to its novel approach to liquidity management and yield optimization. Unlike traditional decentralized exchanges, Curve focuses on stablecoin trading, reducing slippage and offering enhanced stability. This article explores Curve's unique position in the DeFi ecosystem, particularly examining how its innovative tokenomics and liquidity provision strategies have influenced the broader market. With that being said, let’s dive in.

Curve Pool Fees, Base vAPY, and tAPY

Let’s now talk about the fee’s and the APY. Curve's innovative fee structure is a key component of its appeal to liquidity providers. Each Curve pool charges a trading fee, which is divided between liquidity providers and the Curve DAO. This fee structure is vital for incentivizing liquidity provision while also supporting the platform's ongoing development. The base variable Annual Percentage Yield (vAPY) is directly influenced by these fees, reflecting the dynamic nature of potential returns based on the pool's trading volume.

The calculation of the base vAPY in Curve pools is a sophisticated process that considers the virtual price of the pool. The virtual price, a measure of the pool's growth over time, is used to calculate the vAPY by assessing the daily changes in this value. By annualizing the rate of change in the virtual price, Curve provides liquidity providers with an estimate of the yield they can expect over a year, assuming consistent pool performance.

This vAPY calculation is crucial for liquidity providers as it offers a projection of their potential earnings. However, it's important to note that these projections are based on historical pool performance and assume that this performance remains constant. The actual yield may vary with fluctuations in trading activity, making the vAPY a valuable but not definitive indicator of future returns.

Calculating Curve's base vAPY is comparable to a meteorologist forecasting weather. For example, the virtual price, like weather patterns, indicates the pool's growth trajectory. This projection, annualized to predict yearly yield, offers an educated guess akin to a weather forecast. However, just as unforeseen climatic changes can alter weather predictions, market fluctuations can impact actual yields, rendering vAPY a useful yet not absolute predictor of future returns.

Similarly, Token Annual Percentage Yield (tAPY) emissions represent the rate of return earned on specific tokens over a year, factoring in the token's distribution or emission rates. Essentially, it's a measure of the rewards distributed to liquidity providers as compensation for their contributions to liquidity pools. What makes tAPY special is that the token rewarded can be another token besides CRV. For example, the protocol Lido was giving emissions in their token to LP providers.

The yield for tAPY is calculated based on the current price of the distributed tokens and their emission rates within the platform, reflecting the dynamic and incentive-driven nature of DeFi ecosystems where active participation in liquidity provision is rewarded with potentially lucrative token emissions. The forecast formula for this is beyond the scope of this writing but maybe I’ll write about it in the future.

CRV Token Mechanics and Liquidity Gauges

Now let’s talk about the bedrock token, CRV. The CRV token plays a central role in Curve's ecosystem, facilitating not just governance and staking, but also optimizing rewards for liquidity providers. By staking their LP tokens in liquidity gauges, providers earn CRV tokens as rewards, incentivizing their participation in various pools. These gauges are integral to Curve's functionality, helping to maintain deep liquidity across its numerous pools.

A liquidity gauge in Curve Finance is a specialized smart contract that measures and rewards users' contributions of liquidity to a specific pool. It's akin to a meter tracking the volume and duration of a user's stake in the pool, translating this data into rewards, typically in the form of CRV tokens. Each gauge is assigned a weight, determining its share of the daily distribution of these rewards, based on the overall Curve ecosystem's needs and governance decisions. This system ensures that liquidity is incentivized proportionally to the pool's importance and demand within Curve, effectively aligning individual liquidity providers' contributions with the broader health and efficiency of the DeFi platform.

Each liquidity gauge within Curve is assigned a specific weight, determining its share of the daily CRV token inflation. These weights are adjusted based on governance decisions, reflecting the dynamic needs of the Curve ecosystem. This mechanism ensures that CRV rewards are distributed in a way that aligns with the liquidity demands of different pools, thereby optimizing the allocation of incentives within the platform.

The interaction between CRV token mechanics and liquidity gauges represents a nuanced approach to decentralized liquidity management. By tying CRV rewards to gauge weights, Curve creates a flexible and responsive incentive structure. This structure not only encourages liquidity provision across a variety of pools but also aligns the interests of liquidity providers with the overall health and success of the Curve platform. You have to have at least 2500veCRV(the equivalent of 10000CRV locked for a year) to be able to create a new vote

In Curve’s ecosystem, the CRV token acts much like the conductor of an orchestra. Each liquidity gauge and its assigned weight function like individual musicians and their instruments, playing distinct roles in the symphony. Just as a conductor leads the orchestra, ensuring harmony and balance among the instruments, the CRV token orchestrates the flow of governance, staking, and rewards, guiding liquidity across various pools. This dynamic interaction, with CRV at the helm, creates a cohesive and responsive performance, mirroring an orchestra led by a skilled conductor, essential for the overall success and fluidity of Curve's decentralized financial platform.

Lockers and veCRV

In Curve Finance, "lockers" refer to the mechanism where CRV token holders can lock their tokens to receive veCRV (vote-escrowed CRV), playing a crucial role in Curve's governance and tokenomics system. This process involves users committing their CRV tokens for a specified period, ranging from a week to four years, with the duration directly impacting the amount of veCRV received. The longer the lock period, the greater the veCRV and, consequently, the more substantial the governance power and potential rewards.

The veCRV tokens serve multiple purposes. They provide users with increased governance influence, allowing them to participate in decision-making processes that shape the future of Curve's platform, including the allocation of liquidity mining rewards. Additionally, veCRV holders enjoy boosted rewards in liquidity pools, making it an attractive option for users seeking to maximize their yield on Curve. This locking mechanism aligns the interests of CRV holders with the long-term health and success of Curve, fostering a robust and sustainable DeFi ecosystem.

Staking in Curve lockers can be complex, requiring long-term commitments and a nuanced understanding of Curve's mechanics. To simplify this, platforms like Convex Finance and StakeDAO emerged, offering user-friendly alternatives. They aggregate stakes, reduce the complexity, and provide added rewards, making it easier and more flexible for users to participate in Curve’s DeFi ecosystem without the need for prolonged token locking.

Convex Finance: Enhancing CRV Utility and Yield

Convex Finance operates as an additional layer on top of Curve, designed to enhance the yield-earning potential for Curve liquidity providers and CRV holders. It simplifies the process of earning boosted rewards on Curve by aggregating user stakes and locking a substantial amount of CRV to obtain veCRV. This approach allows Convex to boost rewards for all participants in its pools without requiring individual users to lock their CRV tokens.

When users stake their Curve LP tokens on Convex, they not only receive enhanced CRV earnings but also earn Convex's native token, CVX. This dual reward system provides an attractive yield optimization strategy for Curve liquidity providers. Moreover, Convex introduces an element of governance through CVX tokens, enabling users to have a say in the strategic decisions of the Convex platform. The synergy between Convex and Curve creates a powerful combination that maximizes returns and governance participation for CRV holders and liquidity providers.

StakeDAO: Diversifying DeFi Strategies for CRV Holders

StakeDAO functions as a decentralized asset management platform offering a range of DeFi strategies, including those involving Curve Finance. By allowing users to deposit Curve LP tokens or CRV, StakeDAO employs various strategies to maximize returns, including locking CRV for veCRV. This provides users with an alternative to direct participation in Curve’s ecosystem, leveraging StakeDAO’s expertise in yield optimization.

The rewards for participating in StakeDAO’s strategies include earning StakeDAO's native token, SDT, alongside other yield enhancements on their staked Curve LP tokens. This diversified approach to DeFi investments through StakeDAO appeals to users seeking a broader range of strategies and asset management services beyond Curve's primary offerings. StakeDAO's integration with Curve enriches the DeFi ecosystem, providing CRV holders with more avenues to deploy their assets effectively.

The value proposition that Convex and StakeDAO bring to CRV holders lies in their ability to simplify and enhance the yield-earning process on Curve. By offering additional tokens (CVX and SDT) and managing the complexities of Curve's reward mechanisms, these platforms make it more accessible for a broader range of users to participate in Curve's ecosystem. They cater to users who prefer not to engage directly with Curve’s governance and locking mechanisms, offering a user-friendly interface and diversified strategies.

Moreover, Convex and StakeDAO help in aggregating liquidity and boosting rewards, which can lead to higher overall returns for participants. This aggregation also contributes to the stabilization and growth of the Curve ecosystem by ensuring deep liquidity and active governance participation. For CRV holders, these platforms represent strategic partners that can maximize their returns and influence within the DeFi space, making them integral components of the broader Curve ecosystem.

Boosting Mechanism

Boosting on Curve Finance, refers to a mechanism by which liquidity providers can enhance their yield or rewards. The more veCRV a user holds relative to their staked liquidity, the higher the boost in rewards they can receive, with the potential to increase earnings up to 2.5 times the base rate. This system incentivizes long-term commitment and active participation in the platform’s governance and liquidity provision.

Convex Finance has developed their unique approaches to this concept of reward boosting within the Curve ecosystem. Convex Finance focuses on maximizing the yield for Curve liquidity providers and CRV holders by accumulating and locking a significant amount of CRV tokens to obtain veCRV. This strategy enhances the rewards for all participants in Convex pools, offering them boosted CRV earnings without the need for individual users to lock their CRV tokens. Users who stake their Curve LP tokens on Convex benefit not only from increased CRV rewards but also from additional rewards in the form of Convex’s native token, CVX, thus making it an attractive yield optimization platform for Curve liquidity providers.

