December 2021 Status Update

Greetings and Happy Holidays. Here is your next installment of starbeam.one monthly updates. I feel the need to say this each time, but yes, I am still alive. 😊 I am also a bit late this time around, having skipped the November update. Originally, I was aiming for the middle of November, but the final feature task that I was working on took way longer than I anticipated… again. 😅😭 Continue reading

The Digital License Is a Relationship

There is something I have been thinking about lately, and I wanted to be sure to capture it here. With the whole NFT mania (quite literally what it is), we get the feeling it is more about what people want and desire rather than what is actually there. After all, an NFT in one blockchain isn’t exactly unique if it also exists in another. Let’s also not forget that any blockchain at any time can be forked, leading to an instant doubling (or worse, if other forks occur) to any “unique” instance contained within it. Continue reading

July 2021 Status Update

Well it’s July, and as mentioned last time, it’s time to take a break. Except… I don’t want to take a break. 😅😭 I think I mentioned that I am working on the identity system. Indeed, I have taken a wrecking ball to this sucker and it is now officially wrecked. I’ve been picking up the pieces and putting them back together, but it’s been taking WAY longer than expected. Continue reading

Startup Battlefield Retrospective

Some time has passed since I got myself riled up and did a very brash thing with the Startup Battlefield 2021 Application. I wanted to put some thoughts here around it as I have found writing helps get me out of my design/development funk. Not that I am in a funk right now, but I’d like things to be a bit crisper than they are. So my feelings on the entire ordeal are a bit conflicted. Continue reading

Your Private Key Can Be Guessed

One final thought here and I’ll finish. I promise. 😁 In addition to some of the risks I outlined earlier in this article with regards to cryptocurrency, there’s one in particular that I feel needs extra mention. Namely, the private key that keeps your value safe is simply a number: a very very very large number. That conceivably means that if someone guesses that number, they have access to your wallet. Continue reading

Decentralization Is a Foreign Land

Continuing my spontaneous series here. 😁 I have been studying the decentralized space since late June 2017, so nearly four years now. If I was attending college then you could say that I am a graduate in such matters (assuming I acquired all my credits, something I failed to do in real live BUT I DIGRESS). There’s a certain quality or metric that has seemed elusive to decentralization during that time, and that is adoption. Continue reading

Startup Battlefield 2021 Application

On our last check-in, I mentioned working on some finishing features and then moving onto videos. WELLLLLLLLL as it turns out, during that time a nifty article popped up across my RSS feed that I could not archive: Deadline extended: Apply to Startup Battlefield at TC Disrupt 2021 Extended?! Not by one but by TWO weeks? I started to look at the dates and schedule, and a butterflies-in-the-belly notion started to take hold: could I possibly conceive submitting an application to the tippy-top of all tech events and jump for the improbable if not impossible? Continue reading

Publishing vs Gallery

Everyone is trying to get rich off of NFTs. To me, this is a natural extension of the blockchain culture, which emphasizes money and a get-rich (quick) mentality. I am not against this (much 😁), but it does warrant some caution. To be sure, there’s no such thing as a quick buck in life. You might get lucky, sure, but can you replicate this luck at scale? Good luck with that. Continue reading

The Blockchain is Just an Application

The blockchain is just an application. Everyone is going nuts over blockchain now that they see it can be used for commerce, despite its awkwardness and efficiency concerns. In the hysteria, the whole premise of the blockchain has taken on a bigger concept than it actually is. But let’s keep in mind that a blockchain is basically an application. It’s an application that runs on one or more computers (nodes) that comprise a network. Continue reading

The Biggest Threat

I guess now that I have spent the past week preparing for the Startup Battlefield 2021 Application (seriously, it took a lot!), I am more in the writing mood and can start putting together some additional thoughts around what I have been working on and the field I am entering here with starbeam.one. Recently I have been assessing risks. Of course, the biggest risk with any company is that it could fail. Continue reading