Digital platforms like , , and have made it easier for people to relocate. They cut down on commission fees and act as real estate mediators, saving people time they would otherwise have to spend dealing with the legalities. Nevertheless, there is still a middleman taking a cut. Zumper Zillow Homesnap What if there was a convenient way to cut out costly middlemen altogether? Many people want to do it all with just a few clicks of a button or swipes of a screen. There are several sectors of crypto that are burgeoning with potential for the real estate industry as the public becomes more interested in digital currencies. Just look to the rapid rise of NFTs and the metaverse to understand the potential at play. Real Estate meets NFTs The concept of Real Estate NFTs sounds easy on paper. NFTs represent real-world assets, but they are traded on decentralized platforms such as , , and . These platforms are developed with blockchain technology, allowing for the authentication of digital assets and the transparent recording of transactions to show proof of ownership. Items such as art, music, avatars, play-to-earn gaming assets, and even land are being minted in NFT form. The pioneer of land minted as an NFT was in . Open Sea Super Rare Rarible Decentraland While Decentraland led the way in 2017, they have been met with some stiff competition by . Sandbox had a fast rise in the metaverse, with over , whereas Decentraland raked in just under $200 million. Sandbox $420 million in sales volume Why the sudden rise in prices and popularity? Much of the world has shifted to a more virtual environment in the past few years. Widespread adoption led to a fast-growing market as savvy consumers realized NFTs could be used to sell assets and host interesting events in the metaverse. Additionally, many celebrities and corporations decided to capitalize on this burgeoning movement to grow their brands. Snoop Dogg in particular capitalized on it, selling in the Sandbox. Snoop isn’t the only one; notable businesses in the metaverse real estate sector include: Atari, Samsung, Adidas, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Prager Metis, and Miller Lite, to name a few. This list is growing by the week. Snoopverse assets This goes beyond just owning land in the metaverse. Some are leasing land, selling the products of others, advertising their own products, leasing advertising to others and hosting events. We are just getting started. The Metaverse mirrors the real world As real estate has plunged into the metaverse, some businesses are being notably prescient with their strategies. The place for the first real estate marketplace on the metaverse that will provide analytics and brokerage services with transparency is still vacant. For the market to mature we need a platform that will provide an assurance of service to the buyer and assurance of payment to the seller. This connects creators, investors, and metaverse users in one single platform. We are also starting to see metaverse real estate practices mirror those of the tangible world’s real estate industry. is taking the augmented reality (AR) approach, using the technology to sell real-world addresses and landmarks, which can be advertised on and decorated with art. Users will be able to access the world through a mobile phone or with AR glasses in the future. Upland is licensing through the mapping provider before developing them to generate revenue. Think of it as a modern-day virtual version of Monopoly. If you buy a handful of properties in a popular area, you can increase your chance of profit. Upland Upland players can even buy plots of land based on real-world property that Mapbox There seems to be a theme here in the metaverse: location, location, location. The digital landlords of the future could have the opportunity to become virtual real estate moguls of tomorrow. Buying and renting land in the metaverse can get expensive. What if you could take out a mortgage? Well, now you can, thanks to TerraZero. On January 29, 2022, . It was a two-year mortgage for a $45,000 parcel of land in ‘Decentraland’, a Metaverse with approximately 92,000 parcels, for an undisclosed down payment and interest rate. TerraZero provided the majority of the lending funds for the client’s virtual real estate purchase. TerraZero issued one of the first mortgages in the metaverse From Virtual Real Estate to Physical Real Estate Meanwhile, back in The Sandbox, a couple of companies are introducing the first-ever “MetaReal Mansion,” a real-world home that also includes a virtual counterpart in the metaverse. Gabe Sierra teamed up with and to produce this unique NFT. The eventual buyer of the NFT will also acquire the ownership rights of the physical home itself, which is set to be built in Miami, Florida in Q4 2022. General contractor and investor ONE Sotheby’s International Realty Voxel Architects Elsewhere, Propy is a real estate startup looking to lead the way in the physical real estate NFT market that’s already generated a number of crypto news cycles. Propy’s first-ever NFT-backed property sale , when the company auctioned off TechCrunch CEO Michael Arrington’s Ukraine apartment. came last May Then, this February, they sold its A 2,164-square-foot house in Gulfport, Florida, fetched $653,000 (210 ETH) at an auction, with the winning bidder being awarded an NFT as proof of the home’s ownership. The NFT utility unlocks a smart contract, settling the issue of property ownership on a county level. Propy is also working on a platform to enable agents to earn tokens and create personal NFTs, all while utilizing the Propy Offer and Transaction platform. first NFT-backed property in the U.S. The Propy NFT property sale was done on the county level. The method of selling an NFT to represent an LLC has been the only known option so far. While investors can buy and sell NFTs on a site such as Opensea, those are digital properties on the blockchain and there are not always KYC (Know Your Customer) laws in place within the crypto space. When it comes to physical property, especially land and homes, there are laws, regulations, and taxes involved. For a deal within the U.S., there must be compliance with the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act. As the crypto marketplace matures, KYC laws and other regulations will become more important. Laws across the U.S. may have to change how deeds get recorded. You can’t be selling anything to anyone without knowing who they are, let alone real estate that will be traded on secondary markets. Only time will tell if this type of largely unregulated property transfer will be allowed to continue to happen. We may see different laws for different counties and states at the outset. Federal law reigns supreme in most cases, yet it could take longer to materialize depending upon political circumstances. Regulators and legislators are still trying to wrap their heads around what to do about crypto. Fractionalized Ownership There is also tokenized real estate. Most people don't know this, but you can not legally tokenize an actual property. To tokenize real estate, you must tokenize the LLC that owns the property rather than the property itself. Once the LLC is tokenized, you then fractionalize the LLC into a certain number of digital tokens built on top of the blockchain of your choice. Real estate tokenization is very similar to fractional real estate investing in this sense. Using the aforementioned LLC method, there are several companies offering partial ownership of property with several options to earn profit. Let’s explore what they’re doing. provides investors with a simple, intelligent, and user-friendly method to buy into fractional and tokenized properties. Investing with RealToken means low maintenance property ownership, access to cash flows related to the property (e.g., rent), and frictionless ownership transactions via RealTokens. RealToken Ownership of each property is distributed across a finite number of representative tokens. Token owners can collect revenue from rent and vote on property decisions based on their overall token share. Each RealToken property has a property management company overseeing it on RealToken owners’ behalf. The property management company sources tenants, collects rent, and manages repairs so the diverse group of RealToken owners don’t have to. Next up is Like many crowdfunding apps before it, Lofty sources and renovates properties before renting them out. Then it creates a Non Fungible Token of the LLC interests and sells them to investors. Investors are then entitled to daily rental dividend payments made through Lofty’s platform. Lofty AI. Lofty earns income by taking a listing fee. Lofty went through , a highly respected startup accelerator, and initially began as an AI-as-a-service firm to help investors find up-and-coming neighborhoods throughout the US. However, they pivoted last year to get more skin in the game and invest in properties directly. Ycombinator NFT Mortgages uses its to offer the first NFT mortgages as home equity loans. The Bacon Protocol introduces a new way for crypto wallet holders to hold a coin backed by the same types of mortgages that banks, insurance companies, and governments use. Because of the efficiency of the blockchain, users of the Bacon Protocol get the majority of the return, about 2 - 3% vs a standard 0.1% if you kept that money in a savings account. Bacon Protocol’s stablecoin, bHOME, is backed by liens against homes in the United States and grows based on payments from the loans made against these liens. LoanSnap Bacon Protocol Pros and Cons of IRL Real Estate NFTs Pros: Legal right to control the property. As fractional real estate becomes more accessible, people will be open to more investment opportunities. Blockchain technology will allow for more transaction tracking and transparency of information. Combining real world real estate with metaverse real estate will allow for 	experimentation of building and designing homes, properties, cities and more, without incurring the high cost of planning, building materials and man power. NFTs  could transition into cryptocurrency collateral, helping owners get mortgages smoothly. The speed and scalability of blockchain technology is a better solution to our current system. Cons: The technology is moving too fast for many regulators, legislators, and everyday people to keep up with. Trying to explain this complicated technology to average people. NFT token holder could force someone to sell his or her home if the holder owned enough of the tokens. If a borrower falls into default, who can collect on the debt? It would be a problem if each creditor could collect individually, 	both for the lender and the debtor. On the other hand, if only one party can collect, this would make these type of mortgages not much different to peer-to-peer lending platforms and, therefore, susceptible to the same problems of centralization. It is also dependent on the type of ERC that the NFT is being minted as. Some types of ERCs, such as ERC-721 tokens, allow for the changing of metadata and can be a threat to the asset’s security.  Since real life real estate NFTs are very new, there is no set standard yet. The future is approaching fast Cryptocurrency is barely over a decade old and is starting to find its way into our everyday lives faster than the internet did at its conception. The point of the blockchain is having a true peer-to-peer economy by pushing for decentralization and cutting out unnecessary middlemen. The blockchain serves as an answer to the fact that as the world has become more globally connected, power structures still remain in the hands of a handful of corporations, banks, and elite organizations. The old way of doing things is not working, yet the new system is still maturing. The two may need to find a way to coexist and work together, lest the world end up with two dysfunctional systems and many people left behind on the sidelines. The LLC model for property transfer through NFTs is a temporary loophole, but that could be remedied with the snap of a finger by regulators or legislators. The past year alone has seen many big businesses involve themselves with NFTs, the metaverse, and the broader blockchain space. They see the writing on the wall and are adapting to the change. Hopefully, we will see more mainstream adoption of this technology, as well as proper regulations and transparent guidelines, so that the crypto and blockchain space can move forward and change our world. How we do business, maintain our homes, keep track of information, and build a brighter future together could all be radically changed by this exciting sector that’s rapidly gaining public attention.

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Neighborhoods of The Future

When you entered the crypto market, you found a lot of excitement. Data models predicted riches. YouTube and Twitter told you the market would explode to the upside. It doesn’t feel that way today, but it should. Since last summer, you’ve stood on the ground floor of the next leg up, and it’s a whole different experience. Scary. Exciting. Frustrating. Terrifying. Stressful. Hopeful. A mix of emotions. Big upswings, big downswings. Supercycles and bear markets. Laser eyes and death crosses. Big players moving on. Little players moving up. Crypto remains a wealth-creation machine, a generational opportunity to build lasting, durable wealth from owning a stake in the financial networks of the future. It is also a cruel and vicious market. Only the most courageous and persistent survive. To paraphrase a US general, you may have thought crypto is all glory, but I assure you, it is all hell. We’ve been here before In 2019, the market did 4x in six months to kick-start a three-year parabolic run, with upswings of +500% and downswings of +60% along the way. Do the swings of the past six months seem any more extreme? When the market zooms for three months, you feel a sense of ecstasy and excitement. You can’t help but put money in—and everybody’s telling you to do just that. When the market drops for three months, you feel a sense of terror and loss. You can’t help but take money out—and everybody’s telling you to do just that. Both times, it feels like the right decision. Traders will insist it is. And if you act on those instincts, you will never get ahead in this market. In other markets, maybe, but not crypto. Empty promises Perhaps the traders have something else in mind? Last year, they told you that you’d get a repeat of 2017. Then, they said you’d get a repeat of 2013. Now, they’re saying you might end up with a repeat of 2012 or 2019. What happened to $288,000 bitcoin by the end of 2021? Stock to flow says we should be above $100,000 now. How could so many people say so many things that never came true? How could so many people who were so wrong so many times in the past, now be right? Maybe it’s impossible to be right or wrong about the future. If nobody knows what’s going to happen, how can anybody be right or wrong? And even if somebody is right or wrong, how do you know it’s anything more than a coincidence or a lucky guess? Priya in the park yells “bear market” every time the price dips 5% or more and begs you to sell every upswing. Tony on the TV yells “supercycle” every time the price pumps 5% or more and begs you to buy every downswing. Eventually, they’re going to be right. What will you do about it? Does it even matter? In 2019, bitcoin’s price ended more than 100% higher than it started. In 2020, its price tripled from start to end. And most people finished down on their investment. They chased the market. Meanwhile, people who bought in 2018 sold to these newcomers after the price went up. In January, I published an article begging people to blindly. While there’s never a bad time to buy bitcoin, some times are better than others. Just make the most of those opportunities and chill when the opportunities pass. stop dollar-cost averaging Buy low and HODL. Judging from the comments, people didn’t like that advice. Frankly, they hated it and called it terrible and stupid. But it’s worked for me and it’s baked into my plan for bitcoin’s bull market. Read About My Plan With that plan, you’re down as much as 25% but probably closer to even on your investment, possibly up 600% or more. (For altcoins, you may have a far wider range of returns. I’m down +99% on some altcoins and up more than 5,000% on others. Most pace the overall market.) Over the long run, gamblers and competent traders might do better. Dollar-cost averagers will probably do worse. Mark, you still call it a bull market. Why? Like Richard Nixon did with his dog, I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about my plan’s name, I’m going to keep it. You can call it whatever you want—I’m sure you can think of some choice words to describe it. (Some with only four letters.) Bitcoin’s price goes up 100% in bear markets and drops 50% in bull markets. That gives me the latitude to say “bull” and “bear” about pretty much anything I want. In any event, it doesn’t matter. With my plan, you will never have to think about bull or bear, right or wrong, short or long. You won’t have to time the market, take profits, or buy the peaks. Ideally, you will never sell (though you probably will have to at some point). You will simply take advantage of opportunities as they come and let the market do its thing. That way, this market will never let you down. Mark Helfman publishes the newsletter. He is also the author of three books and a top bitcoin writer on and . Learn more about him in his . Crypto is Easy Medium Hacker Noon bio Originally published on Cryptowriter .

