Turning dapp dev team into anime characters
Working as Creative Director, a 1-man creative team at a DeFi startup of all developers and doctorates of Cryptography, getting to know my remote coworkers living across the globe started with my favorite ice breaker yet: Getting self photos from a individuals who covet their digital anonymity simply out of moral principal and obligation. So I morphed their photos into popular anime characters, working closely with them as to how alike or unlike their own photo they felt comfortable with for an image published online.
For real though, advocates for privacy are not shady in the least, definitely not doing anything criminal, but rather fighting for human rights most of us take for granted.
Since started those two years prior, Silent DAO achieved a technological first by developing a identity validation product that confirms who you are without revealing to anyone who you are. By using MATH. Wild right?
I'm no computer scientist or cryptographer, but what they created used a novel version of a "zero knowledge proof" to be specific. No other web3 developer has been able to achieve the same and get approval from financial regulators like Silent has. Game. Changer.
Why all the effort? Because a decentralized internet will transforming society, bringing us closer to equality without giving up our capitalistic free market values. The potential to end human suffering and bring millions of people around the globe out of poverty, hunger, famine, war. The centralized internet is the wild west where private companies create billionaires, while pushing others into an uncountable number of dangerous situations. Technology has come far enough to run companies, processes, and even automate entire jobs. The time had come to being cutting the top of antiquated corporate and governance structures off. The money saved going back to the people, to users of a service, holders of traditional-stock-like tokens value and back into the organization. Any need for human input could be handled by those token holders making decisions using simple majority rules voting right on the blockchain.
Still, this technological shift to a carefully organized and extremely secure web3 internet clearly seemed like an idealistic college freshman's delusions of grandeur. It was too unlike any prior system of authority as leadership for production of goods and services. The FULLY transparent nature of blockchain technology that is web3 would always be too much of an ask. Why bank somewhere that has to leave transactional data public if you can drive across town where no one knows you or can find where you went?
The stakes were high for all: privacy is an essential cornerstone of democracy. It allows us to push back on any autocratic attempts at power grabs. It helps us keep those with power from abusing it. Finally, Silent started to roll out exactly what can help web3 fully form — a way for users to enjoy the same privacy they enjoy offline. Still today as I post this in December 2022 no other protocol has achieved this mathematical, cryptographic miracle and gained the approval of financial regulators, except for Silent.
The future is going to hit us hard, very soon, but in the best way any human has yet been able to figure.
Below are avatars of some of the people who made it happen. Curious if the history books will also keep their names anonymous.
But FWIW, this artist, strategist, neurodivergent problem solver and capitalist is at bottom right 😉 🙋
