Welcome to a series of indefinite length where we look at the articles I'm enjoying on BULB.

The articles that caught my attention

Paul Le Roux: Satoshi Nakamoto?

https://www.bulbapp.io/p/8d83e422-874e-4a24-8095-d029d29609e0/paul-le-roux-satoshi-nakamoto?s_id=fae8bc03-ab3b-4830-ad80-7b08a7ac8614
"Paul Le Roux is a South African programmer and criminal who was the mastermind of an international empire of illegal drug and arms trafficking, which made him one of the most wanted criminals by the US authorities. Le Roux was captured in 2012 by the DEA and since then has been collaborating as an informant to reduce his sentence. But what does Le Roux have to do with Bitcoin?"

Bumper protocol launches on 07.09.2023 - Protect your crypto from downside volatility

https://www.bulbapp.io/p/971ffd52-b0ee-41c5-809f-f34c58a97431/bumper-protocol-launches-on-07092023-protect-your-crypto-from-downside-volatility?s_id=5d01427b-9141-412b-972a-a45ddb749c1e

It's a very interesting concept. I just don't know if THIS is the right time for it. This seems like a product that has much much broader appeal when crypto has much broader adoption TBH.

Counterintuitively I think crypto needs to get a lot less volatile, and see much much larger inflows, to attract the sort of users who would be interested in this type of protected returns product. At the moment the space is mostly speculative traders/investors and they don't want to limit their exposure to volatility, many actually want to increase it (as is seen by the boom in derivatives and leveraged yield products).

Blocmates have done a very comprehensive How-To guide if you're keen in trying it out (especially in the incentive period): https://blocmates.com/blogmates/how-to-make-the-most-of-bumper-finance-explainer-guide/

The Bitcoin Trap

https://www.bulbapp.io/p/c5c66fbb-1280-40fb-b37b-d8454701a858/the-bitcoin-trap?s_id=6b52b704-216d-474c-b94e-7200a0c500ee

A great article. I've never thought Bitcoin was any sort of financial democracy.
A decentralised store of value, yes, but it's not 'fair'.

The oft used analogy is: "Bitcoin is digital gold!".
But when in the entirity of human history was gold a democratising force or something which held any benefit to anyone but the already wealthy (and often that has been only the extremely wealthy and powerful)?

Don't go looking in Bitcoin for things it can't do. It can do some things well, others extremely poorly or not at all.

Everything You Need to Know About Dogechain

https://www.bulbapp.io/p/ca822e50-265f-426c-9bf0-45d9bcc5a2b6/everything-you-need-to-know-about-dogechain?s_id=983a122c-6678-43ad-8523-26d2297ef8d6

I think there is a place for POW chains in crypto. I think they're a niche, but a significant one. If we rule out Bitcoin as an anomaly, as so much of it has proved non-repeatable, then there is a real advantage of being able to have anyone be a block-builder on a network without needing any sort of collateral. It lends itself to network decentralisation even though both Bitcoin and Ethereum (when it was POW) have seen/saw significant centralisation due to the hashing power large mining pools can use to dominate block-building.

The thing I like about Dogecoin is they have a very clear goal to make DOGE an actual currency, that is one which is actually used for payments. To that end they don't do token burns or cap emissions as both those things are designed to introduce more price volatility, not less, and currencies need stability.

Find out more at https://dogecoin.com/ and at https://foundation.dogecoin.com/ both excellent resources.

Sending Transactions via web3.py

https://www.bulbapp.io/p/0a54d786-7fff-458c-8f52-082b5548562b/sending-transactions-via-web3py?s_id=5b223d99-d432-46eb-9851-542c0b5fdaf1

"A common reason why you want to programmatically interact with the blockchain is to automate transactions. That is based off some conditions, you will choose to automatically execute a transaction; i.e. When BTC is below 30k, you will swap all USDC in your wallet to WBTC via Uniswap.

To do this, you must find the relevant function that you are calling for a contract. As mentioned in the previous article, this can be done via the ABI - let's try to transfer some tokens using python!"

Getting started with web3.py: reading token balances

https://www.bulbapp.io/p/159073af-996c-4b7a-90a7-370df7f981d9/getting-started-with-web3py-reading-token-balances?s_id=c3bcc5e6-d871-4566-b312-4183832d244b

"Let's learn how to use web3.py to programmatically interact with the blockchain. This post assumes you are familiar with using a terminal as well as python basics and will cover how to read the token balances of a wallet address."

Unlocking Crypto's Total Value: A Dive into Fully Diluted Valuation

https://www.bulbapp.io/p/1c391928-1774-486b-a6c0-95412c0430cb/unlocking-cryptos-total-value-a-dive-into-fully-diluted-valuation?s_id=97096428-82b6-494d-8c8c-684819238a0e
Good article. It's one of the thing about defi: There is so much information (as it's all out in the open) it can be hard to make sense of it. Plus it's good to remember just because a project's tokenomics may be one way now, that doesn't mean they won't change.