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Why the Crypto Market Always Seems to Let You Down

So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests. It’s difficult to really put a label on what we do professionally these days, especially now that almost everyone will have had some experience of working remotely, and many more will have been forced my pandemic-induced circumstances to give a go at entrepreneurship. I use two labels frequently: “growth strategist” and “blockchain entrepreneur”. They’re convenient, they’re what people who’d want to work with or hire me look for, and they’re relevant enough to make sense to the rest who might not necessarily do a lot of things online or know more about blockchain beyond crypto. So the first label, “growth strategist”, attempts to describe what I’m really good at when working with brands offline and online. I probably don’t deliver to the same metrics that most other “growth hackers” do, though. So I’m not going to be the one to drive thousands of followers to your Twitter account, or get you a million channel subscribers on Telegram -- that’s not the type of growth I advocate for. Instead, I help companies that would benefit from smaller, more focused, more engaged communities. I work with them and their people to cultivate the working culture and online presence that aligns with that focus. I also help them to grow their own resources -- employees, advisors, supporters, often an overlooked area of growth that many self-starting companies neglect. I think a lot of people misguidedly look for hacks and numbers but I think if there’s something really special in the value of a strategy that helps them achieve objective, rather than mere vanity metrics. “Blockchain entrepreneur” probably captures the spirit of who I choose to work with in terms of projects in the blockchain and crypto sector. There are hundreds to choose from, and hundreds more cropping up each week. Yet it’s an irony of the field of emerging technology that very few are actually building truly innovative products or services, or inventing new technology, or developing new ideas. The vast majority of projects are copy-pastes of existing projects. I wish I didn’t mean that literally, too! So when I do end up working with a new project, you can be sure I believe it’s one or all of 3 things: innovative, inventive, never-done-before. Oh, and my name is Tib Palin. Interesting! What was your latest HackerNoon Top story about? I’ll just give you the title, which was published as is, barely hours after I’d submitted it for review! In “ ”, I talk about how the sector is awash with all kinds of overnight influencers, each convincing people to buy a certain type of token or to invest into a certain type of blockchain project. Now, it’s not an entirely new phenomenon, if we’re being fair. Ever since the days of the ICO craze, we’ve seen more and more projects out there to gain a quick buck and they’ve tapped into the pliable minds of social media followers to drive hype and artificial demand for what is otherwise a token that doesn’t at all represent any kind of useful value. The Rise of NFT Fakefluencers Now, this wasn’t an attack on influencers at all -- if we’re using the term loosely. It’s a recognized marketing tool and there are plenty of legitimate people out there who are social media’s equivalent of subject matter experts. Power to them if they’re speaking about what’s important to them and their followers and helping their audience find the right projects to look into. But unfortunately, blockchain is still a fairly new and confusing subject for a lot of regular people and NFTs, in particular, are attracting a lot of interest. Eager money, so to speak. We already see a painful number of people spending their hard-earned savings and salaries on NFTs shilled by irresponsible personalities online. On one hand, I guess fools and their money are often parted, but on the other, I know there are just so many innocent people who genuinely want to make the right financial decisions, and are convinced that NFTs is an interesting and easy way to gain exposure to crypto. For them, it’s impossible to tell what’s authentic and what’s not -- especially when you’re dealing with verified Twitter accounts who purportedly are very successful at profiting from these tokens and whose advice always ends up being sure things. The article hopes to shed a little bit of light on which of these the would-be NFT buyer should avoid listening to. Read Tib’s top story: https://hackernoon.com/the-rise-of-nft-fakefluencers Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about? I guess another tagline I enjoy writing under is “unpopular opinion”. You see, the emerging tech landscape is actually very niche but because blockchain tech has become so mainstream and so loud on social media, almost everyone has heard a little something about it. We all know how tribal crypto communities get, each deliriously supportive of their own token or project and thus, can get very defensive about criticisms thrown at them. To get things straight -- I’m a huge supporter and advocate of blockchain, AI, Web 3.0 and what have yous all lumped together as “emerging tech”. The innovations that are being developed and their implications on our daily lives, those are valuable developments that deserve consideration. But there’s a lot of noise blocking out what’s important, and the most visible information online is always related to markets, that is, the price of so-and-so token. So I try to cut through the hype and speculation, bringing visibility to those that deserve support through my writing. After all, the most mature technologies are those that understand their deficiencies the most and do their best to improve. I think the real tech people, the actual developers, coders, engineers, scientists… they appreciate and desire criticisms. Much like a software developer would love to have white hackers poking about and exposing back doors and holes in their code! Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?) To be frank, it’s not easy to spell out a writing routine if that’s not your actual full-time job. You mention in your next question how tech writers aren’t often writing as a main role. That’s very much a description of me and I’m sure, of the majority of HackerNoon writers. But I do spend a lot of time talking and discussing with industry people -- especially those working in commerce and building products or services. And I do spend a lot of time with online crypto communities of particular projects. Ears always on the ground, listening to what seems important to people is really important in blockchain I feel because for any project to achieve success, it must reach “mass adoption”. It’s cliche I know, but Bitcoin is perhaps the only truly successful project of its kind because it has achieved precisely this. And if that’s the end game for tech, then utility is the ever-present objective. And you can’t have utility without users. So if there’s a routine, it’s probably to sit down every now and then, figure out what people are worried about, what people care about, and then a little bit about what people are currently talking about. Then, figure out also what people are overlooking, what people are forgetting about. Marry some of these aspects together and hopefully, you have a compelling article. Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing? Writing tech pieces for HackerNoon or any other publication requires you to write for an audience. It’s not a diary, or a dream journal, so you shouldn’t write as if you were blogging to yourself. But how do you write for an audience that doesn’t exist? When you start out on a new platform, you don’t have anyone you know. You can’t be writing for an old audience, not completely anyway, otherwise it’d be pointless (or unless you want your old audience to move to your new platform). So you have to try a few things to get started. One thing to try is to write to attract the audience you want, fine. But you’d need to be writing a lot, and hope you’re hitting the right notes, without having many people at first to tell you if you’re on the right track. The other thing to try could be to find out what others are writing about and then produce articles that try to ride in the wake of what’s trending. Not my preferred method because you’ll never be as successful as the wake-maker. The ever-present challenge for a writer, starting out or otherwise, is the discipline to keep on writing. Real-life issues, work commitments, or a switch in direction aside, writing has to be habitualized. The less writing has to do with inspiration, the better. What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career? Earlier in my career, I did spend some time working with creatives for the broadcast industry. I still pull some strings in that area, finding ways to work together with those in tech, and it’s always rewarding to see shared synergies. I think when it comes to media, there’s still a huge cap between blockchain projects and traditional ones. Take gaming, for example, where the creative aspects in conventional games are probably oh much higher standards than those in blockchain -- it’s simply because the talents in the former aren’t yet exposed to the makers in the latter. I hope to see a day when the overlap has become natural. Where decentralized apps are mere extensions of the talents in various industries. I’d really like to be a part of that happening. Speaking of creatives, it’s great to see artists come in and dabble with tech like blockchain. And while I have reservations about how NFTs will truly empower artists, it is an undeniable entry point and could lead to serious amalgamation in the future. Writers on HackerNoon, painters and illustrators on OpenSea, perhaps dancers, musicians, theater performers, street performers can all expand their audiences with the help of open blockchain. Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice? I shouldn’t feel guilty about this, and perhaps someday I’ll learn not to, but I love taking long trips to a quiet place, removed from the concrete bustle of urban working life. If that seems a bit of a writer’s cliche, then I’ll happily admit to it! But I suppose I’m coming from a place where we’ve just emerged from the situation of the past couple of years. I’m aware it’s a real privilege to travel a bit out of the city to the beach, get in a good breath of fresh air and wrap yourself in thoughts for writing. Not everyone in every part of the world is free to do this just quite yet, so if that serves as a bit of grounding. The new normal will require a long period of normalization for a lot of people as well, and I suspect we haven’t yet come to grips with how realistic it will be, or even how healthy it will be, for the majority of people globally to work remotely. If you have the privilege of being outside, enjoy it! And even if you don’t necessarily believe in that discrepancy, I’m sure few would disagree that the highly intensive tech work culture could benefit from a physical break. I know many in the blockchain, crypto, and NFT sectors, myself included, have been guilty of spending far too many hours in front of a screen. The frontiers of tech, it’s just so fast-evolving, it can be tempting to get drawn in! Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it? If it counts, then poker is what I’d say is a hobby that’s been with me throughout adult life. I probably don’t have as much time as I’d like to these days but I used to participate in poker tournaments. Fingers crossed, there’s one coming up soon that I’ll be able to play in. I get that most people wouldn’t call poker a hobby but I have to say, playing it as a serious hobby can change your perception of things, even professionally. It’s easy to dismiss it as a type of gambling and that’s certainly how most people play poker, as a bit of gambling fun. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that type of entertainment at all. But poker isn’t at all the game of chance that other casino games might be. For instance, there’s freeroll poker you don’t pay anything for, and there’s the buy-in type where you pay a fee. You can immediately see the difference of human psychology between the two types of players. Give people something that costs them nothing and they’ll value it less than something that they paid for. I could talk all day about why I find poker attractive but let’s just say that there’s more than meets the eye. I don’t think it’s coincidence that you’ll find professional poker players who are also grandmaster chess players or have other high-functioning jobs. What can the HackerNoon community expect to read from you next? Right off the bat, huge disclaimer: this is not a shill. I do handle a lot of different projects and I’m always on the lookout for interesting projects and people to collaborate with. But for the past few months, I’m doing a lot of work with a project called . Cradles: Origin of Species It’s a pretty ambitious project. A blockchain MMORPG that will attempt to introduce a metaverse element that’s really not been done before in gaming -- “entropy increase”. To put it simply, a game that uses block time to simulate the laws of time and physics. So what we have in games already are persistent worlds, but they’re static in the sense that the elements -- items, buildings, weather, things -- are actually pretty static. But if you could use block-time to progressively alter items (digitally represented by NFTs), you get the effect of entropy increase -- just like in the real world. Building crumble slowly. Plants and animals age. Weapons get rusty. And player interactions leave their mark. Cradles has been in heavy development for the past year, particularly because of a new type of NFT or token protocol, EIP3664. That produces a new type of NFT capable of storing a much larger amount of data to enable it to execute a much more sophisticated range of smart contract functions, essentially producing the effects I just mentioned. So don’t worry, you won’t be getting shill articles shoved down your throat. I expect that gamers interested to see actual metaverse innovation and new ways to implement decentralized aspects of token economies to try it out themselves once it launches this year. Instead, I will continue to write about blockchain gaming, metaverse developments, and NFT goings-on, since these are all closely related to what takes up the majority of my time. Thanks for taking time to join our “Meet the writer” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words? The pleasure’s mine. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to get personal! I’m always on the lookout for human interest stories in tech. If any reader knows of any story that deserves attention, I’d love to hear from them. If it’s some form of professional collaboration you’re looking for, or even just to shoot the wind with me about blockchain, marketing, writing, crypto, NFTs, you can reach out to me via my website: or DM me on Twitter . CryptoMarketeer.com @growthpunk

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Cutting Through Hype and Speculation with Growth Strategist & Blockchain Entrepreneur, Tib Palin