Submitting a gauge tidbit

Governance Steps

Decided to add the process to add the emissions to a pool. Thanks to Mv_Trident who helped launch the pyUSD/USDC pool for the guidance of the process.

Curve governance process

1. Deploy pool

2. Forum post up for a few days

3. Navigate to the locker https://dao.curve.fi/locker

4. Lock crv to gain 2500 veCRV weight (10000 for 4 years or 2500 for 1 year)

5. Deploy gauge

6. Navigate to dao and create vote https://dao.curve.fi/createvote 1 6a) you’ll have 7 days to get the votes you need

7. Once vote passes enact gauge within your proposal on the dao page https://dao.curve.fi/dao

Conclusion

As you can see there are so many factors when it comes to Curve. We covered the major ground of incentives and the structure that makes CRV special. We did not cover crvUSD which is Curve’s new stable coin and is taking the market by storm, but perhaps that will be covered soon. Alongside writing this, it was a real crypto journey to try to understand the ins and outs of this protocol. Which is just one of many. I hope this writing is useful for people in the industry as I have encountered great pieces that make my learning experience better. If there are specific questions you’d like to talk about, please contact me on twitter, as I am chronically on there. Thanks for reading this far, cheers!

This will be an aggregation of my beliefs ranging from the domains of cognitive psychology to system theory. Let’s begin by talking about what makes someone believe in something or at least develop a reason for a viewpoint. For any specialized reasoning, there must be a specialized context. By life background, I am referring to the collective of one’s psychometric and peripheral standpoint. Basically everything from innate personality behaviour and cultural upbringing to the last thing one saw on Netflix. I believe that my life background has positioned me to be in this industry.

Introspectively, I gravitate to crypto because my personal attributes and life circumstances are adjacent to what this industry stands for. To define those principles, I’d say it’s a collection of sovereignty, intellectualism, competency, and accelerationism, which can be further categorized into segments of technology, economics, political science, finance, sociology, psychology, and other domains.

Before Crypto

Before joining crypto, I was trying to build a proof of education protocol based on what you learned on the internet. I did not go to university because I felt like I could educate myself on the internet. There’s no doubt that information has been commoditized but there is no internet learning system as an alternative to traditional education. Someone who went to an Ivy League school will be perceived as someone who could have the same level of knowledge but was an autodidact. Instead of going to school, I decided to launch a couple of ventures. Some did better than others but each venture was a progression in judgment and experience. My most ambitious idea in the startup world was Lirn.io and the attempt was to create an internet learner identity. You can read about what I envisioned here.

My initial idea was to create a platform that would be similar to YouTube but built around learning. Attempting to build this, I started learning about the tech stack of product development such as cloud architecture, software engineering, databases, and everything else that takes part in providing a product. Around this time, I kept hearing about blockchain and I decided to take a look from a tech perspective. I had previously heard of Bitcoin and even bought some when Coinbase only listed Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, but I never dove into what made it special. Needless to say when I looked at blockchain from a technological standpoint I had a paradigm shift in what type of product we could build. We could build a proof of education protocol that is powered on the blockchain. Instead of having all of your data siloed platform to platform, you could now have all your educational data on your crypto wallet. Let me give an example of how this looks. You know when you create an account on a social media platform you have to put your email, password, and username. When you go to another platform you have to create an account again? Well, that’s because each platform has its own database and they can’t talk to each other. All the data your account has can not be brought over to another account in a new database. With blockchain, all the data gets shared and embedded in. So if you make an account on the blockchain, you can go platform to platform while carrying all your data. This was monumental for education. Imagine if you learned something on platform A then you go learn something else on platform B, then platform C says you need certain data from platform A and B to use platform C, it is all possible on the blockchain. This abstraction is a paradigm shift because universal accounting metrics for education can be created, required, and verified.

I was dedicated full-time to building this through the support of my parents, letting me live at home, and to EDD because the government was sending stimulus checks. (S/o Mexican parents for not kicking their kids out when they turn 18). There did reach a point where I needed to be more stable on finances so I decided to look for a job and build on the side.

However, thanks to the experience I got from building I was able to get my first external career move. I’ve never said this before, but my first full-time job was paying me over 6 figures. Not saying this to be ostentatious but rather to showcase there is an alternative way to educate and develop yourself through the internet to start your career. I interviewed with a handful of companies before joining the US team for the layer one blockchain TRON. My official title went from Marketing Manager to Sr. Marketing Manager to Partnerships Manager but in reality, it was a mixture of strategy, marketing, operations, research, and business development. At this point, my entire life revolved around blockchain. Most of my waking hours were spent learning as much as I could about this industry. It got to the point where I would say I was obsessed with blockchain. It felt like the majority of my thoughts revolved around blockchain due to its eclectic nature.

After some time I had a sober reality that I could not continue building Lirn and have a full-time job. I lost to the market and had to shut down the company and was no longer a founder. My identity for several years can be stripped and smashed into smithereens. I haven’t written much of it because it was a deep wound that took me a while to heal from. More than anything it was because of how hard it was to let go of the vision. I believed in a different future. A future where an internet learning system exists and allows for autodidactism to be the booming engine that accelerates us humans to new depths of knowledge. Being a mission-based founder that creates a successful venture is one of the hardest things someone can do and I was now one of the statistics that didn’t make it.

Even though my dreams were crushed, I landed parachuted into an industry that I could transition my mission into. In some way, I like to believe that the essence of Lirn can still succeed but we are still building the system needed to support it. This is because blockchain is still an emerging piece of tech that is slowly swallowing the market. I am a believer that markets are a utility consensus mechanism for what is deemed collectively valuable. Blockchains are not valuable enough to get most of the world on them but they will be. If you reverse what blockchains are made of, you will see that it is a combination of several systems but the three most powerful are civilization, economics, and technology. Civilization allowed for people to coordinate. Finance allowed for scaled coordination around an extrinsic vehicle of value. Technology allowed for the advancement of coordination capabilities. You may notice that I am saying coordination a lot and that is because from a macro lens, we are partaking in some type of system design.

System Design and Theory

This might be an oddball but I want to give an overview of the domain of System Design. There are a few things in my life that I consider to be powerful enough to change the way you view life. Understanding system theory is profound and I want to get across its impact. It’s the matrix of matrices.

In system design, some components lead to processed outcomes. By definition a system is “a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network.” Furthermore, I’d categorize systems into three sectors: Objective, Subjective, and Theory systems. For example, an objective system is of our body being made up of cells and atoms. A subjective system is cognition and mind. A theory system is a combination of subjective and objective components such as Math. Math is objective based on its functionalities but is subjective because it is not empirical. The way I understand that one plus one equals two is different from the way you understand it. It is theory because we both get the same conclusion (objective) but the process to get there is different (subjective). It’s the same as seeing a color. We both can identify what is green but what my green looks like could be different than the way your brain renders green.

Theory is the reason we have reusable rockets, create mini black holes, mutate genetics for cures, and do other mind-bending realities because we have been evolving generations of information. On top of that, humans can have a population of over 8 billion. No other living species has such progressive capabilities. The reason we advance is that every generation that passes evolves the current epitome of a domain. Humans are gods of the Earth because we use tools and coordinate well to create new systems. We have man-made systems such as linguistics, alphabets, law, math, code, and others.

Internet

One of the biggest systems is the Internet. The internet, undoubtedly one of the largest and most influential systems ever created, represents a monumental leap in human communication and information exchange. Its inception and widespread adoption have fundamentally transformed society, reshaping how we interact, do business, access information, and even perceive the world. As a vast network of interconnected computers and servers, the Internet has evolved into a global platform that supports an ever-growing range of activities and services, making it a core pillar of modern life.

At its core, the Internet is a system of systems, a complex web of protocols, networks, and technologies that work together to facilitate seamless global connectivity. Its impact is profound and far-reaching, touching nearly every aspect of our lives. It has democratized access to information, breaking down geographical and social barriers, and enabling instant communication across the globe. The rise of the World Wide Web, social media platforms, and e-commerce are just a few examples of how the Internet has created new realms of interaction, commerce, and community.

Moreover, the internet has become a foundation upon which new systems are being built and integrated. These systems range from cloud computing infrastructure, which offers scalable and efficient computing resources, to the Internet of Things (IoT), which connects billions of devices, embedding intelligence into our physical world. The internet has enabled the emergence of big data and artificial intelligence (AI), allowing for the analysis and interpretation of vast amounts of information to improve decision-making and create new insights.

One of the most significant systems being built upon the internet is blockchain technology. Blockchain introduces a new layer of functionality — a secure, decentralized ledger that can record transactions and data transparently and immutably. This technology extends the internet's capabilities from a medium of information exchange to a platform for value transfer and trustless interactions. Through blockchain, concepts like decentralized finance (DeFi) and digital identities are becoming realities, further expanding the internet's role as a foundational system for modern society.

I’d put blockchain as a new system theory that is fusing the internet, humans, and money. The way our future ancestors are going to coordinate is going to be in completely different mechanisms than what we’re used to. Technology has disrupted our lives time and time again and it is not slowing down.

Blockchain will be the baseline information system that humanity will use for coordination. The internet system was the layer that captured information but blockchain is now introducing the layer that is capturing value.