Ethereum most famously became net deflationary after EIP-1559 (the London Hard Fork). https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/21/08/22371231/ethereum-estimated-to-become-deflationary-heres-when-and-how-much

But if you want an even more interesting turn of events I think PancakeSwap offers one of the best case studies of changing tokenomics over time.
Once it was the poster child of successful inflationary supply https://docs.pancakeswap.finance/archive/old-tokenomics/cake-tokenomics-v1

Now we have seen them push to switch the token to deflationary, first with v2 https://assets.pancakeswap.finance/litepaper/v2litepaper.pdf

And now v2.5 goes even harder to getting supply down https://blog.pancakeswap.finance/articles/achieving-ultrasound-cake-our-deflationary-vision

How to Grow Your Crypto Community

https://www.bulbapp.io/p/11bd30af-bd6f-44f0-bf38-a04a34f8d592/how-to-grow-your-crypto-community?s_id=0e72bb59-2a6b-4330-b2c8-13f70c5c5b89

Discord is the best community building tool I've seen. The level of control you have over the space allows you to provide a truly rewarding experience for your community and let individual participants grow into larger roles within the community over time.

I think it scales much better too.

Using tokens and NFTs you can section off different parts to let sub groups within the community connect around certain interest areas whilst still being a part of the large space.

And there's so many systems you can plug in to track performance over time and reward participants for positive actions that grow and strengthen your community as a whole.

I'd go as far to say it's the best place to build a product from scratch that I've ever seen.

Sweatcoin is Coming to the US

https://www.bulbapp.io/p/5d9ce2f7-3fa4-48c3-a250-5e52f4f3e418/sweatcoin-is-coming-to-the-us?s_id=842e12ca-0e73-4151-ae74-bbf9ec628784

I wonder how this will fair with the rewards now being able to be transferred back into crypto in possibly their biggest market. A large piece of the original Sweatcoin strategy (back a few months ago when I looked into it) was to establish a partner ecosystem through the rewards system with users converting Sweatcoin (non crypto token) for partner offers. The issue for me is earning $SWEAT, the crypto token you are able to convert Sweatcoin into, generates no value to the protocol (unlike staking $NEAR helps validate transactions on the NEAR blockchain). If there's no value from the generation event that gives little to no value to the $SWEAT token itself.

Whilst $SWEAT emissions are controlled and decreasing over time, there's still no burn mechanism, so the supply continues to inflate. This is fine, after all NEAR & Solana are inflationary tokens and they're going great, but without a clear utility for $SWEAT it risks being dumped as soon as it's earned thus destroying its' value.

This article below lays out the basics of the $SWEAT economy. It's a few months old now so possibly we've seen some burn mechanisms put in place to help control supply and give some price support to counter the strong sell pressure. Looking at the $SWEAT token price it's clear that there still isn't many reasons it's valuable to buy the token as opposed to earning it for free and then selling it.
https://www.coingecko.com/learn/what-is-sweat-sweatcoin-sweat-economy

⚠ Alert! A New Russian Malware Threatens To Steal Your Cryptocurrencies.

https://www.bulbapp.io/p/57f70870-34b1-414a-ad49-96e5c868ee3b/-alert-a-new-russian-malware-threatens-to-steal-your-cryptocurrencies?s_id=9be35b56-aa37-4fd1-b9ce-6130b09bb1ac
"If you are an Android user and have any cryptocurrency app installed on your device, you could be at risk of losing all your funds. Several US and UK intelligence agencies have warned of a new malware called Infamous Chisel, which is linked to a Russian cyberwarfare unit called Sandworm."

Software Defined Radio & Radio Hacking: Part One

https://www.bulbapp.io/p/ea2d27d5-aa9a-4435-b418-efc69c0085db/software-defined-radio-radio-hacking-part-one?s_id=af1cf5b2-9a1f-493a-9f34-d7c9dd9ef0d6
"Everyday we see solar installers using RF systems to monitor power generation, and garage door installers using RF triggers to open garages at the push of a button. Starlink and Iridium signals fly overhead, transmitting conversations, internet and telemetry the whole way. All of these can be explored with some SDR knowledge.

When we look at all of this in context and try to understand how we analyse the world around us, we start to realize that we need to cultivate certain skill sets to effectively engage with these new forms of technology. Without a doubt one of these essential skills to master, is Software Defined Radio."

Promoting BULB. Also FREE BULB!

Hey BULB-ers I have posted this on Medium and I would LOVE your help to boost it and get some more people switching to BULB.

Or at very least cross posting their Medium blogs.

I’ll give you 100 BULB for each clap & comment on the post on Medium.

The catch is you need to put a share link from one your posts in comments to qualify. Make sure you use the referral link feature so views count towards your challenges.

No link. No BULB.
So get out of your shell and promote yourself!

I reserve the right to not pay spammers. If the article you link to is low quality AI spam (or worse copyrighted) then you don’t quality.

https://medium.com/@bowhowdy/the-best-of-my-bulb-3-3ed5e7560453