When you enter the NFT market as a newcomer, you will most likely encounter many NFT projects that sound almost too good to be true. It does not matter whether you have no experience or tos of experience, people still tend to ignore these easy-to-remember red flags to separate promising NFT projects from the shady ones. To ensure that you don’t make these massive mistakes by getting into a suspicious NFT project, we gathered the TOP 6 red flags to not avoid by any means. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t99EJu_7GAQ 1.Undoxxed team If you look at the project’s website and it does not have links to real Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn accounts, do not buy the NFT to prevent the possibility of getting scammed. A doxed team, regardless of skill set or background, adds a layer of trust that there are real people building real projects. Recommendation: Question their discord as to why there is no personal information included. If they cannot provide an answer as to why that satisfies your standards, stay away. 2. Fake Twitter or Discord followers/accounts There are plenty of sources that will chat on behalf of the team on their Discord server. For example, Fiverr provides a message every min per hour just for $20. Different websites such as GetViral sell Twitter followers for almost no money will create an illusion of a reliable following. Recommendation: Do a quick audit, for instance, use . Look through engagement on posts to see if there are any real people or just bots. If the account has 120k followers and only 50 likes, it is a red flag. Also, check if any notable people follow the account. TwitterAudit 3. Artificial hype Most shady NFT projects often purchase celebrity endorsements to generate unrealistic publicity around the project. Big names in the field of entertainment such as Thiago Silva can be hired for a silly amount of money to gain people’s attention in the sketchy project. Recommendation: It is highly recommended to do some research. Dig into whether the partnerships are officially approved or just paid “partnerships”. 4.Unrealistic mint price Hype-based pricing is certainly a real problem in the NFT space. The golden rule to identify a suspicious NFT project is to analyse the mint price. Behind a high mint price there is almost always the combination of hype and FOMO which drives the price unrealistically high. Many projects have nothing of substance to back their price and rely solely on “influencers” to boost the price. This results in investing money into those projects because of FOMO and losing everything when the hype dies. Real community builders start the mint price at a reasonable level and do not extract all the liquidity out of the market. Just because the NFT project can demand a high price does not mean they should. Recommendation: A project that allows the original minters to participate in an affordable way is what builds loyal supporters of the project to stick through the storm and lulls. As an opposite, projects that mint at ridiculously high prices often have difficulty finding support during tough times. Therefore, it is important to invest in projects you truly believe in. 5.Predatory tactics Floor sweeps: Sweeping the floor in the NFT world means when a specific project buys all its minted NFTS at the floor price. The floor price is the minimum “ask” or the lowest price an NFT can be sold on the secondary market. It is the most popular metric for tracking a project’s performance over time and its relative success compared to others. As an emerging project, floor sweeping can be a method to attract newcomers by guaranteeing low entry points. Banning members: Another predatory tactic to look out for is banning members from listing below prices. This means a member of the project is being kicked out of the community for selling their NFT at a much lower price than the fishy owners of the projects approved. Echo chamber: A big red flag is the existence of an echo chamber. It is an environment where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect and reinforce their own. This may limit the information the users consume and promote ideas relevant to the NFT project. Recommendation: Step out of the chamber (Discord, forums etc) for a few days. This often allows for the head to clear so better judgement can be made. Other popular red flags to watch out for are harassment of any kind, threats, and piggybacking of popular projects. 6.Meta cliché If the project fails to bring more than little innovation by introducing repetitive meta or roadmaps, be cautious. This can be an alarming indicator that the project is most likely going to take advantage of your money to cover its own interests. In addition, if the project fails to address legality concerns over securities and insurance of tokens, consider exiting the project. Meta is easy to copy, and tokens can be launched only in a matter or hours. On the contrary, real economies take months or years to create. The lack of ability to create proper Tokenomics or P2E for sustainability and longevity is also a worrying measure. For instance, the owners of the Bored Ape Yacht Club can participate in exclusive clubs and areas of the BAYC. This is a good way of thinking in the future and gaining people’s trust. Tokenomics: The goal of a Tokenomic analysis is to understand the potential value of the project by considering all aspects of a token’s creation and management, including its supply, allocation, and distribution. The reason why Tokenomics is so important is that it helps to ascertain the future worth of an asset by giving an insight into the profitability of one asset over the other in the future. P2E (Play to Earn): indicates a type of gaming that hinges on NFT technologies. For example, gamers can play video games and virtual worlds for rewards by making an initial investment in the NFT. Identifying these red flags may be a long arduous journey of separating the real NFT projects from the quick cash-grabs, but once you understand the importance of it, success is guaranteed. Unfortunately, there are no blueprints to follow in this new industry, which means there are no right or wrong ways to approach a project. Start by looking for niches and teams with the ability to execute. Find out who is the founding team, and how they work, what their values and grand vision are. If they show lack in respect, transparency, or communication, consider moving on. ‍ Thank you for reading 💗 We hope this article helps you avoid trouble in the NFT world, for more educational articles check out our blog at https://coinboosts.io/blog This article is published by team of ex-investors & market researchers on Crypto & NFT field now offering marketing help to projects in the same field. CoinBoosts

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How to Avoid NFT Scams and Rug Pulls: 6 Red Flags to Avoid in 2022

In a post-pandemic landscape, the corporate world has begun to evolve significantly. With 66% of 22-56-year-olds now working at home at least once a week, digitalization has taken center stage within the business world as technology continues to transform the WFH potential. In fact, are planning to implement at least one new form of smart technology into their workplace in 2022 alone, as a remote future becomes a certain reality. 38% of WFH-based companies (Image Source: Gartner ) As you can see above, some of the leading technologies driving the digital workplace range from AI-generated data collection tools to immersive aids that enhance remote productivity. In fact, a recent survey from Hello Global found that introducing just one form of digital aid into the workplace , boosting value production and making a hefty return on investment. increases productivity by 33% One technological development, in particular, has been tipped for success in 2022. The evolution of immersive aids, powered by augmented and virtual reality are set to revolutionize the future of WFH. From a virtual interview process to immersive onboarding, let’s delve into the benefits of introducing AR to the workplace, and find out why it might just set you apart from the crowd. What Is Augmented Reality? So what is ? In short, augmented reality, otherwise known as AR is a form of immersive technology that is able to enhance your reality. Unlike virtual reality which is able to create a new 3D dimension with the help of VR hardware, AR simply adds digital layers onto what you already see. augmented reality (Image Source: Statista ) As you can see here, AR shipments are expected to exceed 26 million by the end of 2022, with over a quarter of AR-based sales from the business sector alone. As tech giants such as Microsoft release their HoloLens, an AR-Powered productivity tool for efficient hands-free working, it’s no surprise that the potential of immersive working aids is finally being tapped into. Using a series of digital layers, AR and VR users are able to enhance their remote working experience. From attending virtual meetings from the comfort of your couch to displaying large amounts of data in front of your eyes, experts suggest that immersive tools could be the key to company success in the digital age. As consumers continue to embrace immersive aids within the workplace, a number of enterprise-focused AR/VR developers are beginning to transform the corporate scene. says that immersive technologies can “blur the lines between reality and imagination to empower enterprises.” MesmeriseVR Stating that “Immersive technologies are cheaper, more portable and more intuitive than ever before,” they suggest that AR/VR powered technology can be used universally across a large range of industries as we ‘go digital’ post-pandemic. The Future of Virtual Onboarding A recent Gallup poll suggested that only claim that they have access to appropriate digital equipment to assist them while working remotely. The same poll also reported that the lack of technology significantly reduced both efficiency and productivity during the working day. three in ten corporate-based employees So, the question is how can immersive technology boost success? The key here is business efficiency. Not only can AR/VR-based tools speed up onboarding and training processes for newcomers, but they also reduce the workload for the other staff members who would struggle to train new employees in a remote setting. Immersive aids do exactly what they say on the tin. They immerse you within your work. Seeing data in real-time and embracing training sessions in a completely virtual immersive setting enables employees to connect to what they are doing and is proved to increase task focus. Let’s have a look at some of the main benefits associated with immersive training tools. A Look into the Benefits of Immersive Training Tools One of the main areas of the corporate sector that is set for reform is staff training. As remote onboarding becomes a challenge of the past, immersive training tools are aiding business leaders to onboard staff with minimal effort and maximum success. A new found that: “66% of global employees would be willing to use AR/ VR products in their professional life; most as a training tool and 62% of global employees agree that their job could be made easier with the assistance of artificial intelligence.” Dell Workforce Survey Utilizing the immersive benefits of AR and VR-based technology, new employees will experience a realistic training practice, where they will be able to interact with mock virtual activities and gain a hands-on onboarding session, accelerating their learning process. In fact, VR-based tech may also enhance the interviewing process in a remote setting. Rather than simply video chatting, interviewees can be thrown into the practicalities of their new role using immersive aids that may mimic real-life complications they may stumble across. In response, leaders are able to assess the candidate’s problem-solving skills within a completely remote setting. Last, but certainly not least, immersive aids can also significantly and provide a hefty ROI. From reducing staff assistance to automating a large portion of the company workload, the business’ production value can still remain high, while staff costs remain low, a perfect story for digital success. reduce company costs

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Virtual Onboarding: Will Immersive AR/VR Tools Replace In-person Training?

Although 2022 is having a bit of a rough start, to say the least, it is still widely expected that we will have a major bull run this year and it will be all about crypto gaming, NFT, and metaverse-related projects. When it comes to crypto (and investing in general), the difference between making good or life-changing money (10x vs 100x gains) is usually all about getting in early – before the bull market is in a full swing and finding projects before everyone starts talking about them. Sure, investing early is very risky and can be quite scary, but at the same time – this is exactly how the biggest profits are made. And what’s the best way to be early? Simple – participate in Initial Game Offerings Initial Game Offerings, or IGOs (also referred to as ICOs or IDOs), are an opportunity to purchase the tokens before they are listed on cryptocurrency exchanges. I wrote an article about IGOs last year (you can check it out ) and when the market was active, I was making between 10x and 600x gains on each IGO. And it was always in a matter of days or weeks (let alone holding longer-term). here Of course, the current market is much more uncertain but the principle remains the same – there’re still some opportunities there to make some solid, quick gains and more importantly – start building your positions ahead of the next bull market. As a side note – investing during bearish and uncertain times like now is very risky and not all projects will perform well – essentially you’re investing in a startup in a very uncertain market, so please act accordingly with your risk tolerance and your own personal situation and don’t treat this article as financial advice. Ok, so how can you participate in IGOs? You can find new IGOs on launchpads – platforms specialised in raising funds for new projects. Some of them have a broad range of projects, while others specialise in a particular type, such as gaming or DeFi. The list of launchpads is constantly evolving but here are some of the most popular ones: Kommunitas Seedify Enjinstarter GameFi BSCPad Dao Maker What makes a good launchpad? In my opinion, there are two key elements - a relatively low entry threshold for guaranteed allocation and a large number of IGOs. The first one makes it easier to participate in IGOs (although in most cases the investment is still quite substantial - more on this later) and the latter ensures that you will actually have plenty of opportunities to invest in new projects - no point joining a launchpad, which has only 1 or 2 projects per month. Allocations If IGOs are such a great way of making consistent profits, why everyone who participates in them in not a millionaire yet? You can’t simply put 10,000 USD in an IGO and make 10x straight away because everyone would want to do it. To manage the volume of potential investors, launchpads require them to hold a certain amount of their tokens (KOM, SFUND, etc.) to give them either a chance to participate in an IGO (lottery) or a guarantee (guaranteed allocation). The more tokens you hold, the larger allocation you can get. Usually, there are specific tiers – please see Seedify Fund as an example below. As you can see, you need a minimum of 250 SFUND tokens (around 1,300 USD at the time of writing) to take part in a lottery. If you want guaranteed allocation, you need a minimum of 1,000 SFUND tokens (around 5,160 USD) and from my experience, this will only give you around 20 USD allocation. Sure, this can still give you a very healthy profit, especially if the project does 600x like it was the case with Blocktopia, but it won’t make you a millionaire anytime soon. You can see an example of allocations per tier in the image below. But there's an interesting alternative now available Here’s a comparison of a few popular launchpads and their respective minimum tiers. Kommunitas is a relatively new but very active launchpad - 5 IGOs in February and 9 scheduled for March. While most launchpads follow a similar model - tiers based on the amount of tokens you hold, Kommunitas does something completely different. It's a tier-less launchpad with a proportional allocation Yep, there are no tiers. Even better - you're eligible for a guaranteed allocation as long as you hold at least 100 KOM tokens (0.51 USD at the time of writing). This way literally anyone can participate in an IGO - the biggest issue with most launchpads is a relatively high entry cost - sure it's well worth it but it may simply not be affordable for many people. Of course, if you hold only 100 KOM tokens your allocation will be tiny but here's the second unique feature - the allocation is proportional based on your KOM holdings. This not only is great for investing in IGOs but it also creates stronger demand for KOM token. Let me explain - while Seedify has been in my experience a very solid investment, for a lot of people, over 5k USD for the lowest guaranteed allocation is simply too much money. There’s also very little incentive to hold SFUND tokens in a range between tiers – for example, if you have 1,500 SFUND, your allocation will be the same as if you were holding 1,000 SFUND. This means that the holders are more likely to sell them, especially as the price goes up and there's an opportunity to make decent profit. Sure, you can earn rewards by staking your tokens but this is also true for many other launchpads. By introducing proportional allocation, Kommunitas is achieving two important benefits - it's a benefit for holders, as their allocation grows in line with the size of their KOM holdings but also, it increases the demand for the token, as there's an additional benefit to holding more of it. Finally, this is a relatively new project with a tiny market cap - just over 5 mil at the time of writing. Compare it to over BSCPad which is over 50 mil or Seedify and DAO Maker which are both in the 120-150 mil range or even Enjinstarter at 13 mil (and this is in the current, rather bearish market). It's quite easy to see that Kommunitas has a huge potential for growth. 2022 - the year of crypto gaming and the metaverse Considering how strong is the gaming/metaverse narrative, it is reasonable to assume that launchpads focused on gaming projects are likely to perform incredibly well in the coming months. While there are quite a few options to choose from, as I outlined above, I think that Kommunitas offers by far the lowest entry point and the best potential through its unique proportional allocation. I hope you found this article helpful and interesting. If you’re interested in crypto tutorials and crypto market commentaries, please check out my and follow me on . YouTube channel Twitter ---- Disclaimer The content covered in this article is NOT to be considered investment advice. I’m NOT a financial adviser. These are only my own speculative opinions, ideas and theories. Do NOT trade or invest based purely upon the information presented in this article.