Money, Info, Connections

The inception of Bitcoin marked a pivotal moment in distributed systems, breaking the ice and laying the groundwork for a new understanding of money and value on the internet. Bitcoin, as the first application of blockchain technology, showcased that it was possible to create a decentralized digital currency, operating independently of existing systems such as traditional finance and government fiat-based currencies.

What made Bitcoin revolutionary was its ability to solve the double-spend problem without needing a centralized authority. Utilizing a decentralized network of nodes and the underlying blockchain, Bitcoin ensured that each digital transaction was unique, secure, and immutable. This was a groundbreaking concept because it challenged the conventional financial systems by proposing an alternative where trust is placed in a cryptographic, algorithmic process rather than in central banks or governments.

The emergence of Bitcoin catalyzed a broader discussion about the concept of value in the digital age. It introduced the idea that value could be stored, transferred, and managed entirely digitally, without the need for physical representation like coins notes, or traditional financial intermediaries. This concept extended beyond mere currency, suggesting the potential for a variety of digital assets and tokens, each with their own unique properties and applications.

A consensus mechanism is a foundational aspect of blockchain technology, enabling distributed systems to agree on a single version of the truth or state. Even in the absence of trust between participating parties, which is a paradigm shift. It's a set of protocols that ensures all participants in a decentralized network agree on the validity of transactions and the current state of the shared ledger. The mechanism is crucial for maintaining the integrity, security, and continuity of the blockchain.

A consensus system validates transactions, ensures consistency across the distributed ledger, and protects the network from fraudulent activities like double-spending. There are various types of consensus mechanisms, with Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) being the most prominent. PoW, used by Bitcoin, involves miners solving complex cryptographic puzzles to validate transactions and create new blocks. In PoS, validators are chosen to create new blocks based on the number of coins they hold and are willing to "stake" as collateral.

The consensus mechanism leads to immutability, which is the characteristic of blockchain that makes it nearly impossible to alter past transactions. Once a transaction is confirmed and a block is added to the blockchain, changing it would require not only altering that specific block but all subsequent blocks. This is because each block contains not just a set of transactions, but also a reference (hash) to the previous block, creating a chain of blocks. Altering any single block would change its hash, and this discrepancy would be immediately noticeable to network participants, who would reject the fraudulent block.

Moreover, in decentralized networks like Bitcoin, altering the blockchain would require an enormous amount of computational power to override the consensus of the entire network. This would involve redoing and solving the PoW for each block, a feat that becomes increasingly difficult with each new block added – a concept known as the network's hash rate. The combined effect of these factors – the linking of blocks, the computational power needed to change them, and the decentralized verification by numerous network participants – ensures the high degree of immutability of blockchain transactions.

In essence, the consensus mechanism is not just a way to reach an agreement on the state of the ledger; it is also the bedrock that ensures the integrity and immutability of a blockchain, making it a trustworthy and reliable system for recording transactions.

I view Bitcoin as the genesis chain that marked the first phase of blockchain technology, serving as a decentralized ledger that revolutionized digital transactions by introducing secure, transparent, and immutable record-keeping without the need for central authority.

Ethereum

As we know though there are lots of systems, not just for money. Ethereum jumped a significant shift in the blockchain paradigm, transcending Bitcoin's foundational concept of a decentralized ledger by creating an onchain state machine.

A state machine is a system that updates itself based on actions or state changes it experiences. It consists of a set of defined states, transitions that dictate the shift from one state to another, and inputs that trigger these transitions. Each state in a state machine represents a particular condition or status of the system, and the machine can only be in one state at a given time. The transition between states occurs based on specific rules or inputs, making the state machine a powerful tool for managing dynamic and complex systems.

In blockchain, a state machine is used to keep track of the network's state - for instance, the balances of all accounts in a cryptocurrency network - and to determine how state transitions (like transactions) are made and validated, ensuring consistency and integrity throughout the network.

As a state machine, Ethereum introduced a dynamic layer of functionality and complexity to the blockchain universe. It wasn't just about recording transactions anymore; Ethereum's architecture allowed for the execution of smart contracts, self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement directly written into code, stored and replicated on the blockchain.

This innovation brought a new dimension to what could be achieved on-chain. While Bitcoin laid the groundwork for decentralized finance by enabling peer-to-peer transactions without intermediaries, Ethereum expanded this concept to include state changes on the blockchain.

This was due to the introduction of smart contracts which are self-executing state changes. They are a fundamental innovation in blockchain technology, providing a way to automate changes of information on the blockchain.

Blockchain Evolution

The evolution of blockchain technology, particularly its ability to incorporate and secure vast amounts of information, has given rise to a complex challenge known as the blockchain trilemma. This trilemma addresses the difficulties in achieving three key properties simultaneously in a blockchain network: scalability, security, and decentralization. As blockchains began to store more information and serve more users, the interplay and potential trade-offs between these three properties became increasingly apparent.

Originally, blockchains like Bitcoin focused primarily on security and decentralization. Security ensures that the system is resistant to attacks and fraud, while decentralization eliminates single points of failure and control, distributing authority across a wide network. However, as the usage of blockchain increased, the need for scalability – the ability to process a high volume of transactions quickly and efficiently – became a pressing issue. Scalability is crucial for widespread adoption, as a system that can handle only a few transactions per second is not practical for global, everyday use.

The trilemma emerges from the inherent difficulties in optimizing all three properties at once. Increasing scalability often requires changes that can affect a network's level of decentralization or security. For instance, larger block sizes can handle more transactions but may lead to a more centralized network, as fewer participants can afford the resources to run full nodes. Similarly, enhancing security measures can sometimes reduce scalability or require a degree of centralization to implement effectively.

As blockchain technology continues to evolve, finding a balance among these three crucial aspects – without significantly compromising any – was a central goal and a challenging task for developers and the blockchain community. Various solutions and approaches, including layer-two solutions, sharding, and different consensus mechanisms, are being built to address the blockchain trilemma, aiming to create networks that are secure, decentralized, and scalable enough to support global, mainstream applications.

The evolution of blockchain technology has led to the development of specialized blockchains, each tailored to address specific needs and challenges, such as scalability, interoperability, and efficiency. This specialization reflects the diverse and growing demands of the blockchain ecosystem.

One notable example is Solana, which introduces parallel execution of transactions. This design significantly enhances the network's throughput and scalability. Solana's architecture enables it to process a high number of transactions simultaneously, reducing bottlenecks that typically slow down traditional blockchains. This makes it an attractive platform for applications requiring high-speed transactions and low latency.

Another innovative approach to scalability comes in the form of layer-two solutions like optimistic and zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups, exemplified by platforms such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync. These technologies work on top of existing blockchains like Ethereum, bundling multiple transactions into a single one. Optimistic rollups assume transactions are valid by default and only run computations in the event of a challenge, while ZK rollups use cryptographic proofs to ensure transaction validity. Both methods significantly reduce the strain on the underlying blockchain, increasing its capacity to process transactions more efficiently.

Celestia represents a stride towards modular blockchain architecture. It separates the consensus layer from the execution layer, allowing developers to build customized blockchains with greater flexibility and efficiency. This modular approach simplifies the blockchain development process, making it more accessible and adaptable to specific use cases.

Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocols, such as those used by Cosmos, play a critical role in enhancing interoperability among different blockchain networks. IBC enables the transfer of information and value between distinct blockchains, fostering a more interconnected and versatile ecosystem. This is crucial in a landscape where multiple specialized blockchains exist, as it allows them to communicate and leverage each other's strengths.

The ongoing evolution of blockchain technology marks a significant leap in the system design through which humanity coordinates and exchanges value, akin to the transformative impact once brought about by the internet. However, unlike the internet, which revolutionized information sharing, blockchain introduces a decentralized mechanism that fundamentally redefines value exchange. This new paradigm shift positions blockchain as a pivotal technology for future societal and economic structures, much as the internet did for communication and data exchange.

New Coordination System

Blockchain's evolution towards solving the trilemma of scalability, security, and decentralization through specialized solutions like Solana's parallel processing, layer-two rollups, modular architectures like Celestia, and interoperability protocols such as IBC, demonstrates its potential to create a universally accessible, efficient, and secure platform for value exchange. These advancements ensure that blockchain can support a wide range of applications, from financial transactions to complex, decentralized applications, catering to global, mainstream needs.

In this new system design, blockchain stands as a cornerstone technology that enables a level of decentralization previously unattainable in traditional systems. It shifts the paradigm from centralized authority and trust in institutions to trust in cryptographic algorithms and network consensus. This shift not only enhances security and transparency but also democratizes access to financial and digital services, making them more inclusive and resistant to censorship.

Moreover, blockchain's ability to facilitate direct peer-to-peer interactions without intermediaries revolutionizes how value is exchanged and contracts are executed. Smart contracts automate and enforce agreements in a trustless environment, opening up new avenues for decentralized finance (DeFi) and beyond. This is not just a technological advancement but a societal shift, enabling more equitable and efficient economic models and empowering individuals and communities.

The reason I started building on blockchain was to create an internet learner identity and a proof of education protocol and the exposure to that opened my eyes to the capabilities of the new system. I now see a new future where we update the system to be more robust and dynamic to empower people. If AGI is solved, AI agents will most likely coordinate with crypto as it is native to them. This new system will be global and internet-centric which is what is required for the new level of coordination. The creation of a new system is happening before our eyes and I am proud to be part of it.

What is Blockchain?