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The Best Gaming and Metaverse Launchpads in 2022

Design collaboration tools have become increasingly popular in the last years. Designers have greatly benefited from tools such as Figma to complete their work in an increasingly intuitive, organized, easy, and quicker manner. Collaboration with other functions in the business like marketing or engineering has also dramatically improved. As a developer though, there is one thing I am still bitter about – Implementing Pixel Perfect Designs. I have extensive experience in software development and trust me, there are not many things that make me as frustrated as endless iterations of pixel-perfect design implementation. I am outlining my reasons below: Everybody likes to have some degree of self-government when it comes to work. When I spend so much time implementing small design changes in web/mobile apps I feel like I have been stripped out of my professional freedom. This just gets multiplied when as a team we are not using cross-platform frameworks. Autonomy – I strongly believe in the massive value add of designers’ work, however, I need to admit that I sometimes do not understand certain iterations I get asked for. I do not demand to be explained exactly all the reasons for every change, but as many people in the workplace, us developers also appreciate being involved in the process and being able to contribute in a timely manner. Understanding – Have you ever wondered why more experienced developers generally shy away from front-end development? Yes, I am generalizing, but the continuous development of skills and education it takes to be a successful back-end developer are greater than what it takes to be a front-end developer. Back-end provides you with a longer steep learning curve, something that definitely does not come with implementing pixel-perfect designs. Professional Development – These are my experiences and would love to hear what are your thoughts. I, in the meanwhile, am working on a solution to convert my designs into widgets at . Wish me luck! Figma Flutter https://codis.io/

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Table of contents What is Selenium? Selenium Webdriver Selenium Grid Selenide Evaluating the frameworks based on our requirements Skillset available in the company Learning curve Ease of use Cross-browser and platform support Integration with cloud testing services CI/CD integration License cost Detailed reports Result Final words is not an easy task. You have to based on your company's needs: Choosing a UI automation framework consider many factors Skillset available in the company Learning curve Ease of use Cross-browser and platform support Integration with cloud testing services CI/CD integration License cost Detailed reports Back then my fellow colleagues evaluated multiple frameworks and they narrowed down the choice to Selenium and Selenide. So the question is which framework to use? I won't waste your time, so I quickly answer the question: . Thanks for reading. 😊 both ….. Joking aside, if you are interested in the whys, please continue reading. In this first article let's look at both one by one so I can give a little bit more detailed answer to our question. What is Selenium? Selenium is an project consisting of different It is widely used in test automation, but it is not limited only to testing. Its main components are , Selenium RC, Selenium IDE (record and playback), and . I won't talk about Selenium RC which is the predecessor of Selenium WebDriver, if you would like to read about it, you can find information . I am also skipping Selenium IDE which is a simple record and playback tool. Based on my experience it is only useful for people who are beginners in software development or in case you are not that familiar with the DOM. In case you are still interested have a look at . open-source tools for automating web browsers supporting many browsers across many platforms. Selenium WebDriver Selenium Grid here this page Selenium Webdriver It is a collection of , as a real user would do. The supported languages include J . The WebDriver can run either locally or remotely (using Selenium Grid). language-specific bindings to drive a browser natively ava, C#, Kotlin, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Perl, and PHP but you cannot automate native apps, for that purpose you can use . In case you are interested in Appium, I highly recommend 's Udemy course. Selenium can only automate webpages Appium Rahul Shetty In case you are interested in Selenium WebDriver programming using Java language, 's course on , I personally . I highly recommend Rahul Shetty Udemy learnt a lot from that I also following the course, so you can start Selenium development in no time with it. It is available on . For Selenide I cannot recommend a good course yet, but that is the main reason why I started to write this article series. developed a Cucumber-based Selenium framework GitHub Selenium Grid Using Selenium Grid . The latest version is Selenium Grid 4 which has a completely new codebase compared to its previous versions. you can run tests parallelly across multiple machines both virtual and physical ones Using Grid you can build your own infrastructure, but there are many sites that provide Selenium grid services. One of them is which supports more than 3000 real devices and browsers. Browserstack Selenide Let's talk about . So what is Selenide? Selenide is an framework built on top of Selenium WebDriver whose main purpose is to . As it is it also means we get the and lets' see what else we get in : Selenide open-source make test automation simple based on Selenium WebDriver full feature set of it addition It has a for tests, so you will have a . fluent API more concise and readable code It supports , so you will have much less trouble with handling timeouts, so . Ajax you can write more stable tests In addition to the Selenium selectors, you have more advanced selectors which make finding elements easy. Provides easy ways to download files. Provides methods to navigate between parent and child elements. It is as it is using sensible defaults, so you don't have to mess with WebDriver, but of course, you can if you want. very easy to configure Selenide providing also the link, even during running on Jenkins, so you can identify the problem more easily. automatically takes screenshots on failing tests It has a . built-in Profiler Sending keys to elements is quite slow using Selenium, as it is sending keys one by one. . Selenide provides a javascript based method which is a much faster way to send keys Provides detailed error messages even logging the HTML source belonging to the element, so it makes debugging much easier. , even if you have hundreds of Selenium tests, as the Selenium tests are completely compatible with Selenide. Switching to Selenide from Selenium is easy That is the basic information we need about the frameworks, so let's continue with comparing them. Evaluating the frameworks based on our requirements Skillset available in the company Our team has a strong Java background so seems to be a reasonable choice as it Selenium supports many programming languages including Java. , but as we have the Java background For us, the standing is Selenide is limited to Java and other JVM based languages Selenide is as good for us as Selenium. Selenium:Selenide 1:1. Learning curve For Selenium, you can find tons of materials on the internet: video courses, tutorials, articles. In case you have a strong Java background and you are familiar with the DOM then . As it is open-source you can also check the source code anytime. learning Selenium is quite easy Selenide has , but it has many examples available on . I have not found any video course on the topic, but of course, articles are available. Stackoverflow has a few hundred questions related to Selenide in comparison Selenium has almost 100000. Despite this, easy (especially in case you are already familiar with Selenium). It is also open-source, so you have the option to skim through the code if you want. quite short documentation GitHub learning Selenide is also However many of the problems you encounter during Selenide development can be answered by the materials belonging to Selenium (as Selenide is based on Selenium WebDriver) it is still a win for Selenium: 2:1. Ease of use In case you look back at the Selenide introduction section you can see the list of topics in which . This is a Selenide excels in comparison to Selenium huge win for Selenide: 2:2. Cross-browser and platform support Both frameworks have the It is same browser and platform support. equal: 3:3. Integration with cloud testing services Both Selenium and Selenide can , so it is . The standing is . integrate with Browserstack equal again 4:4 CI/CD integration and the can be told . At our company, we use GitLab which has its own CI/CD tool and I can tell Selenide works well with it: Selenium integrates well with Jenkins same about Selenide 5:5. License cost Both of them are free software: 6:6. Detailed reports , but you can easily integrate them with testing frameworks like . With those frameworks, you . In addition to this with which you can generate reports which include the execution time of every action in milliseconds. Based on this you can better understand where your tests are spending their time and where can you improve your tests. With the profiler, it is Neither Selenium nor Selenide has built-in reporting JUnit or TestNG can generate the needed reports Selenide has a profiler another point for Selenide. Result So the final result is to Selenide. Of course, you , as all of the t depending on your team's need. Taking into consideration the which makes development easier, and we did not regret our decision. Selenide is quite an active project, having multiple releases per month, 6:7 cannot decide just on the result factors have a different weigh extra features of Selenide we decided to go with it I highly recommend giving it a try. Final words This is the first introduction article of a series I will write about test automation using Selenide. I am pretty sure you are eager to see some code, so in the next article we will jumpstart Selenide development. In case you are interested in the management side of quality assurance in an agile environment, then I recommend reading written by my colleagues and . this article Ákos Piltmann István Szarka To close the article, I leave you a question here: What is your number one UI automation framework? Please share your experiences in the comment section. **Spread the word about how awesome Hashnode is, so please share this article on social media!**😊 In case you do , just , on , on on , on and even on . 😊 not want to miss my posts follow me here on Hashnode LinkedIn Twitter Medium.com dev.to Instagram P.S.: . 👍 Support me by sharing this article 🧡 Buy me a coffee! 📚 on ! ✌ Join the Selenide community LinkedIn

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Selenium vs. Selenide: Which is the Better UI Test Automation Framework?

Wars, floods and chaos as the new normal This story is part of the Web3 Writing Contest hosted by The Octopus Network in collaboration with HackerNoon. We should probably feel upbeat, as crypto markets are starting to recover from their Lunar New Year lull, just as we predicted they would. However, there is a lot of other things going on which give us pause (paws?) for thought. Around the world, the COVID pandemic seems to be waning, and new virus variants seem less deadly than their forebears. This is good, but it is a slow recovery and a long way to go back to “normal”; if that is even possible. Even when in a meeting with someone who is triple-vaccinated, the handshake may be absent or awkward, and the psychological scars or multiple lockdowns may be with us for years to come. Russia is at war, the USA has applied sanctions and world supply chain issues still drag on. We anticipate higher prices on many commodities will be an issue for the next 12-24 months. The higher prices due to lack of supply are also compounded by underlying inflation: the bonfire fuelled by central banks printing trillions of dollars in paper cash as a dubious panacea for the pandemic. Long-time readers will know that BostonTrading.co initially back in and . The puppies do not have crystal balls; we simply recognised some early indicators that the several months before the COVID outbreak. forecast lower rates, cash-printing and hyperinflation September 2019 October 2019 ; a full six months before the pandemic broke out global economy was starting to get sick Like the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the COVID outbreak was merely the straw that broke the economy’s back. The early warning signs of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC1) were felt as far back as 2006, when Michael Burry placed__ __ and Jeremy Britton wrote the warnings in his . “The Big Short” 2006 best-seller We are now well into GFC2, with shortages of not only toilet paper, but also things like copper, gold, silver, lithium and more. If you had been following the early analysis, you may have picked up some treasures along the way, and be in a good position now. If you are new to the puppy pack, do not fret: we will continue to provide you with updates (pup-dates?) from our long-range economic forecasts, so you will always be ahead of the wave. Anarchy is not exactly chaos There are images floating around the interwebz that show anarchy as riots in the streets, looting, violence and absolute chaos, however, this popular idea may not be true. Dictionary definitions of anarchy vary greatly, with some claiming it is a “state of disorder, lawlessness, riot, rebellion and mutiny”. Other definitions show a gentler side to anarchy, defining it as “society being freely constituted without authorities or a governing body”. That second definition may sit well with those who seek a simpler life. A few centuries ago, there were citizens who lived close to the palace of the King or Queen and in large cities. The in-dwellers used currency, paid taxes, went to the markets to buy and sell goods, obeyed the sometimes fickle ruler and lived a life of relative security. Far away from the palace, the out-dwellers chopped their own wood, grew their own food and, aside from the occasional bandit, lived a life of relative security. Depending on how far you lived from the ruler, city or government, you may have been unaware of whether the King was alive or dead, and may have been unaware of the concept of fiat currency. In self-sufficient farming communities, life was simple and bartering worked most of the time. Obviously, there are many Russian citizens who do not support their government waging war in Ukraine. There are many citizens in the rest of the world who do not support their government creating so many lockdowns, printing cash like there is no tomorrow or many other decisions that have been recently enacted. Whilst we do not support any form of violence, riots or mutiny, there may be some value in peaceful anarchy and “opting out” of many systems. If you are fortunate enough to be able to grow even a small percentage of your own food, then you will be less reliant on governments or the supply chain. If you have some funds allocated to crypto, gold, silver or other scarce commodities, you will be less impacted by hyperinflation or the devaluing of paper currency. The US dollar has lost over 97% of its purchasing power since it was created in 1913, but an ounce of gold is still an ounce of gold, a tin of coffee is still a tin of coffee and a Bitcoin is still a Bitcoin. That which is scarce or finite cannot be inflated away. Selah*. Crypto: come for the returns, stay for the revolution As we compiled this month’s update, it is not only pandemic, war and supply-chain shortages that we face. Serious weather events, including a “rain bomb” and severe flooding have impacted Australia, with many houses being flooded, and many more communities left for up to a week without internet and or electricity. As someone who is right in the thick of the torrential downpours, it is great to see little ‘rays of sunshine’ emerging during the storms and floods. These are not literal sunbeams, but human heroes who do whatever it takes to help their neighbours. We have witnessed people with electricity running long cables out of their house to assist neighbours who have had no power for days. Those who have spare generators offer them to those in need. Friends and family have braved the storms to bring warm food, gas stoves, hot water and battery packs to those without power. Electricians and plumbers have walked the streets, knocking on doors to aid those who may have damaged homes or appliances. Some people have offered their houses as a temporary sanctuary to those who have had to evacuate flooded homes. It is heartening to see communities rally together to help each other; with no intervention required by governments. Imagine the peaceful community all assisting each other as best as they can in the chaos of flooding in and . It may be seen as a microcosm of the global crypto community: a community that can exist without the intervention of a ruler or a ruling class. Queensland Northern New South Wales Elsewhere, the government in the USA has stated that it will not fight directly against Russia, but anonymous cyber hackers are trying to cripple Russian communication systems, and crypto communities from around the world have been sending cryptocurrency into Ukraine to assist Ukrainian defence efforts. It is a beautiful thing to see humanity and compassion shining bright in what can seem to be dark times. How have we fared this month? Despite operating without internet and electricity for up to a week, the puppy pack have managed to stay safe and dry, due largely to assistance from the local community. The Boston portfolios show signs of recovery, as we recover from the annual Lunar New Year doldrums, and increasing global uncertainty drives investors into crypto and away from the devaluing fiat currency. Bostoncoin portfolio update (BOS) Whilst the OG crypto (Bitcoin) is still around 20% lower than what it was last year, due to the diversified nature of the world’s first crypto fund portfolio, Bostoncoin is still up. Winners this month include: month on month (MOM), as investors eschew Tether (USDT) for a variety of reasons, not only limited to backing by Chinese real estate instead of dollars or fraudulent USDT records. We do not recommend Tether to anyone for any purpose. Luna have their own stable coin (Terra, UST), which has increased dramatically in popularity, and whilst UST is stable and fixed at $US1, we expect further gains from the LUNA parent. LUNA up 64% **SECRET up 147%**year on year (YOY) as more people open up to the idea of privacy control on smart contracts. YOY and we expect more from this one, as Facebook loses billions in ad-targeting revenue and web-users demand a slice of advertising dollars. BAT up 139% YOY as the blockchain version of live-streaming entertainment comes into its own form of decentralised revenue sharing. LPT up 696% YOY as integrity in supply and delivery becomes more important. XYO up 5196% As of Feb 28, 2022 BOS price 158.809677 BOS NAV 144.372434 MOM (-21.37) 1yr 12.35% 3yr 172.83% (average) POLLYcoin portfolio update (POLLY) Move along, nothing much to see here. POLLY is backed by hard currency so does not go up and down. She sits stable and pays an income of 5% per year, so your cash savings can party like it’s 1999. If your friends are still earning 0.1% on their lazy cash, tell them that POLLY is still living like it is the last days of the old Millennium and paying 5% pa, with monthly income. Feb 28, 2022 POLLYcoin (Principal Outcome Lateral, Low Yield) POLLY price $1.00 POLLY NAV $0.97 POLLY income 5% per annum DARTcoin portfolio update (DART) This crazy little boy has been on a wild ride over his first 12-18 months of beta-testing and he was not allowed in public until he calmed down. Sage investments into some altcoins worked well, with massive climbs up to 50 892% followed by an 82% drop. This portfolio is NOT for the faint-hearted, and we recommend less than 5% of your portfolio allocation in DARTcoin, unless you are a highly-sophisticated investor or you enjoy rollercoasters. is a standout winner for DART. Many of the other coins in the DART portfolio are majorly behind, or only slightly ahead. Despite huge climbs, with the sharp falls, the DARTcoin portfolio outperformed both Bostoncoin and Bitcoin for the full year. RUNE up 10 385% Feb 28, 2022 DARTcoin (Digital Asset, Risk Targeted) DART price 224.631 DART NAV 204.21 MOM (-79.6%) 1yr 194.86% That is it for the monthly roundup. We trust that you and your loved ones are staying safe. If you can, avoid warzones, floods, scammers, spammers and flim-flammers. If you spot anything weird or wonderful in the crypto world, please send us an email to let us know, before you invest or before you tell others to do so. If the project is great and we love it, we may send you some Boston swag as a gift. If the project is highly dubious or outright criminal, we can help protect you from it. Always read the warning labels, and if there are no warnings on a crypto project, run the heck away, as they are clearly not being honest. JB *Selah: this word is used 70+ times in the Old Testament/Torah. Although the exact meaning has been lost to time, it is often written as a single word sentence after a profound thought. The most helpful translation is: "pause here and reflect on this". Let's bring this one back :)