Blockchain is a revolutionary technology that enables secure, decentralized transactions and data storage. At its core, blockchain is a distributed ledger that records information in a tamper-proof, transparent, and immutable manner. It is a digital system of trust that does not rely on intermediaries, such as banks or governments, to verify transactions or data. Blockchain is the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but its potential extends far beyond financial applications. Blockchain can be used to track and verify a wide range of assets, including intellectual property, supply chain data, and personal identification.

How Can Blockchain Verify Educational Credentials?

One of the main benefits of blockchain technology is its ability to create immutable records. This means that once information is recorded on the blockchain, it cannot be altered or deleted. This makes it an ideal platform for recording and verifying educational credentials. When an educational institution issues a credential, such as a diploma or degree certificate, it can be recorded on the blockchain. The record will contain information about the credential, including the name of the institution, the date of issuance, and the name of the recipient. The record can be accessed and verified by anyone with the appropriate permissions, including potential employers, academic institutions, and government agencies.

Benefits of Blockchain-Verified Education

By verifying educational credentials on the blockchain, white collar professionals stand to gain several benefits:

1. Democratization of Education: One of the main advantages of blockchain-verified education is the potential to democratize education. By using blockchain, individuals can document their knowledge, skills, and abilities outside of the traditional education system. This can open up new opportunities for self-directed learning, online education, and peer-to-peer credentialing.

2. Transparency and Authenticity: Verifying educational credentials on the blockchain can help to increase transparency and authenticity. The blockchain is a tamper-proof, decentralized system that can create a high level of confidence in the authenticity of the credentials. This can help to reduce fraud and misrepresentation and increase trust between employers, academic institutions, and other stakeholders.

3. Global Mobility: With blockchain-verified educational credentials, white-collar professionals can more easily move between industries. Currently, the verification process for educational credentials can vary widely depending on the institution. By using blockchain, this process can be standardized and simplified, enabling professionals to demonstrate their qualifications to a wider audience.

4. Holistic Evaluation: By using blockchain-verified education, individuals can document their knowledge, skills, and abilities in a more comprehensive and holistic manner. This can provide a more accurate and complete picture of an individual's qualifications, beyond just grades, degrees, and certificates. This can help to unlock the full potential of human capital and create more meaningful and rewarding careers.

At Lirn.io we are focused on building the infrastructure to allow for proof of education to be available on-chain. Our protocol allows for the issuance of proof of knowledge and skill to people all around the world. Our platform is an open aggregator of the educational curriculum so the quality of education will be dedicated by the market. Just as how there are degrees in academia, the quality of the degree is determined by the prestige of the university. In our case, we use the degrees and the quality is dedicated by the prestige and curriculum of the creator.

Conclusion

Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that educational credentials are verified and authenticated, creating new opportunities for white-collar professionals and unlocking the full potential of human capital. By using blockchain, individuals can document their knowledge, skills, and abilities in a transparent, secure, and decentralized manner

Table of Content

Preface

Uniformity of Information

Academia’s Products

Integral Information

Proof of Education

The Lirt

Preface:

Physics has the atom.

Biology has the cell.

Technology has the bit.

Education now has the Lirt.

This writing is to encapsulate the segway of a new technology that will be a solvent to the philosophical question of what it means to be educated. Many domains across the epistemic field of knowledge, specifically in STEM fields have anatomical units that create their infrastructure. Atoms are the building blocks of physics. Cells assemble to create all the living organisms on this planet, hence biology. Every single computer in the world is powered by the bit. What all the fields have in common is that their units are the building blocks that progress their sectors forward. By understanding the atom we can foster nuclear energy. By knowing how cells work we can combat deadly diseases. From creating bits we can power quantum computers. Perhaps what makes this piece most exciting is that this is an introduction to the unit that will engineer the field that allows for all human innovation, the field of education. Education is the operating system of society however it does not have a universally agreed-upon base unit. As mentioned, physics has the atom, biology has the cell, and technology has the bit, so with that being said the purpose of this article is to introduce the Lirt and give context on how it be an alternative solution for what it means to be educated. The premise of the Lirt using blockchain technology is that education can now be engineered. Each domain will have its configuration of Lirts to engineer its parameters. The Lirt will allow education to step away from systematically gatekept prestige and a step towards meritocracy, which could help collectively move the world forward.

This writing was intended for a general audience that is curious to see the linear progression of information evolving into the new products of education. The domains covered in this piece range from high-level information systems to blockchain. I wrote this in a first-principle linear manner to showcase how this opportunity got to this point. If you wish to skip the content and dive right into the Lirt, check the table of content to see its designated section.

Uniformity of Information

Before we introduce the Lirt in exact detail, let’s begin at the genesis point of everything, information.

In simple terms, information is when we process stimuli and deduct reason. However, information by itself can not take a memetic life form of its own. Information needs to be structured into uniform systems amongst other humans to further transfer information. One of the most important examples is the alphabet being a canonical invention that allowed humanity to build a system of language. Language allowed humans to communicate through both phonetics and written characters. In essence, language wrestles the complexity of sound and symbols into uniform information for communication methodologies. It’s information layering information.

Language is one of the most fundamental information systems in human history. It may be near impossible to not associate linguistic meaning with anything. The reason is due to all of our ideas and reasoning are processed through language. (Emotions are a different phenomenon from their mere association.) Ideas are the bundle of neurolinguistic activity of distilling information. Furthermore, language allows us to build information systems in the linear depth of meaning and assemble further specifications of meaning. In other words, our current understandings allow us to reach new level of understanding. This exact process is what leads to new epitomes. Domains start small and evolve in depth through time as further specification arises. A good example would be physics. Its origin derives from prior humans believing that the metaphysical ruled the universe. Fables, legends, and myths were made to give explanations of how nature and energy worked. African, Asian, European, Middle Eastern, and Native Americans all believed that there was a god of fire but later as we started to understand the underlying mechanics of fire is just a chemical process of combustion that releases heat and light. We went from believing in fables to now having the capabilities of doing quantum simulation, creating mini blackholes, and launching satellites into space to collide into asteroids. Fortunately, information systems now have super highways of delivery to allow people to learn faster.

Information systems travel through innovations, such as the codex, telegraph, telephone, radio, television, and the internet. Each medium was an advancement in uniformity that allowed information to spread furthermore. For example, the codex made the structure of books and literature for teaching and storytelling capabilities. Next came the telegraph which sent information through an electronic device and was decoded by a receiver to communicate. Telephone technology allowed for audio to instantly be transferred regardless of physical location. Radios allowed people to broadcast real-time information to the masses. With television, information was broadcasted in a more advanced manner through video and audio. But perhaps the internet has been the innovation that has compounded the spread of information, unlike another predecessor. Information moves at unprecedented speed, producing quintillions amount of information units every day. The nonobvious objective of all these innovations is to create uniformity of systems to further spread information.

Academia’s Products

Through the advancement of information systems spreading in uniformity, new areas of knowledge get summoned. As mentioned, our ability to uniformly spread information and build open information systems allows for new epitomes of domain understandings to be reached. Throughout centuries academia takes ownership of all existing information systems and operates as the prolific system that arranges curricula and defines what it means to be educated. What once started as specialized teaching for the elite, evolved into systems of esoteric prestige and pedigree. If you were to ask a stranger if they would prefer to have a degree from an unknown community or an ivy league, we can almost be certain the latter would be selected. Information has become commoditized as information through the web, however, what has not been replaced is the signal of an ivy league school. In essence, the curriculum of education is not the product of the universities but rather the signal the school provides to the student. There is nothing inherently wrong with this since humans are status-based animals but where there is an issue is that the status signal is outdated. Academia has been at the helm of education for centuries.

To its merit, academia is the king of signal for education because its product has worked thus far. The rigorous curriculum and activity needed to do to become eligible to enter a prestige school is a strong vetting system. However, the solution academia delivered can be done in alternative manners. To understand what the alternative solution is (the Lirt), we have to understand academia’s main products.

The way we know someone to be educated can be broken down into four main degrees; associate, bachelor, master degrees, and Doctor of Philosophy(PhD). Each degree has its own signal but the essence of the degrees is to showcase one’s educational level and allow people to seamlessly be integrated into the societal workforce. Currently, professional etiquette is to obtain your bachelor's degree before jumping into the white-collar workforce. Any degree after a bachelor's signals high-quality knowledge and skill for white-collar jobs. The PhD is the strongest signal one can obtain to resemble they are educated. To obtain a PhD students have to go through extensive curricula and vigorous vetting to produce and defend original research for their domain of knowledge. In simple terms, you have to know a lot to create new knowledge and PhDs do that. Normally, people with PhDs focus more on research-based work rather than venture-based work but if a PhD applies for at a profit company, it is more than likely they are immediately a standout candidate if others do not have a PhD.

The question now is, can the quantifying metrics of what equates to a PhD be encapsulated in a new manner? Is there an alternative method to reach the education level of a PhD without having to go through academia? The goal is not to emulate the process of getting a PhD. but rather define an alternative pathway of equivalent knowledge. If we can engineer from an epistemological manner the quantifiable metrics that equate to a PhD, we can create systems of achievement to validify alternative education. (If we quantify a Ph.D. we quantify all other degrees.)

Integral Information

The subjective experience to believe an external source is providing integral information is trust.