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Last month, I participated in a logo design competition that I didn’t win. My entitlement hat had it all prepared to make a parade. But since the miserable promoter didn’t win, there is nothing to say and a natural-usual reaction to being silent about what happened. But let’s consider the complication of looking at what was lost, with the work executed and its lessons learned. We know the good/bad aspects of this. The good is the consideration to reflect on what would be considered noise. The bad is a natural tendency to trash things too fast and not learn. It makes sense to see the situation as under our control when it’s the case that it is up to us when things are in our control. But the modern world brings another factor present in the accelerated tracks that we might find ourselves. Consider that logo competition as an example. It had a framework: with dates, with judges, with rules. As the world becomes transactional, the projects that we engage might fit into a mode of . There is a natural expectation that transactional processes have validation systems, naturally creating the bias for disclosing the wins when we make the right moves and ignoring everything when we fail in the critic’s eyes (from the metrics as expected). operation-oriented to delivering outcomes In this inductive clock-based sliding device, a pipeline, we are compelled to reduce and hide many things and focus on what is being expected. It’s a problem with these transactional tracks in the modern world. There is a softer version of the problem and a hard version. The soft is when you can do something about it - when things are in your control as indicated. The hard version happens when . As an example, the contract in the transaction might require confidentiality - it’s biased at the contract level. the tracks require us to abide by the rules and join the contract Therefore, keep in mind and be aware of the many outputs you might be interested in when executing a project, such as learning outcomes that can come from any execution. Use time to reflect on the biases - and rules - when projects are oriented to outcomes, when it presents winning/losing criteria, or in go-no-go situations. As for my non-winning logo entry, it falls under the soft situation since it’s in my control to look back at it, reflect, and learn.

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Nowadays the engineering community has many products for authentication in their frameworks. Lots of them have built-in features for authentication and a lot of libraries available for social sign-in. We have the Django framework, Flask, and python-social-auth to build almost everything we need to authenticate users in the pythonic world. In this article, I'll show you an example of how to add everything we need for the user's authentication without writing lots of lines of code. The code used in this blog post is available on . We'll use , , , , , and . GitHub Flask flask cookie-cutter docker docker-compose Postgres Ory Kratos Ory Keto Let's take a look at the login flow of our application using Ory Kratos and Ory Keto. What we will use in our project is a great tool to bootstrap our project structure. It's always a great idea to have ready-to-use linters, Dockerfile, and package management tools out of the box. Flask cookiecutter Postgres as an RDBMS. We will have two Postgres services running in two containers in this example. I think that it's a great idea to keep it simple without using custom scripts to have multiple databases available in a single docker-compose service. Ory Kratos with UI to authenticate users. Ory Keto as an access control service. Setting up Ory Kratos Ory Kratos will be responsible for storing identity data such as email/login and password. Using the guide we need to copy the contents of to the root of your project and then add the following content to the docker-compose: quickstart contrib/quickstart/kratos/email-password postgres-kratos:
    image: postgres:9.6
    ports:
      - "5432:5432"
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=kratos
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=secret
      - POSTGRES_DB=kratos
    networks:
      - intranet

  kratos-migrate:
    image: oryd/kratos:v0.8.0-alpha.3
    links:
      - postgres-kratos:postgres-kratos
    environment:
      - DSN=postgres://kratos:secret@postgres-kratos:5432/kratos?sslmode=disable&max_conns=20&max_idle_conns=4
    networks:
      - intranet
    volumes:
      - type: bind
        source: ./kratos
        target: /etc/config/kratos
    command: -c /etc/config/kratos/kratos.yml migrate sql -e --yes

  kratos:
    image: oryd/kratos:v0.8.0-alpha.3
    links:
      - postgres-kratos:postgres-kratos
    environment:
      - DSN=postgres://kratos:secret@postgres-kratos:5432/kratos?sslmode=disable&max_conns=20&max_idle_conns=4
    ports:
      - '4433:4433'
      - '4434:4434'
    volumes:
      - type: bind
        source: ./kratos
        target: /etc/config/kratos
    networks:
      - intranet
    command: serve -c /etc/config/kratos/kratos.yml --dev --watch-courier

  kratos-selfservice-ui-node:
    image: oryd/kratos-selfservice-ui-node:v0.8.0-alpha.3
    environment:
      - KRATOS_PUBLIC_URL=http://kratos:4433/
      - KRATOS_BROWSER_URL=http://127.0.0.1:4433/
    networks:
      - intranet
    ports:
      - "4455:3000"
    restart: on-failure


  mailslurper:
    image: oryd/mailslurper:latest-smtps
    ports:
      - '4436:4436'
      - '4437:4437'
    networks:
      - intranet

  postgres-keto: Setting up Ory Keto You can get familiar with the concepts of Ory Keto reading the guide. These articles can give you a brief introduction to it. Since we need to manage access to the home page, we need to create a folder at the root of our project and have a file with the following content: quickstart keto keto/keto.yml version: v0.7.0-alpha.1

log:
  level: debug

namespaces:
  - name: app
    id: 1

serve:
  read:
    host: 0.0.0.0
    port: 4466
  write:
    host: 0.0.0.0
    port: 4467 We need the following containers: postgresd-auth is the database for Ory Keto. keto-migrate that takes care of database migrations. keto-perms is a wrapper to work with permissions using a command-line interface. keto runs the server. version: "3.7"

x-default-volumes: &default_volumes
  volumes:
    - ./:/app
    - node-modules:/app/node_modules
    - ./dev.db:/tmp/dev.db

services:
  oathkeeper:
    image: oryd/oathkeeper:v0.38
    depends_on:
      - kratos
    ports:
      - 8080:4455
      - 4456:4456
    command:
      serve proxy -c "/etc/config/oathkeeper/oathkeeper.yml"
    environment:
      - LOG_LEVEL=debug
    restart: on-failure
    networks:
      - intranet
    volumes:
      - ./oathkeeper:/etc/config/oathkeeper

  flask:
    build:
      context: .
    image: "kratos_app_example-development"
    environment:
      - FLASK_APP=autoapp.py
      - FLASK_ENV=development
    networks:
      - intranet
    restart: on-failure
    volumes:
      - type: bind
        source: ./
        target: /app

  postgres-kratos:
    image: postgres:9.6
    ports:
      - "5432:5432"
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=kratos
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=secret
      - POSTGRES_DB=kratos
    networks:
      - intranet

  kratos-migrate:
    image: oryd/kratos:v0.8.0-alpha.3
    links:
      - postgres-kratos:postgres-kratos
    environment:
      - DSN=postgres://kratos:secret@postgres-kratos:5432/kratos?sslmode=disable&max_conns=20&max_idle_conns=4
    networks:
      - intranet
    volumes:
      - type: bind
        source: ./kratos
        target: /etc/config/kratos
    command: -c /etc/config/kratos/kratos.yml migrate sql -e --yes

  kratos:
    image: oryd/kratos:v0.8.0-alpha.3
    links:
      - postgres-kratos:postgres-kratos
    environment:
      - DSN=postgres://kratos:secret@postgres-kratos:5432/kratos?sslmode=disable&max_conns=20&max_idle_conns=4
    ports:
      - '4433:4433'
      - '4434:4434'
    volumes:
      - type: bind
        source: ./kratos
        target: /etc/config/kratos
    networks:
      - intranet
    command: serve -c /etc/config/kratos/kratos.yml --dev --watch-courier

  kratos-selfservice-ui-node:
    image: oryd/kratos-selfservice-ui-node:v0.8.0-alpha.3
    environment:
      - KRATOS_PUBLIC_URL=http://kratos:4433/
      - KRATOS_BROWSER_URL=http://127.0.0.1:4433/
    networks:
      - intranet
    ports:
      - "4455:3000"
    restart: on-failure


  mailslurper:
    image: oryd/mailslurper:latest-smtps
    ports:
      - '4436:4436'
      - '4437:4437'
    networks:
      - intranet

  postgres-keto:
    image: postgres:9.6
    ports:
      - "15432:5432"
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=keto
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=secret
      - POSTGRES_DB=keto
    networks:
      - intranet

  keto-migrate:
    image: oryd/keto:v0.7.0-alpha.1
    volumes:
      - type: bind
        source: ./keto
        target: /home/ory
    environment:
      - LOG_LEVEL=debug
      - DSN=postgres://keto:secret@postgres-keto:5432/keto?sslmode=disable&max_conns=20&max_idle_conns=4
    command: ["migrate", "up", "-y"]
    restart: on-failure
    depends_on:
      - postgres-kratos
    networks:
      - intranet

  keto-perms:
    image: oryd/keto:v0.7.0-alpha.1
    volumes:
      - type: bind
        source: ./keto
        target: /home/ory
    environment:
      - KETO_WRITE_REMOTE=keto:4467
      - KETO_READ_REMOTE=keto:4466
      - LOG_LEVEL=debug
      - DSN=postgres://keto:secret@postgres-keto:5432/keto?sslmode=disable&max_conns=20&max_idle_conns=4
    depends_on:
      - postgres-kratos
    networks:
      - intranet

  keto:
    image: oryd/keto:v0.7.0-alpha.1
    volumes:
      - type: bind
        source: ./keto
        target: /home/ory
    ports:
      - '4466:4466'
      - '4467:4467'
    depends_on:
      - keto-migrate
    environment:
      - DSN=postgres://keto:secret@postgres-keto:5432/keto?sslmode=disable&max_conns=20&max_idle_conns=4
    networks:
      - intranet
    command: serve


volumes:
  node-modules:
  kratos-sqlite:

networks:
  intranet: Working with policies Keto has configured namespace to use in Flask application. Following the guide I decided to implement simple permission policy for the demo project: app Check whether a User has Access to Something Use keto-cli managing permissions. Use email for without symbol. subjects @ Pros Easy to use and maintain. Can easily be automated using CI/CD pipelines. Cons Lack of UI can be dealbreaker for non-engineering staff This permission policy can violate , or any other compliances due to personal data usage. GDPR HIPAA Flask part HTTP_STATUS_FORBIDDEN = 403


@blueprint.route("/", methods=["GET", "POST"])
def home():
    """Home page."""

    if 'ory_kratos_session' not in request.cookies:
        return redirect(settings.KRATOS_UI_URL)

    response = requests.get(
        f"{settings.KRATOS_EXTERNAL_API_URL}/sessions/whoami",
        cookies=request.cookies
    )
    active = response.json().get('active')
    if not active:
        abort(HTTP_STATUS_FORBIDDEN)

    email = response.json().get('identity', {}).get('traits', {}).get('email').replace('@', '')