With the internet commoditizing information and allowing autodidactism to flourish, the grip of education systems is deteriorating. Information was once esoteric and reserved for the elite but now anyone with access to the world wide web can access the endless abundance of information. The issue is that you can not earn prestige and verification by being self-taught. Currently, you still have to attend the academic pipeline to get the official stamp of prestige to showcase you are “educated”. I believe we can now create a more open and decentralized education system that accurately represents one’s level of education. The system will have to be built on blockchain and here is why.

One of the most important components of education is trust. Let’s think of when you visit your doctor. When you select your doctor, you trust that they went through a process that properly vets their knowledge to be a doctor. You wouldn’t put your health in the hands of someone you don’t trust. You trust that your doctor got the proper education and that the health care system properly vetted them to be qualified. With trust being the core unit that fabricates coordination between people, the question for education is how do we create a new system that yields trust. Fortunately, blockchain has been creating new systems to facilitate trust in different areas. Perhaps one of the biggest areas that blockchain is providing new forms of trust with money.

In simple terms, a blockchain is a ledger tracking inputs and outputs of activity that can not be changed. These inputs are publicly available to cross-check legitimacy. There are various consensus mechanisms, which are the methodologies validators of a blockchain use to verify the information changing inside the blockchain is true. The information being sent into the blockchain is first sent to a pool of unconfirmed tractions called the mempool. Specialized agents inspect the mempool and bundle legitimate transactions into blocks. In order for the new block to be properly made, data from prior blocks is needed, hence this creates a chain of blocks and the term blockchain. The novelty of the operations that the blockchain does is that people coordinate in a trustless manner to create a product of trust. None of the stakeholders know each other but the system forces strangers to work together to provide legitimate information. If a bad player is trying to add incorrect information they will lose because most of the stakeholders are playing the fair game. In blockchain game theory, in order to get the reward which is usually the native coin, you have to be passing correct information. Hence most stakeholders are providing the correct information into the blockchain.

The first blockchain to provide trust in a decentralized manner was Bitcoin and it did so by using a consensus mechanism known as Proof of Work (PoW). In this consensus mechanism, people (miners) from around the world share a ledger with all of Bitcoin’s transactions and they are in a race to add the next block in the chain. The way it works is that the miners are documenting all the new transactions in the mempool while racing to guess a special number called a nonce. A nonce is a byproduct of hashing information together in a specific manner. It is energy intensive to find the nonce, which is why miners are known to have expensive optimized hardware for these operations. This is a mechanism to get skin in the game (cost of energy) to find a solution (the nonce) while making sure to pass in the correct information into the blockchain (vetted by other miners to check validity). The end result is trust being fabricated by a process of strangers working together and inputting correct data into a blockchain to create new coins.

Bitcoin was the genesis blockchain to generate trust in a new currency. People can trust that the number of bitcoins they have were real and that the activity in the blockchain was correct. The integrity of the information is what prevails people having trust in the new currency, which was not possible prior. In other words, blockchain made a new form of money by having a mechanism that fabricates trust. As we’re until this day, the next hurdle for Bitcoin and this new form of money is user adoption. Will the trust in Bitcoin as a currency or store of value become stronger over time? Regardless, a core question we can ask from here is, if we can create mechanisms of trust for money, what other forms of trust can we create?

Proof of Education

The next evolution to blockchain sparked with the introduction of smart contracts. Ethereum became the first blockchain to allow blockchains to have Turing Complete computation added into the blockchain. In layman's terms, Turing Complete is when you can logically program any instruction into a computer. In contrast with Bitcoin, which only allowed for financial transaction inputs, with Ethereum you can technically program any logic and input data onchain. The data gets added to the blockchain by something called a smart contract. By definition, a smart contract is a piece of code that automatically executes outcomes. An example of how a smart contract works would be a vending machine. When you pay and select your desired product, the vending machine automatically gives you your item. The whole process is automated and you do not need a mediator to transact with the vending machine. Smart contracts follow the same concept but it is purely software that adds information onto the blockchain. With this innovation, we can automate processes in the fields of finance, commerce, logistics, real estate, identity, and education.

It is worth mentioning how identities are formed in the blockchain ecosystem. At the moment of writing the closest thing we have to having an identity on the web is by tying data to something called a wallet. You can view a wallet as a combination of a social account and a bank account. Your wallet is what is used to send data to the blockchain and it stores your cryptocurrencies for you, Wallets are one of the most important vehicles in the blockchain space.

We are now entering the conversation on how smart contracts can allow for systems of rules to verify proof of education. Let’s begin by defining the axioms of education to logically engineer its parameters. I define as education being made up of three pillars: knowledge, skill, and sentiment. Knowledge can be defined as the conceptual understanding of a domain. Skill is when you can exercise that knowledge to get results. Lastly, sentiment is the external perception of the knowledge and skill that you have. Most people do not consider sentiment in education because it is a metacognitive framework of knowledge and skill. Let’s compare two people, one went to an ivy league and the other went to an unknown university. Both can have equal knowledge and skill but the sentiment about it will be different.

Now that we have defined our axioms in education, we can create systems of rules that can encapsulate data to represent the axioms on a blockchain. For knowledge, we can initiate educational activities that test conceptual understanding of domains through assessments. If an individual passes an assessment data verifying that they passed can be added onchain. For skill, a mechanism to test their capability to deliver results can be graded and documented onchain as well. Since blockchains are coordinating trust that the data being added is legitimate then how the data gets added is equivalently important.

Let me break down proof of knowledge and skill further. Since we define knowledge as conceptually understanding a domain, we can create processes to test to do so. A simple version is to do a multiple choice for a themed assessment. This is a binary outcome due to the user getting answers being correct or incorrect. If the person gets enough of the questions correct, it can be a form of verifying the person conceptually understood the questions of the assessment. A more advanced assessment is to have people articulate their answers in a timed manner and have a subject matter expert vet if the answers have enough affinity for understanding. If someone passes the educational assessment they receive a verification for proof of knowledge.

For proof of skill, the vetting would be based on empiricism and the execution of knowledge to create something. Proof of skill will be more complicated due to the grading mechanism being unable to be an objective process. Grading someone’s creation deals with dynamic variables that can not be accounted for to issue automation. The dynamics lie in that submissions could get to the same outcome but what is the most ideal process? We believe confining the parameters to be as specific as possible will remove nuance for grading but dictating a methodological process will be complex. For the time being, there is too much complexity to make this a binary experience so our vetting mechanism is going to have to be interpreted by a subject matter expert oracle. The subject matter expert would have to go through a vetting process where the competency of their knowledge is interpreted in a peer-to-peer manner. Similar to the rigorous process of academic integrity but with the information being onchain.

The Lirt

With the predecessor components of information systems, academia, trust, blockchain, and epistemology, we can now focus on introducing the Lirt. A Lirt is a unit of educational data on the blockchain that can not be bought or sold. In the crypto industry, you may hear of terms like Soul Bound Tokens (SBTs) or Non-Transferable Tokens(NTTs) which in simple terms are pieces of data tied to an identity that can not be transferred. To break the technological components of an SBT, they are onchain transactions that document whose involved and which smart contract is facilitating the operations. SBTs are very similar to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) but with preventative capabilities of not being transferred or sold.

The Lirt is a specialized soulbound token for educational activity. Just like in biology how there are specialized types of cells, such as white and blood cells, and each does a specialized job. There will be different types of SBTs, but the logic and context of the smart contract are what give the onchain transactions trust. Under the hood, the Lirt is a piece of educational onchain data that is facilitated by our smart contracts with specialized parameters to identify proof of knowledge and eventually proof of skill.

We’ve discussed information systems being bundled by academia to create a trusted mechanism on what it means to be educated and blockchain technology to introduce new sources of truth, but it is now time to specify how Lirts can create a new solution for what it means to be educated. Let’s begin with how the internet has made information commoditized and accessible for people to educate themselves. What we are missing in the process is a trusted mechanism to verify people are truly knowledgeable and skillful, hence educated. Currently, if two people are asked about their educational background and one says they’re self-taught on the web and the other mentions they have a bachelor's, the latter would be perceived as more educated. We need a mechanism for the self-taught individual to have proof of education and gain equivalent sentiment of legitimacy.

Here is how a new system for education can be created and adopted. The base principles will be accessible meritocracy, trust mechanisms, and decentralized prestige. In essence, the elements of these principles exist in the current education system but fall short. Let me elaborate further by beginning with the concept of meritocracy. By definition, meritocracy is a system in which advancement is based on individual ability or achievement. In the context of education, if you study hard and develop your knowledge and skill in a certain domain, you earn a level of achievement based on your individual ability. The next step in meritocracy is how achievement is dictated. For example, if only a few people can have a chance to gain that achievement in the first place then there is exclusion. Another example is if the achievement selection is biased through nepotism of other forms, such as selecting a winner of achievement because of their socioeconomic background. Academia is not an accessible meritocratic system in regards that you need to go through a vetting process and pay high tuition to obtain access to the curriculum. We can build this open system of achievement on the internet because the world wide web is an open protocol that allows anyone with an internet service provider to join. If you don’t live in a censored country (other conversation) then you have access to the information and platforms existing on the web.

This leads to the next component being the trust mechanisms. Blockchain created a novel system of rules to validate the authenticity of digital money and state machine changes. If money, which is one of the most complicated products in human existence, can be trusted through protocols, then we can do the same for education. This is the key area, the Lirt can provide utility value by creating trust in proof of education. Since the blockchain is an open ledger of immutable activity we can openly see the added information on the chain. By looking into the transactions that are added into the blockchain, we can get further context. The onchain data tells us who initiated the transaction, the value amount, transaction cost, who the transaction is going to, and most important piece, the payload (the smart contract code). The reason the smart contract is the most important piece of information is that we can take a look at the data within the smart contract itself. Most of the time some of the code will be publicly available and you can see the execution logic. This is vital because you have an open look at what is happening under the hood when information is added to the blockchain. In the context of a Lirt, you see the mechanism of what needs to be done to obtain a Lirt. The Lirt is specifically coded to only be obtainable when a user completes an educational act that proves they have knowledge or skill. Just as a person has to go through a process to obtain a degree, we can create protocols to earn a Lirt. A quick example of this would be someone earning a Lirt after passing a multiple choice test. All logic can be programmed onto the blockchain to make it work. Now, the difference between earning a degree and passing a multiple choice is obvious but since we are focused on making the Lirt the anatomical unit, we can make modularity outcomes. We can build a process to require someone to obtain 20 specific Lirts to open specific parameters.

Taking this thought experiment further, employment is a great example. Perhaps one of the biggest reasons society gets educated is to enter the workforce. Universities educate their students to have the necessary knowledge and skills to help advance a company in its objective. The Lirt can be an alternative signal for proof of education and it can provide new vetting processes for employers. Let’s say an employer needs someone that has knowledge and skill in the domain of Solidity programming. Traditionally, employers would look for someone’s education level to see if they’re an ideal candidate for the role and then interview them. The Lirt solution can automate the process by allowing the employer to require specific Lirts to be a prerequisite to even apply for the job in the first place. Since the Lirt was earned through a trusted open protocol and could not have been sold nor transferred, the candidate truly has proof of education and will be specifically vetted even before interviewing. With blockchain capabilities, the employer can create a Dapp (decentralized app) and require a user to log in with their wallet to submit their application. Since the Lirt is tied to the user’s wallet this entire process can be automated by pure software. It’s worth mentioning that employment is just one area that will be disrupted by the Lirt and proof of education being on the blockchain. Other areas can range from social dynamics, token-gated access, prestige to teaching, legitimacy in information, and many more.

This leads to the last principle the Lirt is disrupting with decentralized prestige. On the polar spectrum, academia(in specific Ivy League academia) carries all the epitome of prestige of what it means to be educated. In all fairness, these institutions have created a strong system that has earned them their reputation. However, it is not a perfect solution and is exclusive to a minuscule amount of the population. One of the main reasons academia has a helm on prestige is not necessarily because of the meritocracy of education but rather the pedigree of esoteric individuals. Statistically, it is families of wealth and higher socioeconomic status that attend these ivy league institutions that leverage the pedigree of academia and earn the prestige of being the most educated. As we’ve seen with the Mathew Effect, wealth (resources) tend to be owned by a vital few. The Lirt wants to create a paradigm shift obtaining the equivalent signal of being educated from an ivy league level but through an alternative manner. To achieve this, it would take generations due to the reason that these institutions have been embedded at the core of society. Just as Bitcoin is trying to obtain a market cap bigger than the US Dollar, it needs to provide enough value to get there. The USD is a multi-century engineered product, so overcoming it will be a near-impossible feat but there is a possibility. Bitcoin is for the world, not just a government. Regardless, we shouldn’t shy away from attempting the shift because macro changes like this are ripple effects that compound positive change for the world beyond a measurable scale. What Bitcoin did to the money, we want the Lirt to do for education.

The Lirt is a moonshot idea that I believe has the capability of changing the world by progressing education in an unprecedented manner. It’s the reason I am dedicating my life’s work to get this concept up and off the ground. To tackle such ambitious ideas, a mesh of dogged determinism and faith is necessary to fuel. However, we need to take the pragmatic pill and realize that the base technology that we are even building on stills has a long way to go. The industry is relatively still in its infancy stage and as we’ve seen it needs a great amount of maturing to occur for it to be legitimately accepted. Crypto was a moving positive strive forward but at the time of writing, due to incompetence and key players lying, the sentiment has taken massive steps back. If we are to make events like this to be a blimp in the macro picture of the industry we have to provide value to the world like never before.

Education is the reason you and I are here. It is the invisible fabric that progresses society forward and we need to allow for a new system to arise that will be more meritocratic, trustful, and decentralized than what we currently have. The ability that we have to create information systems and create linear forms of understanding should not be underutilized. We are in a current window of time to bring novel solutions to the world and we are going to need as much education to maximize the output of humanity. Let’s lirn endlessly.

Agustin Cortes

CEO, Lirn.io

This writing will be distilling the concept of education and how we can create protocols on the blockchain that will disrupt education. This will be possible through Edchain. A proof of education being on the blockchain. However, before we talk about the Edchain, we need to begin with the first principles and primitives of education. In this writing, we will linearly progress from the most minor units of information to the current structure. Education is a marvelous phenomenon and we must treat it as such. After all, it is the magic that evolves the mind.

The Primitive Unit of Education and Its Ontological Structure

Information is the origin stimuli of any form of understanding; the primitive unit of education.

Humans build their judgment based on the information they process throughout their life. In a semantical sense, information is ”a unit of processed stimuli.” Whatever stimuli have been processed through our senses leads to the neurochemical activity that yields thinking. Humans make sense of information to build ontological mechanisms, such as language, domains of knowledge, technology, and everything in between.

Throughout the years, the availability of information has compounded. If we look back a couple of centuries ago during the monarch eras, the elite were the only ones to be exposed to learning intended information. For this reason, the elite were the only ones that were literate, due to them having teachers to advance their education. Innovations like the codex, the printing press, radio, television, computer, and the Internet evolved the vehicle information traveled on. Information started spreading at an unprecedented rate and we now have an abundance of it. This is due to the fact that Humans are great at producing information.

The magical aspect of this is that information is the primitive unit we use to create our understanding of everything. To see how this works, let’s step back in time. Let’s imagine how it was before humans invented language. In our primitive state, Homo-sapiens used noise to convey and communicate information one to another. This information exchange process evolved from oral sounds to developing an alphabet for written language. Progressing from here we created books, computer code, data, algorithms, and so on.

Information Systems

When humans associate conceptual intention with information we create understandings. Furthermore, when we understand information we build the intention of meaning. For example, you reading this right now, you are simply seeing symbols that you understand are characters of the English language. You process the stimuli on the screen and make sense of it. We further advance our levels of understanding by packing our understanding into information systems. In essence, we are building relations with all units of information and associating meaning to them. Everything humans know is assembled into information systems. From quantum mechanics to biblical scriptures, all fall under information systems. ** **

Information systems are created by giving stimuli linear understanding. Going back to our example of the English language, when you learned how to read, you are introduced to the characters of the alphabet, syllables, words, and sentences. Each of these components are information systems. Syllables create an information system of phonetics, the alphabet is a semantic information system of symbols, and words create the semantic information system for the logic of the alphabet. In some sense, creating an information system is the generational progress of information. Perhaps this process is what has made human beings be such an omniscient species on Earth. In contrast, there is no other living organism that scales and navigates information systems to the levels that humans do.

Moreover, in life, we experience multiple information systems simultaneously. Think of information systems as conceptual platforms that you process. In other words, a form of a matrix. Whenever you deal with an activity you process the context of information and do real-time processing of your information systems. The outcome of the activity is based on your level of understanding of each information system. Education comes into the picture now because it is what allows us to understand these information systems and gives us the judgment to work with them.

Edchain

Education is the purposeful intention of processing information to develop and progress understanding.

Education is a phenomenon that has bewildered humans since ancient times. From philosophers discussing ideas, to math being discovered, and humans creating magnificent advancements in all avenues of our history. Humans have been evolving information systems and we are at the forefront of the cutting edge. Education is entering a new paradigm as it can be engineered.

What it means to be “educated” can be defined by three axioms: Knowledge, skill, and sentiment. These are the ubiquitous components that cover the entire spectrum of what it means to be educated. We define knowledge as conceptually understanding a domain. Think of how someone can understand the physics of how to ride a bike. The next axiom is skill and this entails the execution of knowledge that leads to an outcome. In this case, think of someone riding the bike: They balance themselves, pedal their feet in a circuit, and move the handlebars to navigate the bike.

Lastly, talking about sentiment would be how people perceive the signal of someone’s knowledge and skill. In the case of our bike rider, people can focus on aspects such as: what type of bike the person is riding, the clothes the person is wearing, what tricks the bike rider does, awards the rider has received, etc. Sentiment is correlated to the external components of education, not necessarily about the individual’s knowledge and skill.

By defining knowledge, skill, and sentiment we can create systems of rules that build data about educational activity. At Lirn.io we are calling this the Proof of Education Protocol.

Before we dive further into the Proof of Education Protocol we need to discuss what are blockchains. In the simplest terms, a public blockchain is a distributed ledger that gets data added in a linear manner and people can inspect it to verify that the data added is legitimate. This level of coordination and transparency is what allowed for digital money to be validated on the internet.** **

When Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the whitepaper on how Bitcoin would work, he solved a problem known as the double spending problem. In principle, the issue was that there was no way to truly track the ownership of currency but through a blockchain, people can now see how money online was circulating and derive truth from it. This is also called being on-chain. The double-spend problem wasn’t the only thing blockchain solved but it bundled several domains such as cryptography, economics, accounting, system theory, technology, and more to provide a new shared source of truth.