    # Check permissions

    response = requests.get(
        f"{settings.KETO_API_READ_URL}/check",
        params={
            "namespace": "app",
            "object": "homepage",
            "relation": "read",
            "subject_id": email,
        }
    )
    if not response.json().get("allowed"):
        abort(HTTP_STATUS_FORBIDDEN)

    return render_template("public/home.html")

@blueprint.route("/oathkeeper", methods=["GET", "POST"])
def oathkeeper():
    """ An example route to demo oathkeeper integration with Kratos """
    return {"message": "greetings"} Nota bene Consider having and packages that use and . Instead of just calling some magic endpoints, your code will be more readable with SDKs. authorization authentication Kratos SDK Keto SDK Please pay attention to configure and . login session cookies It's better to use instead of having Ory Kratos managed by your team just because Ory manages it, and you don't need to enable observability/logging/metrics for your service. Ory Cloud

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A few weeks ago, I went to buy a pastry for my coffee break. As if it was nothing the cashier asked for 3 bucks for something that last week had cost 2.80. It brought memories of my teenage years in Mexico where runaway inflation was common. Some people in the west are not familiar with inflation and what it means; unaware of the effect it will have on their savings, their wealth, their plans for the future. I want to share with you what I learned as a kid. What is inflation? [ɪnˈfleɪʃ(ə)n] NOUN economics “a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.” Inflation is coming Our current inflation situation started with Corona, as people started using the money they were not spending in services (Restaurants, parties, travel) to buy goods. This, together with some planning mistakes by manufacturers created shortages of components across multiple areas in the economy. Suddenly a laptop that you could usually order for delivery in a few days could only be delivered in a few months. Purchase managers threw money at trying to get critical components, prices went up, and suddenly sales guys realized they could ask for more money without much push back from the market. If there had been a chance that the central banks could control this, the ongoing war in Ukraine reduced these plans to ashes. Both Russia and Ukraine are big suppliers of basic commodities, not only oil but grains and other agricultural products. Reduced supply and steady demand will result in price increases. Along these lines, I want to share my experience growing up in Mexico with inflation, with the goal of giving you some ideas not to be hacked by it. Note that I am no financial advisor, just an observer who has seen things. What does inflation do to you? Low inflation is actually a desirable thing. It helps all of us believe that we are making progress because we are earning more money or the value of our investments goes up. The problem is when and the central banks can not control it. inflation causes a spiral of prices going up, salaries going up, prices going up The chart above helps visualize how low inflation is what makes you sell a house that you bought for 70 in 1999 at 105 in 2019. I remember my early days as a business owner in Mexico. The country went through several periods of inflation caused by e In my business we were selling industrial supplies to manufacturing industries. Every month there would be price increases from our suppliers. Depending on what had gone up sometimes we would have sold material cheaper that what it costed for us to replace it. xchange rate shocks and wrong fiscal policy of the government. High Inflation felt like swimming against a roaring sea with every new wave threating to bring you under. After a few months, the following became clear: Keeping stocks of material was the best way to keep your capital afloat Money in the bank would lose value every month. Long-payment terms by customers were really bad business. So, while circumstances have changed, and inflation is not looking like it is going to be fully out of control, there are still some things that I can share with you from my experience that might be of help. What can you do to protect against inflation? Liquid assets like cash or money in the bank will lose value; especially in saving accounts where your money is locked. While it is true that banks will raise interest rates on your savings they would be tailing the real inflation. Assets that are scarce can be a good place to park your money; it could be real estate, gold, and even some crypto currencies (But not all). We live in strange times though, let me explain by looking at this in detail: Small excursion on the stock market: The stock market will turn into a rollercoaster, mostly because the central banks need to raise interest rates to control inflation, and this would lead to many companies and individuals that have been profiting from a lax economic policy getting in a dire financial situation. In the words of Warren Buffet: “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who has been swimming naked” However, it is not guaranteed that inflation will be the main issue. The real issue with the stock market is that they are at historical highs, and thus . I got two graphs below showing stock market and inflation for over 100 years. You can see how the drops in the stock market often match the high inflation periods of WW1, WW2 and the oil price shock of the 1970s: probably due for a correction Small excursion into real estate market: This is a mixed bag, depending on where you start. If you have a house and a you are good. The reason is that while the interest rates will go up, you locked them while they were low, and while the value of your property might fluctuate, you will still pay less in interests than the market would require you to do if you had a variable interest rate. mortgage at fixed rate set to mature long term If you don’t own real estate and you want to get into it, you might risk buying at the top of the bubble. Look at the graph below: Remember our inflation graph: buying for 70 to sell for 105, means 50% gain. The real estate graph goes now from 70 to 278, almost 400%. Fanniemae (A US credit institution for housing) predicts a . deceleration on growth Small excursion into Gold, Commodities and similar investment vehicles Gold behavior is quite interesting. It goes up during crisis and goes down when the economy is doing well. The problem with Gold now is that it is near its highest level: Gold is a good proxy to a business buying goods that it can sell more expensive at a later stage. Where the alikeness ends is that the market for Gold is liquid and quite volatile. Another investment which is modeled in scarcity like Gold is Bitcoin. I single out Bitcoin because there is a fixed limit of coins that can be in circulation thus creating an artificial scarcity. If you can stomach the environmental bad karma, Bitcoin could be an alternative to gold. Again here with all the volatility that the market dictates. And this takes us to commodities, which are the closest thing you can get to being a business and buying goods you can sell quickly: People will have to eat, the war will reduce the crops and exports of grains, unfortunately for many people in the world . Investopedia has some recommendations on commodity indexes available. prices will go up Conclusion I have tried to make the following points: Inflation is coming You need to protect your savings from it To keep money in Long-Term Savings accounts is a really bad idea To keep (Except for what you need to be liquid). cash is also a bad idea If you own a business, stock on items that you can sell easily If you have your own (greater than 5 years) you are sitting pretty. house with a long term mortgage If you already own a house but have no long term mortgage, talk to your bank now. If you want to buy real estate property now, make sure you know what you are doing, you’ll probably buy near or at the top of the wave. If you are heavy on , it might be , or brace for the ride. stocks time to consider getting out Hold on to those gold coins that you inherited from your aunt. Overall, I wish you well, good health, prosperity, and peaceful times.

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How to Hack Inflation

Transparency with how charitable organizations spend their income is a point of concern for people who donate to these organizations. Only slightly more than a third (38%) of philanthropic income is spent on the cause, according to , with the majority of charitable income going to fundraising and administration. CharityComms.org , or FCG, has launched a database-free, decentralized staking solution with a fully traceable weekly raffle. FoodChain Global FCG is a blockchain ecosystem focused on addressing global hunger through NFTs, P2E games, staking, and unique products. 10% of the prize pool is donated to charity, allowing the company to feed those in need while also rewarding its users. According to the World Food Programme, more than people lack sufficient food, with 45 million at risk of hunger. The United Nations has pledged to solve world hunger by 2030, but the problem still persists. 811 million While charities aid in the mitigation of the problem, the general people must have faith that charitable gifts are going to the correct places. Fewer than of Americans feel they have a high level of trust in charity, indicating a general suspicion of charitable groups. one-fifth Early in 2018, stories of aid workers' wrongdoing in Haiti and elsewhere shook public confidence in the work of development charities and NGOs. The decline in trust was documented in two different reports: by nfpResearch Trust in Charities and the Overseas Development Sector by Populus and the Charity Commission Trust in Charities These issues also attracted the attention of Baroness Stowell, Chair of the Charity Commission, that "people now trust charities no more than they trust the average stranger they meet on the street." who stated Salaries are undoubtedly one of the largest elephants in the room; similar to businesses, charity CEOs often take home larger pay packages than government leaders, prompting the question "why?" When taxpayer money is squandered on meaningless ceremonies or large Covid-19 contracts that fail to deliver, the public is outraged, and it is also apparent that when their donations are used to pay for , the public is outraged (even if not all of the sector are that ludicrous). excessive salaries Despite the effort they perform to restructure these organizations, extreme vigilance must be exercised in order to avoid overpaying CEOs. In the view of many, a six-figure income in a non-profit organization seems unjustifiable. Despite this, the sector's largest flaws are undoubtedly inefficient strategy and inept management. Charities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are often scrutinized and chastised for inefficient spending: aggressive fundraising strategies, bad administration, and a lack of transparency are all major sources of public concern. Being overly aggressive in fundraising has earned the public's scorn time and time again; it's one of the top reasons why people dislike donating to charity, and it's caused enormous misery in some already committed donors. Potential contributors are likewise concerned about poor administration and ineffective philanthropic initiatives. There's the question of why well-known, long-standing charities haven't succeeded in solving the problem they set out to solve, and it's a complicated, but reasonable argument. Non-profits have been fighting internal battles to fix these issues in order to gain public trust, and they are admitting their flaws; the answers just need to come faster. FCG addresses this problem by increasing the transparency of charitable donations through staking, increasing liquidity, and advancing FCG's objective of ending world hunger. To ensure maximum success, 10% of the weekly raffle proceeds will be contributed to the cause. Unlike many platforms that stake their tokens on centralized exchanges, FCG's staking platform is decentralized, allowing token holders to earn interest on their wallets without the fear of government intervention. Actions are automated and secured directly on the blockchain through decentralized, non-custodial staking, which is built purely on smart contracts. In contrast to typical centralized or custodial staking solutions, which assume custody of user funds, FCG staking gives users self-control over their funds. To combat inflation, FCG offers high-interest rates ranging from 10% to 20% depending on the locked-in duration. This comes as continue to grow, with 3.81 percent predicted for the remainder of 2022. global inflation rates With the token contract built into the back end of its ecosystem, FCG doesn’t require a database and offers speedy transaction times. FCG believes crypto projects should be built with the idea that the chain serves as a database. This further backs the FCG motto to “make it make sense,” and minimizes unnecessary layers to oversee users’ funds and provide optimal security and trust. Final Thoughts Honesty and transparency are valued by the public. In order to regain people’s trust, it is past time for charities to be more open about their operations and plans for improvement.

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While working with a new language you will always try to find some similarities with languages that you already know. I’m experienced in JavaScript and Java and can conclude that Go is more similar to JS. Why is that so? Well, in my opinion, this is because of the supporting some functional paradigm features. Pure functions It is a basic entity of functional programming. From wiki: the function return values are identical for identical arguments Here is an example of a pure function: func multiply(a, b int) int {
  return a * b
} Functions as First-Class Citizens According to the wiki, it means that: ; properties such as being able to be assigned to a variable, passed around as a function argument, returned from a function, etc. a given entity (such as a function) supports all the operational properties inherent to other entities We can return a function: package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
	myFunc := makeCounter()
	myFunc()
	myFunc()
}

func makeCounter() func() {
	counter := 0
	return func() {
		fmt.Println(counter)
		counter++
	}
} What should you notice here is that function not only returns a new anonymous function but also got a variable that saves in anonymous function lexical closure, just like in JavaScript. makeCounter In programming languages, a closure, also lexical closure or function closure, is . Operationally, a closure is a record storing a function together with an environment. a technique for implementing lexically scoped name binding in a language with first-class functions Wrapping At the time this article is written, Go doesn’t support generics through Go version 1.18 which will include support of generic types should be released in March 2022 Go 1.18 is not yet released. These are work-in-progress release notes. Go 1.18 is expected to be released in March 2022. Despite this fact you can also use some wrapper functions, for example, if you want to provide some data to the output while invoking certain functions like so: func multiply(a, b int) int {
	return a * b
}

func wrapWithLogs(fn func(a, b int) int) func(a,b int) int {
	return func(a, b int) int {
		start := time.Now()
		r := fn(a, b)
		duration := time.Since(start)
		fmt.Println("function took ", duration)
		return r
	}
} Of course, it will be much more effective using generics. So we need just to wait for a while until the new release will be published :) If you want to get the name of the function dynamically you can also use: runtime.FuncForPC(reflect.ValueOf(fn).Pointer()).Name() Wrapping opens a door to use some cool things like memoization Memoization In computing, memoization or memoisation is . an optimization technique used primarily to speed up computer programs by storing the results of expensive function calls and returning the cached result when the same inputs occur again Like it said, if you have some heavy calculation - it is always better to cache already computed results somewhere and use them instead of doing the same calculation again. func sum(a,b int) int {
	return a + b
}

func memo(fn func(a, b int) int) func(a, b int) int {
	cache := make(map[string]int)
	return func(a, b int) int {
		key := strconv.Itoa(a) + " " + strconv.Itoa(b)
		v, ok := cache[key]
		if !ok {
			fmt.Println("calculating...")
			cache[key] = fn(a, b)
			v = cache[key]
		}
		return v
	}
}

func main() {
	mSum := memo(sum)
	fmt.Println(mSum(2, 3))
	fmt.Println(mSum(2, 3))
} The result will be: calculating... 5 5 Of course, you can avoid wrapper function and write memorization logic directly inside your function. But still you will use closure to store cache inside. Recursion We can use recursion if we need to calculate something like factorial: func funcFactorial(num int) int {
	if num == 0 {
		return 1
	}
	return num * funcFactorial(num-1)
} But please be aware of using recursion whenever possible. The problem is that in most cases it is better to use some stack or queue instead of recursion. Usually, limits of memory lie further than the limits of the call stack. Currying Remember we discussed closure in the first example? Currying is about taking a parameter and returning it in a closure. For example, we got a function multiply: func multiply(a, b int) int {
  return a * b
} We can call this function like . With currying, we can call this function in a way . To do that we need to rewrite our main function: multiply(2, 3) multiply(2)(3) func multiply(a int) func(b int) int {
  return func(b int) int {
    return a * b
  }
} But rewriting existing function just to use currying is not a good practice. Using some wrapper function we can do it in a better way: func multiply(a, b int) int {
	return a * b
}

func curry(a int) func(b int) int {
	return func(b int) int {
		return multiply(a, b)
	}
} Conclusion Go supports some features of the functional paradigm to make things easier. But don’t forget that it is structural language and there is no need to try to write Go code in Functional or OOP style. You will lose in both cases.