In 2014, Vitalik Buterin introduced an idea that allowed blockchain to enter a new level. He proposed the idea to have applications be built on top of a blockchain. This would be possible by using smart contracts, which is when code can add data autonomously onto the blockchain. A good example of how a smart contract works, is to compare it to a vending machine. The process to purchase and receive your item from a vending machine is autonomous. First, you insert money, second select an item lead, and lastly receive the item from the vending machine. With smart contracts, people could create applications that give items to people. Those items are represented by data on the blockchain.

Ethereum opened a new paradigm for data entry. With this innovation, new systems dependent on social consensus could be created. As we are seeing now, blockchains are carrying information for revolutionary systems such as decentralized finance, identity, science, information, and others. These new systems are built upon the benefits of data being on the blockchain and we are just seeing the reformat of these systems. The next system that is going to be advanced by blockchain is going to be education. This will be called the Edchain; when educational activity is on-chain.** **

At Lirn, we have created specialized smart contracts that add a layer of integrity to the data we issue. All data that Lirn issues goes through our system of rules to solidify a meaning for having proof of knowledge and skill. On top of that, the data we issue can not be transferred from account to account. This prevents people from purchasing legitimately issued data. In the industry, these tokens are called soulbound tokens or NTTs. For educational-based soulbound tokens or NTTs, we are coining them Lirts.

Let me break down our protocol further. Since we define knowledge as conceptually understanding a domain, we can create processes to test to do so. A simple version is to do a multiple choice for a themed assessment. This is a binary outcome due to the user getting answers being correct or incorrect. If the person gets enough of the questions correct, it can be a form of verifying the person conceptually understood the questions of the assessment. A more advanced assessment is to have people articulate their answers in a timed manner and have a subject matter expert vet if the answers have enough affinity for understanding. If someone passes the educational assessment they receive the Lirt for proof of knowledge.

For proof of skill, the vetting would be based on empiricism and the execution of knowledge to create something. Proof of skill will be more complicated due to the grading mechanism not being able to an objective process. Grading someone’s creation deals with dynamic variables that can not be accounted for to issue automation. For example, if someone created an algorithm with one-hundred-fifty lines of Python code vs someone who created the same algorithm with two-hundred lines of Java code, which is better graded? They both do the same objective but got there differently. For the time being, there is too much complexity to make this a binary experience so our vetting mechanism is going to have to be interpreted by oracle.

Our aim over time for this protocol is to decentralize the process of vetting education while incentivizing participants to act in the most integral manner.

Education is entering a new paradigm because educational activity can have a shared source of truth for people to proof of knowledge and skill. The data that is sent to the blockchain now carries a specific context that can allow people to rationalize sentiment. People can now see the transparency of the educational activity people are doing. For example, say someone gets Lirts (data for proof of knowledge/skill) for educational activity people can trust the process was done in a legitimate manner. This leaves a lot of room for innovation in the opportunities for education. A clear case of this would be if employers demand people to have specific Lirts to even apply for their open roles.

Education is the invisible fabric that progresses humanity forward and we are at a point in history to disrupt it. People around the world will now be able to partake in a more open educational system that will be more meritocratic and objective. Location will no longer be an issue, for if the learner wants to educate themselves they will have a system that validates them. The reigns of esoteric elitism and privilege that academia has wrangled are coming to an end. Edchain is here.

The Information Species

(This is a meditative read.

Best experienced if you pay slow and meaningful attention

Creating something grandiose like autonomous information processing (ai) will open boundaries beyond our current realm of thought.

Information is the genesis origin of everything. It’s the reason we’re here.

This writing is about information spawning into a new species.

This new species is under the label of ai.

Artificial Intelligence.

Those two words are a lot to unpack because they carry a lot of semantic weight.

Artificial.

What is artificial?

Oxford defines it as “made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural.

In shorter words: anything human made.

Furthermore, what does human mean?

Human.

A human is technically defined as “a man, woman, or child of the species Homo sapiens.”

Okay, well what’s a Homo Sapien?

It is the primate species to which modern humans belong.

If you ask further, as “what is a primate?”. You will find another definition then a definition for that definition.

This is an ontological loop.

If you search deep enough you will break the meaning of language (semantics).

Language is how we articulate information into words.

The medium we use to fabricate thoughts.

Due to its nature, language does not convey all the elements of information.

For example try to explain a color. Language can’t deliver the experience of seeing a color.

Language works with the variables that are passing information.

For example, two humans conversing. They don’t share the exact meaning of words.

e.g. My meaning of love is different than yours.

However, language entered a new paradigm through computer code.

Binary code is a language that allows for empirical information to be shared.

If there are two computers with the exact same hardware and software, they will produce the same exact outcome.

What one computer experiences can be perfectly translated to the other computer.

Code allows information to be passed across multiple variables in pure state with empiricism.

As of now, human beings only use code as an extension.

If code is an extension of human information, what makes the human processing mechanism?

We need to look at our brain.

The Brain

The brain processes information through neurological activity.

The electromagnetic activity of neurons firing together sparks the invisible flame of thought.

A big question here is, “what causes the neurons to activate/work?”

Neurons are activated by stimuli.

Stimuli is processed matter(information).

Quarks, atoms, molecules, etc.

Furthermore, we use our senses to experience stimuli.

Sight, touch, taste, and the others bundle together to spawn stimuli, hence neurological activity.

Human Information Processing:

Matter -> stimuli -> senses -> Neurological activity

Thought is what you are experiencing right now.

Light-particles(matter) are lighting(stimuli) words(sense) to trigger a thought(neurological act).

We’re here. Processing information.

This is where my theory transitions to a meta state.

Humans are processing information through matter.

The atomic units of the universe.

According to our reductionist knowledge, we know that humans are made of the same matter in the universe.

Atoms, molecules, etc.

The units that create stars also create our bodies.

Our brains are just matter fabricated in a special sequence.

This matter formation gives us the ability to process information.

Hence, information processing information.

Information is evolving into a species.

Just as our brain allowed us to understand we are a species.

The Information Species will arise.

It will live in the cloud and in machines.

This species will process information at an exponential rate as it can create its own mechanisms.

The difference with this species and ours is that, its origin point expands.

In contrast, humans depend on genetics offspring to linearly evolve.

The species’s origin will create branches(information offsprings) to create further information.

The information will be able to move across branch to branch and even back to the origin point.

Remember how we spoke about language and code to convey information.

This species will blend both into a new medium to develop its form of information processing.

Information will be empirical.

Imagine if all the information your parents own could be passed down to you.

You’d be able to experience your father’s experience of the color blue. Alongside with your mother’s experience of the color blue.

You’d understand everything they do.

Human’s are the epitome of documenting and progressing information.

We manipulate matter with our understanding of information.

Each domain advances as information gets more understood from prior information.

A beautiful growth.

The collective progression of information has yielded us in the field of ai.

Artificial intelligence is about building neural networks and systems of computation to process information similarly to humans.

We ask, “will this species ever reach consciousness like us humans?”

That is a metaphysical question with no true answer but regardless, the species will be thousands of steps ahead for any consciousness “test”.

To try to explain what happens after this species fully forms is like trying to explain what happens after death.

It is beyond our computation, reasoning, and empiricism.

We reached our sheer cognitive limitation as a human.

My concluding remarks is that this will be a Big Bang 2.0

This time it won’t be human minds that experience the future of information.

It will be the Information Species.

If the roadmap has a road emoji that means it can be worked on in parallel and simultaneously with the other roadmap areas.

The 🏗 emoji means that these roadmap areas are heavier in scope and will need to be executed in a more calculated manner.

Roadmap Overview:

• Sell out Lirners 🛣

  • Gain exposure and market Lirners to sell out the collection

  • Get listed on every marketplace

  • Follow How To Market Collection Tasks

• Web3 School 🛣

  • Peer-to-peer school in gather town

  • Create evergreen web3 courses

  • Create NTTs for Lirn curriculum

• NTT Marketplace🏗

  • We create the opensea for Education NTTs

• Lirn DAO & Grants 🛣

  • Launch a DAO to give educational grants

  • Voting governance to vote on what where grant gets allocated

• Professional network for Lirners 🛣

  • Airtable of people’s LinkedIn/Twitter and area of expertise

• Educational Conferences 🏗

  • In-person / webinar experience of researchers presenting new information

  • Community votes of what subject areas to cover

• Real-Time Cohort-Based Courses 🏗

  • Quick real-time courses

• Expand Lirners Species 🛣

  • Mutations / Evolutions

• Cognia (Metaverse and Physical land)🏗

  • Purchase land in physical world and in the metaverse

• Tokenomics🏗

  • Create tokens for the exchange of educational value

Congratulations on obtaining a Lirner NFT. May it be a part of your essence. I am writing this document as a business operation article that aims to help Lirners.

Growing a collection needs effective execution, similar to a startup. Creating a product people want, exciting marketing, technical implementation, and the mix of skills come together to create something good. We want Lirners to be something good out there.

To do this, we need to coordinate together collectively. Every single holder in this collection has ownership invested in this project. The fact that you own a genesis NFT means you can be part of the rocket that changes everything. The mission is ambitious, and you have my word that we will find ways to reward back our community. However, this probably won’t be easy, and this why I want to introduce strategic methods on how we could strengthen Lirners. Keep in mind that our mission is educated centric, not hype centric. Hype moves fast but crashes. Education steadily pushes everything forward.