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Reporter: Please state the link of the article you are reviewing: HackerNoon https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3927138,00.html What is your opinion regarding this piece? Google announced that it would ban the usage of third-party cookies; it has made a lot of publishers afraid that they won't be able to utilize user data. I am not talking about being able to sell data to data companies or something like that. I am talking about being able to use user data to improve your website's content and personalization aspect. In this article, we can see how we bridge that gap and provide data opportunities for publishers. What are some of the varying perspectives on this subject that you’re aware of? Google's decision to remove third-party cookies is based on the concerns of many users who are afraid that large corporations are abusing their privacy. That is definitely something we should pay attention to and be wary of. On the other hand, some companies have been utilizing that data to provide a much better user experience for their users. That is why I think that even though Google's decision might be appropriate. Finding alternatives is essential for companies who want to provide an excellent experience for their users and customers. What are some of the nuances people frequently miss when discussing this subject matter? I think the aspect of data being used for good. I think people automatically see data usage as a validation of privacy. But like, I stated in the previous question, data can be very beneficial for companies who actually want to help their users and provide them with a better product and experience. What is your favourite quote or paragraph from this article? Why? This paragraph: We are the only engagement platform that gives our clients some score regarding the engagement,” Rabbi explained. “You can understand if your product works or not, and what you need to do to make it more engaging.” This paragraph helps explain the vision of founder Gil Rabbi - creating a way for publishers and media agencies to score engagement and figure out how to optimize it. We saw how media platforms like Buzzfeed have been able to dominate website visitor metircs, as well as , and having an advanced engagment platform has helped them do just that! Storycards time spent on website Is there anything else about this you’d like us to know? The advertising industry will need to adjust and learn how to target an audience effectively even without Google’s third-party cookies. This will mean that engagement platforms will be even more essential to provide value and gain insight into users. I think that the publishers who are going to build up that engagement platform infrastructure will be able to gain an advantage.

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Using User Data After Google's Third-party Cookies Ban

Minimizing downtime during any deployment is a key part of any successful deployment strategy. There are many ways to achieve this, and blue-green deployments are one of them. Using blue-green deployments allows you to not only minimize downtime but also give you the ability to roll back to a previous version of your application if something goes wrong. In this article, we will go over how to deploy Materialize in a blue-green deployment strategy. Prerequisites Before getting started, you should have the following: Basic knowledge of Materialize - Materialize Cloud Account The free trial includes access to two instances, so you should be able to test out a blue/green architecture for free. or installed on your machine psql mzcli DNS Service Provider like Cloudflare, AWS Route 53, Google Cloud DNS, or any other DNS service provider What is a Blue-Green Deployment? A blue-green deployment strategy allows you to deploy a new version of your application while keeping the old version running. Once the new version is ready, traffic is switched over to it via an update to load balancer rules or DNS. The old version is kept running in the background until the new version has successfully taken over. Once we are sure that the new version is stable, the old instance can be destroyed. As an example, take a look at the following diagram: Here, we have two instances of Materialize running on the Materialize Cloud. The blue instance is the one that is currently running and is handling the traffic as this is what we've configured in our DNS. The green instance is the one that is being deployed and would start handling the traffic once the deployment is complete and once we change the DNS to point to the green instance. The whole process usually goes like this: You would initially have the blue instance running as follows: That single instance is the one that is currently handling the traffic and doing all the work. You would then deploy a new version of Materialize to the green instance: After the deployment is complete, you would need to create all of the necessary Materialize sources and views. After the deployment is complete and all of your data has been ingested, you would then switch the DNS to point to the green instance: Once the DNS is updated, the traffic is switched over to the green instance. However, keep in mind that it might take a while for the DNS to propagate before the green instance starts handling all of the traffic. During the DNS propagation, the blue instance will continue to handle some of the traffic. Once the DNS is updated, the traffic is switched over to the green instance: During that time, the blue instance will no longer be handling any of the traffic and can be shut down. But before shutting down the blue instance, we need to make sure that the green instance is up and running and we've tested it thoroughly. Finally, we can shut down the blue instance completely: That way the end-user will not experience any downtime during the deployment as there would have been always an instance running in the background. Plan Your Deployment The rest of this article is a hands-on walkthrough of a blue-green deployment of Materialize Cloud taking the following steps: Create one instance of Materialize via the Materialize Cloud, this will be the blue instance Create a DNS record pointing to the blue instance Connect to the blue instance and create all of the necessary Materialize sources and views Create a new instance of Materialize via the Materialize Cloud, this will be the green instance At that point, only the blue instance is running and handling the traffic so next, we will switch the DNS to point to the green instance Once the DNS is updated, the traffic is switched over to the green instance but keep in mind that it might take a while for the DNS to propagate before the green instance starts handling all of the traffic Finally, we will shut down the blue instance completely once we are sure that the green instance is up and running and we've tested it thoroughly Note that it is always a good idea to keep the old instance running in the background until you are sure that the new instance is performing well. Creating Materialize Deployments Create the instance via Materialize Cloud UI: blue Click on the 'Create New Deployment' button Choose the name of your deployment. We will use the name 'blue' for this deployment to make sure that we can easily identify it later Next, choose the size and the region of your deployment Finally, click on the 'Create' button This will take only a few moments to complete. Once the deployment is ready, we will be able to connect to the instance via any PostgreSQL client. Connecting to Materialize For this demo, we will use the command to connect to the instance. psql Follow the instructions provided in the Cloud UI to download the certificates and connect to your new instance via on the command line. psql Note: you'll have to change the flag to when not connecting to the deployment hostname itself. sslmode=verify-full sslmode=require Adding Materialize Sources For this demo, we will use the . PubNub example from the Materialize Cloud documentation First, we need to create the PubNub source: CREATE SOURCE market_orders_raw
FROM PUBNUB
SUBSCRIBE KEY 'sub-c-4377ab04-f100-11e3-bffd-02ee2ddab7fe'
CHANNEL 'pubnub-market-orders'; Then we can create a , which simply provides an alias for the embedded statement: non-materialized view SELECT CREATE VIEW market_orders AS
SELECT
    ((text::jsonb)->>'bid_price')::float AS bid_price,
    (text::jsonb)->>'order_quantity' AS order_quantity,
    (text::jsonb)->>'symbol' AS symbol,
    (text::jsonb)->>'trade_type' AS trade_type,
    to_timestamp(((text::jsonb)->'timestamp')::bigint) AS ts,
    ''
FROM market_orders_raw; And finally, create the that computes the average bid price: materialized view CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW avg_bid AS
SELECT symbol,
       AVG(bid_price) AS avg
FROM market_orders
GROUP BY symbol; At last, you can check the results: SELECT * FROM avg_bid;
  symbol    |        avg
------------+--------------------
Apple       | 199.3392717416626
Google      | 299.40371152970334
Elerium     | 155.04668809209852
Bespin Gas  | 202.0260593073953
Linen Cloth | 254.34273792647863 For more information about the PubNub source, check the . Materialize Cloud PubNub example Create the route (via DNS or LB) to the blue instance Once you have created the views, you can add a DNS record or a load balancer rule to point to the instance. To do so you will need to go to your DNS provider and create the following record: record for pointing to the Materialize instance hostname (e.g. ) CNAME materialize.your_domain.com 12345mz.materialize.cloud For example, if your instance hostname is , you will need to create a CNAME record pointing to as follows: my-instance.materialize.cloud my-instance.materialize.cloud materialize.example.com. CNAME  12345mz.materialize.cloud. Note change the to the hostname of your instance. 12345mz.materialize.cloud This will allow you to access the instance via your own hostname: . materialize.example.com Once the record is created, you can access the instance by using the same command as before but instead of the Materialize hostname, you can use the DNS name (e.g. ). CNAME psql materialize.example.com Alternatively, if you already have a load balancer, you can use it to create a route to point to the Materialize cloud instance. Performing a Blue-Green Deployment With all that setup, we can now perform a blue-green deployment. We will first create a new instance of Materialize via the Materialize Cloud just like we did for the first deployment. Once the deployment is ready, we will be able to connect to the instance via any PostgreSQL client and again create the PunMub source and views as follows as we did for the first deployment: Create the PubNub source: CREATE SOURCE market_orders_raw
FROM PUBNUB
SUBSCRIBE KEY 'sub-c-4377ab04-f100-11e3-bffd-02ee2ddab7fe'
CHANNEL 'pubnub-market-orders'; Create the non-materialized view: CREATE VIEW market_orders AS
SELECT
    ((text::jsonb)->>'bid_price')::float AS bid_price,
    (text::jsonb)->>'order_quantity' AS order_quantity,
    (text::jsonb)->>'symbol' AS symbol,
    (text::jsonb)->>'trade_type' AS trade_type,
    to_timestamp(((text::jsonb)->'timestamp')::bigint) AS ts
FROM market_orders_raw; In most cases, you would proceed with a blue-green deployment when you have to make changes to the source code or the view definitions. One thing that we could do is to add a new column to the materialized view. That way we would know which instance is currently handling the traffic: avg_bid CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW avg_bid AS
SELECT symbol,
       trade_type,
       AVG(bid_price) AS avg
FROM market_orders
GROUP BY symbol, trade_type; That way if we run the statement, we will see the new column which will tell us which instance is currently handling the traffic. SELECT * FROM avg_bid; trade_type To monitor the status of your instance, you can follow the steps from the Materialize documentation here: Materialize Cloud Monitoring Once the results are correct, we can proceed with the blue-green deployment. Update the route to point to green Once you are ready, you can head back to your DNS zone and update the DNS record for the instance to point to the new instance hostname. Or in the case of a load balancer, you can update the route to point to the new instance. For example, if your instance hostname is , you will need to update the CNAME record pointing to as follows: my-instance.materialize.cloud my-instance.materialize.cloud materialize.example.com. CNAME  54321mz.materialize.cloud.  # Change this to the new hostname Note change the to the hostname of your new instance. 54321mz.materialize.cloud In case that you are using a public DNS provider, you can also reduce the TTL of the CNAME record to 1 hour to avoid the DNS provider from caching the record. This will allow you to access the new instance via your own hostname: directly once the DNS changes have been propagated. materialize.example.com Verifying the Deployment To verify that we are successfully connected to the new instance, try to connect to the new instance via the command as before by using the DNS name (e.g. ) and run the following query: psql materialize.example.com SELECT * FROM avg_bid; If you see the column, you know that you have successfully connected to the new instance. trade_type Alternative approaches to the DNS change The described approach using DNS changes and traffic routing is a good one to use but there are other ways to achieve the same result. With the DNS approach, you will have to wait for the DNS propagation to finish before the green instance starts handling the traffic. During that time both the blue and green instances will be handling some of the traffic based on the DNS propagation. This means that you don't have much control over the traffic routing and you will have to wait for the DNS propagation to finish before the green instance starts handling the traffic. As we already mentioned throughout the article, alternatively, you can use a load balancer to route traffic. This is a good approach if you want to have more control over the traffic routing. With a load balancer, you can do the switchover of the traffic to the green instance at any time and also revert to the blue instance if the green instance is not performing well quickly by making a single change to the load balancer configuration. Downside of Blue-Green Deployments Some of the downsides of a blue-green deployment strategy are: The DNS change might take a while to propagate The traffic might be routed to the blue instance for a while before the green instance starts handling the traffic If you have Materialize Sinks you would need to plan how to handle the data that is being sent to those sinks while the two instances are running During the deployment, you would have to have two instances running during the same time which could add some overhead In case that you have a lot of data with a lot of changes, you might have to wait for the new Materialize instance to ingest the data which could take a while if there is a lot of backpressure. Conclusion This is just a brief overview of the steps that you need to take to deploy Materialize in a blue-green deployment strategy. In this article, we were using the Materialize Cloud to deploy Materialize but this approach will work with any other Materialize deployment strategy. If you are not part of the Materialize Slack community, please feel free to join [here]]( ). https://materialize.com/s/chat Useful links: Materialize Documentation Materialize Demos Materialize Cloud Materialize Github

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An In-Depth Guide to Blue-Green Deployments with Materialize