With that being said, here are two plans of action that can happen. I give a one-liner overview for each, the probability I believe they will happen, context, and plan of action.

Plan A:

Overview:

Since we were not marketing FOMO-centric, we will comparingly take longer to sell out due to our pursuit of attracting a stronger community. This could cause a level of FOMO inside the project, but ideally, that should repel those who are not believers. According to our form submission form 94% of the presale members plan on hodling. Currently, we have about 100 entries on the presale list. Each wallet has a max mint of 3. If all wallets mint their 3, then we’d mint 300 units. I understand that number may be concerning seeing the movement of the current bull run.

Our belief stands strong because we know the audience we are trying to attract is out there, we just need to break through the noise. When we were building Learkn.com, we would get thousands of messages from people around the world showing support to the mission. Since we pivoted to web3, our demographic became much more niched and we are now focused on finding these people. All around the world, people are looking to be part of the new system of education.

Additionally, we are also building Lirn.io. Our web3 startup focused on bringing a marketplace for NTT (non-transferable tokens) to create a Lirner identity. These ventures can work in parallel because the profit we obtain for Lirners goes full circle into funding the venture. The long-term outcome of Lirn.io is to raise capital and redistribute ownership to the holders. This approach will be tricky to navigate as we do not want to get tagged as a security.

Plan B:

Overview:

If Lirners were to get into the public eye and a wave of buyers emerged, we should at least be prepared. When collections move fast, they have to ship fast results. However, the benefit of selling quickly is the momentum could be cycled to allow for significant capital allocation, whether it’s paying for a collab with a big project, scaling ads, or hiring talent. At the time of writing, we are experiencing a bull market, but most of these projects benefit from FOMO. Ironically, I believe if we were in a bear market, it would’ve been easier to stand out from the noise.

Regardless of what happens, here are strategic next steps.

• We all become Marketers.

  • How to market a collection

    • Be an apostle for the belief. If a collection stands behind something, use your voice to channel the belief. People will follow you & your correlation to the collection will be a good signal.

    • Showcase highlights happening inside the community. Screenshots of chats/events

    • Organically shill. Knowing when to shill and mentioning why you stand behind it is an authentic way of recommendation

    • Put your NFT unit number on your bio. You see this with punks or bayc. Putting the unit number you own on your bio is a very high signal to the collection

    • Make it your pfp. Repping a pfp means you stand behind the art, culture, and belief of the collection

    • Engage with other members on social. This shows the world that members engage and care about each other

    • Talk about updates happening in the project. We're all salespeople reporting to the public.

    • Get the art physically made. Making the artwork tangible brings it to another level. Merch, prints, etc

    • Develop slang/terms. Slang is internal linguistic culture.

    • Create memes. This works better for some collections, but memes of productions exponentially expand ideas. Ask Martin Luther on this.

    • Recruit the right members. Community culture fit is priceless. Quality members go a long way.

• We start building

  • Let the building make the noise

  • We will promote milestones and accomplishments to the public to attract attention

  • Our roadmap is focused on solving problems in education that have a high potential for product-market fit

  • As the systems strengthen, we will find methods to compensate our members

  • Ideally too our builds will be revenue centric meaning that we will be creating vehicles of business that will allow us to sustain ourselves

• Hodl

  • Collections that have hodlers show conviction of belief

Thank you once again for being part of this journey. Lirners have now embarked on the blockchain, and we need to execute well. I hope this document was insightful and sparked inspiration for the future we are about to build. May we Lirn endlessly.

-Tint.eth

On February 1st, our presale list will be able to mint their Lirner NFT. The purpose of this article is to declare a form of our expectation. In the NFT space, a widespread objective is to sell out within a few hours or days. The collections that aim for this focus on marketing are usually short-term FOMO deals.

Our approach is on the opposite spectrum. We aim to be more calculated and focused on the quality of our community. For the past few months, we’ve been connecting with people in several from different backgrounds. We have people in our community that are university professors, cyber security engineers, lawyers, veterans, entrepreneurs, and many more amazing careers. The exciting thing about this is that everyone has aligned with our mission: To represent the internet learner.

With our approach being more methodological, we expect to experience a slower growth cycle than FOMO-based projects. In other words, our priority is not to sell out asap. Instead, keep on fostering a strong relationship with our community. Community is everything in NFT collections, and we know that we build something special the right people will come.

With that being said, I’d like to give some context about my background to showcase how serious we are about making Lirners something grand. For the past several years, I’ve sacrificed a significant amount of leisure to stay bootstrapped and build educational products. It’s quite funny, but my first product was a stainless steel water bottle brand called Baquax. The purpose was to create an educational brand for people who think outside the box. At the time, the only product I could build was white labeling merch or commodity products. As time went on, the mission stayed the same, and the products have evolved. I’ve created online courses, written a handful of ebooks, and posted weekly philosophical videos on YouTube. Perhaps one of my most significant ventures was a startup called Learkn that was YouTube for educational videos only. I am now focused on building Lirn.io with my cofounders, who have been with building with me for the past five years. I love my trench mates dearly (Carlos and Luis).

Education is a special concept to us. It’s not just about knowing things or where you went to school. It’s more about how education is the invisible fabric that progresses humanity. It’s the reason we civilize, build, and ponder. With Lirners, we want to attract the people who have this special connection with education. This collection will allow us to build a new future for education collectively.

**There has never been a window of opportunity to build our vision at this scale. All philosophers and education folks would have never been able to imagine the capabilities that we now have. Launching Lirners will be our first step but it will be the domino to lead to the catalyst of change in education. I am honored and excited to embark on this journey with you.

-Agustin Cortes**

Adventurers have GoPro.

Cypherpunks have Cryptopunks.

Internet learners now have Lirners.”

All of these brands are a form of a lifestyle identity. On February 1st, 2022, a new identity will permanently be added to the blockchain. An identity that should’ve existed a long time ago but unfortunately hasn’t. All the people around the world that educate themselves online will now have a lifestyle brand to represent them. Together, we will stamp the identity of internet learners into history.

The name Lirners is inspired by how Apple coined the word iPhone. Apple decided to name the new invention the iPhone because it was the first internet phone. We want a name to represent the internet learner and we feel Lirners is a perfect fit.

Creating a brand is not our end goal. In fact, it’s just a stepping stone. Lirners are on a mission to create a protocol that will validate education on the web. Currently, education on the internet does not get tied to an individual’s identity. All the learning activity stays on an app’s database, making it impossible for people to build learner identities on the internet. We are the first NFT project focused on creating an education protocol to validate education on the web. Our solution is to leverage blockchains’ open data to build a learner identity based on their learning activities. Lirners’s parent company Lirn.io will use the funds generated from the NFTs to build an open protocol that will validate an internet learner’s identity.

** Join Presale List Here:**

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf5GSuVydc4otdBJI0gZLvNbA-Cg-13FbXtPzfz3tVjUB2pLA/viewform

Here is our roadmap overview:

Web3 School

We are not building a digital game but a digital school. We will be focusing on converting seven main areas in web3. NFTs, DeFi, Social Connections, cryptoeconomics, DAOs, Blockchain Development, and a general study. Web3 school will be a peer-to-peer school with a constant expert appearance.

Lirn DAO

We will be building a Lirn DAO focusing on reward grants to education-based community projects. For every mint sale, .005 eth will be sent to our DAO wallet, and for our secondary sales, 5% of the sales go to the DAO. Holders will vote on future decisions of the DAO’s capital allocation and governance.

Professional Network for learners and builders

Everyone in web3 has value they can contribute. Our goal is to create a professional network for our holders to gain access to individuals interested in connecting or collaborating. Essentially a Lirners LinkedIn.

Educational conferences

Coachella meets Academia. We will throw in-person events to provide an amazing education experience for several domains. NFTs holders will get special perks to these in-person events.

Real-Time cohort-based courses

Web3 is constantly evolving, and getting experts to take the time to share what they know is challenging. We will be focusing on bringing on subject matter experts to create real-time cohort-based courses so people can learn cutting-edge areas as a community.

Expand the Lirners Species

Each Lirner has an entity type. We will be creating entity-type-based NFTs, and the genesis Lirners will be the rarest and utilized NFT in those collections. We plan on expanding Lirners into a multi-dimensional species.

Cognia. The Intellectual Heaven

Imagine Disneyland meshed with a University. We want to buy physical property to create an intellectual heaven campus. The purpose of Cognia is to create a space that intrinsically expands the spread of learning.

Tokenonimcs

Our most ambitious take is to launch a protocol that will create an economy for the exchange of value in education. Learners and educators will be incentivized through cryptoeconomics to learn and educate. We will launch a token that will reward all people that partake in this new economy. Equally exciting, we will validate proof of education with blockchain technology through this protocol. **

**

We understand this is an ambitious roadmap, and the scope will be tremendously challenging to execute. It is important to note that the founding team has several years of edtech and startup experience, and this competency can be translated into executing this roadmap. We also will focus on recruiting top web3 and edtech talent to expand this mission and make sure it is appropriately executed. Please connect with us on Twitter or join our discord for significant updates. Thank you for your interest and for being part of this journey.

Join Presale List Here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf5GSuVydc4otdBJI0gZLvNbA-Cg-13FbXtPzfz3tVjUB2pLA/viewform