So, you want to float some balloons on a webpage, huh? 🤔 🎈 Maybe, it is a birthday celebration or some other occasion. Maybe, you want to celebrate on your own website or for your users. Now, what about if you can also have a feature to pop them with burst audio 🎈💥. It would be so cool, wouldn’t it? 😂 I get it. A similar chain of thoughts came to my mind on my previous birthday. And most probably, you have already seen something similar, if you’ve used Twitter on your birthday. That’s where I got my motivation too. TL;DR npm i react-floating-balloons Creates custom floating balloons in ReactJS/NextJS Custom count, msg, looping, hangOnTop, multiple colors, etc. Supports balloon pop animation and sound Uses React Portal and Styled-Components Thanks to this elaborate , I got off to a quick start. But it was implemented in vanilla HTML/CSS/JS. And it didn’t have a lot of customization options. On one side I thought of making a ReactJS npm library while on the other side, my mind wandered. The mind wanders when it wanders, right? 😂 I kept thinking about writing custom messages on the balloon and popping them. post After stitching some code and tailoring some features, I made a working example in ReactJS. The library used for pop animation is . I was not quite happy with the code. There were two problems: here Some core parts of the balloon element were still using vanilla HTML/JS/CSS. I had a very low level of control over the customization of balloons. I also noticed a bug that the pop sound of balloons was restricted to only once in a certain time interval, even if you might have popped more balloons during the interval. I quickly realized that any issue of CSS conflicts in UI will disappear if I used react portal here. While I was working to fix the above problems, I hit a major snag in popping the balloons in mobile browsers(touch-supported devices). Okay, so I thought it would be cool to implement a balloon pop feature on the double click event. While it worked on my laptop, but when I tested the new version on mobile, nothing happened. I dug deeper into the reason and found out that all touch-supported devices don’t seem to support/work well with native desktop-browser-like double click events. The solution: allow such devices to pop the balloons with a single click. And to recognize such devices, the easiest working solution was: const supportsTouch = “ontouchstart” in window || navigator.msMaxTouchPoints; I was releasing multiple patches and minor version updates/fixes to test and then I hit another major snag in SSR. It didn’t seem to work with NextJS. Two issues: issue, which can be easily solved by dynamic imports with flag and displaying the balloon component only after CSR. ReferenceError: self is not defined { ssr: false } . NextJS doesn’t seem to have support for this yet. The only possible working solution was to use module with next.config.js which can be a lot of work for some devs. [Global CSS cannot be imported from within node_modules](https://github.com/vercel/next.js/issues/19936) next-global-css I realized in a few hours that the best way to get rid of most of the above and previous problems is to use styled-components. I started to re-write all the Balloon elements and animation from scratch. Once I was done implementing all the basic features of the balloon and popping, I started adding some new features as well. Now I had full control over all the balloon elements and their customization. It became all easy to add extra features. I was able to add 2 additional features like , in only a few minutes each. loop hangOnTop And, the “no concurrent balloon popping audio” issue was fixed too. 😊 The complete code size apart from dependencies is only at the time of writing this article. ~3KB So, here is the library 🎈: npm i react-floating-balloons And, here is a basic example: React Floating Balloons — CodeSandBo Basic Example Please feel free to raise any issues here Learnings: Iterate over very quickly in the beginning. Making examples for the users while writing such libraries, provides more clarity to oneself. Test on various kinds of devices, as it helps in finding bugs. Make sure to have high levels of control over core elements and components for quick customization and lesser bugs. This library is still in its very early stages and I have a lot of Todos like props validation, more customization options, examples, and test cases. All feedbacks and GitHub ⭐️’s are appreciated. Thanks for reading. Happy Balloons Popping!! 🎈💥 Also published . here

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How to Make the Floating Balloons 🎈Effect in ReactJS

The negative impact of technical debt on businesses is massive. Here are the best ways to prevent and manage technical debt that both startups and enterprise companies can implement today. The expression technical debt gets thrown around a lot and every Engineer knows that it slows down the development process. In this article, I want to give practical advice on how your engineering team can manage and solve technical debt without spending a lifetime on it. Let's Define Technical Debt... Often, refers to a rushed development process or a lack of shared knowledge among team members. However, don't forget that in many cases technical debt is inevitable and is part of a normal software development process. technical debt For instance, Engineers might not implement the correct design patterns in your infrastructure because you want to save time to ship new features. Other examples include not writing documentation to share knowledge or having a lower code test coverage. In short, the quality of the code suffers in various ways, such as not sharing knowledge or rushing certain aspects of the development lifecycle. Here’s a quick overview of the most impactful types of technical debt you want to avoid: 1. Knowledge-based tech debt To understand knowledge-based tech debt, let’s look at an example. Imagine two software engineers have worked on a new feature. They own all knowledge about this specific feature. However, other software engineers in your team don't have this knowledge. When they have to work on this feature or have to do an implementation that makes use of this feature, they won't have the knowledge required to correctly implement a new feature. Therefore, it's essential that you actively share knowledge about features and important codebase changes. It includes creating documentation, examples, tests, and sharing knowledge during retrospective meetings. Knowledge sharing is one of the easiest methods to solve the technical debt. 2. Design debt Design debt often occurs in highly competitive markets or startups where speed to market often is the highest priority. When delivering new features quickly, you're not thinking about the structure of features or the architecture of your codebase. It often gets neglected, making it increasingly harder to add new features. And now you have to fix it as a team. Therefore, design debt is closely linked to structuring features and adhering to design patterns. 3. Code debt Code debt is about writing bad code and not fixing this in time. For instance, a developer wants to quickly merge code without writing sufficient tests or adhering to code standards. Many organizations use automation tools such as pre-commit hooks with code linting to verify code quality. When you don’t implement such code checks, bad code can quickly decline the overall quality of your codebase. 3 best ways to fight and prevent technical debt Technical debt grows every day and the best time to implement a process for solving it is now. Here are a few proven methods. 1. Code and Architecture Refactoring One of the most straightforward solutions to prevent and/or resolve code and design debt is organising a refactoring week every X sprints. A refactoring week allows your team to resolve open bugs, evaluate the current architecture, and prepare the architecture for the upcoming product features. For instance, set some time aside to think about how new features might affect the architecture of your codebase. A refactoring week gives the needed breathing room for developers to evaluate and reflect on the code before implementing a new set of features. It’s great for solving big pieces of debt. Benefit: The development process slows down while you are doing refactoring and your team is not solving debt continuously. Drawback: 2. Start Regular Technical Debt Discussions Retrospective meetings are the gold standard for engineers to share knowledge. It’s even possible to involve more stakeholders in these meetings, like product owners, to create a shared understanding of the codebase and problems engineers face. A retrospective meeting addresses what went well and what didn’t. It’s an open stage to share feedback without placing blame. It would be best if you focused on improvement. You can use retrospective meetings to share updates about the code. Engineers can show what they have accomplished. Mostly, a couple of engineers get the chance to present their codebase changes and explain how it affects the codebase or how they have achieved this. Therefore, a retrospective meeting is a great tool to share knowledge after each coding sprint. Benefit: Stakeholders and managers need to be on board with the vision and give engineers time to organise these meetings. Drawback: 3. Start tracking technical debt in your editor The best thing you can do for your codebase health is to make it as easy as possible for engineers to solve technical problems. Tracking technical debt in the editor allows engineers to: Get full visibility on technical debt See context for each codebase issue Reduce context switching Solve technical debt continuously You can use various but the quickest and easiest way to get started is to use free Stepsize extensions for or that integrate with Jira, Linear, Asana and other project management tools. tools to track your technical debt VSCode JetBrains Developers already spend most of their time in the editor so it's the best place to track and report technical issues. Implementing a process for managing technical debt will positively influence engineering team morale and customer satisfaction. Benefit: Starting a new habit takes time and effort from team members and it's impossible to do without a tech debt hero. Drawback: How to detect a growing technical debt? You want to manage and track different types of technical debt actively. It’s important not to let your tech debt grow. Large technical debt will slow you down significantly and becomes harder to solve. In other words, large tech debt is costly and hurts your speed to market. It’s essential to track metrics related to different types of tech debt. Here’s a list of metrics you can track: Overall code coverage percentage and code coverage per feature: A declining percentage is a red flag for a growing tech debt Number of failed CI or CD builds: If the number of failed CI/CD builds increases, it’s a strong indicator for instability in your codebase. This can be related to both design and code debt. Number of new bugs per week or month: If your team finds more and more bugs on a weekly or monthly basis, it indicates a quality decline of your codebase. Therefore it’s a great metric to detect a growing tech debt. Feature throughput: How many days does it take to push a new feature to the branch. It’s a supporting metric that can indicate growing tech debt. Not each feature has the same size, but if you see a decline over multiple weeks, it’s time to intervene. main Issues with non-functional requirements: Did you think about measuring non-functional requirements when defining metrics to detect tech debt? Measuring metrics such as application performance, UX (increasingly difficult to use), or loss of compatibility are solid indicators for increased technical debt. If you want to get started with this metric, try out performance monitoring for critical paths within your application. How do companies at different stages deal with tech debt differently? Startups often endure a lot of pressure to ship their product quickly. They can easily solve technical debt by implementing automated tools that verify code quality. Besides that, actively sharing knowledge among their often smaller team is one of the most powerful strategies to avoid tech debt. However, it's not that easy for large enterprises to keep technical debt under control. According to the , 66% of engineers believe the team would ship up to 100% faster if they had a process to manage technical debt. Another 15% believe they would even be 200% more productive. State of Technical Debt 2021 Report Unfortunately, large enterprises need a better solution than organising knowledge-sharing meetings like retrospective meetings. Yet, it’s part of the solution. To keep technical debt under control, large enterprises need to use project management tools to understand which features are in development and who’s working on specific areas of the codebase. Project management tools are great to avoid conflicts. Besides that, they should use automated code quality tools to ensure overall codebase health. Code quality tools can often be integrated within a pipeline. Continuous Integration Conclusion Leaving technical debt unaddressed can result in several issues for your organisation, such as higher total cost of ownership, slower time to market, reduced agility because of a poorly designed architecture, and poor security. Therefore, make sure to measure a few metrics related to technical debt. You can quickly get started by measuring the number of new bugs and how many get resolved and using Stepsize or extensions to track and see this data. VSCode JetBrains In conclusion, make sure to have a process that makes it easy to share knowledge with team members and resolve technical debt continuously. Also published by Micheal Murders on the Stepsize Blog

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Kill Technical Debt Before it Kills Your Project

The founding, growth, and evolution of businesses are rarely linear and predictable, despite business owners' best intentions. The most successful businesses are the ones that managed to adapt to adverse situations and changing circumstances. Reintech has dealt with its fair share of mistakes and failures but has made it through to the other side stronger than ever. This article provides an inside look into the history of , as shared by founder Sasha Bondar. Reintech Starting Out: Software Services In the beginning, we were a simple service business, providing software programming services to clients. There were occasional issues, of course, but they were all small-scale and easily solvable. We had no difficulties with clients, as most seemed to find us through recommendations. I was heavily engaged in the sales end of the business, and I found success there because I am both knowledgeable about technology and skilled in communication. I was the model "technical leader" to many of our clients; they believed what I told them because I understood the technical side of the business. In several situations, I would manage the first project for a new client myself, and this helped bolster my technical expertise as it related to their needs. Our clients were small and grew gradually, so we never felt concerned about a lack of clients or opportunities for work. The main problem we faced was growing our workforce. We initially tried offering courses to help bridge the experience gap between what fresh graduate developers knew and what they needed to know to be successful in the industry. These courses worked well, and this was in part due to the fact that young professionals generally underestimate their own capabilities. They frequently think that the work will be much harder than anything they've ever done before, but in terms of the technical demands (namely writing code), 80% of graduates could already do just about everything. All they lacked was experience, and they often needed direction in the form of management, but we had a strong management team to help them so everything worked out in that sense. Training took a long time (2-3 months) and a lot of effort. We also realized that many of our developers that we trained would move on to other opportunities within a year or two. Of course, we don't begrudge them this – it was, for many of them, their first job, and for most people their first job is not the only job they'll ever have. Fortunately, we had a number of developers that stayed with us longer, and for those we provided even more opportunities for growth. All the while, we had a desire to make our own products. We made , a platform for students seeking their first job, and it is still used today. the Studlava project It was during a big client meeting in New York City when I had the uncomfortable realization that I couldn't quite articulate what our business was. We were a small company at that point, with around 20 employees. We had several clients whom we provided software services for. Some projects we managed on our own, in-house, and for others we staffed their company with our developers. In some projects I still participated as a tech lead. This particular client in New York asked me if I could build them a big dev team in two months' time, and I had to tell him no. We also couldn't continue working on projects with fixed budgets, as we didn't have the sufficient competencies and experience to lead full-cycle product development projects, which included tasks like complex planning and risk management. As difficult as the refusal was, it served as an important turning point in our business and made us consider some important questions: what are we doing, what direction do we want to pursue, and can we scale it? The Birth of Reintech We looked hard at the market and didn't like what we saw – the big players were getting bigger and smaller ones weren't growing. Continued growth and success looked unlikely on our current path. When my business partner and I got together to think about the general direction we wanted for the business, we realized that we had three big advantages: we were profitable, we weren't particularly dependent on any one client, and we were committed to ourselves – the world was our oyster! It made sense to us that we should maximize our efforts in the area where we had the most success and could provide the most value. After a few strategic sessions, Reintech was born. The change was gradual, as we all had to understand and connect with the new idea before it became our reality. At first Reintech was just a few ideas about open finances, corporate culture, and the like. Much of the cultural discussion we had was on matters I've written on in the past; as a developer, I tried to create a , which is the same thing I still write about today when I write about . strong engineering culture independent developers Early on, we encountered a supply and demand problem we had never faced before. We thought initially that we needed more developers to be able to serve the clients that were sure to come. This did not prove to be true; when a lot of developers joined our platform, we didn't have enough customers and work to go around. This led me to another important realization – we didn't have a systematic method of acquiring new customers and promoting our business. If I were asked where our customers came from, I wouldn't have been able to answer. The Path to Product Transforming an existing company is, in many ways, harder than starting a new one from the ground up. It's the process of realizing a vision while reconciling it with what's currently in place. Some parts of the vision never make it to fruition, and other parts that I thought would be valuable would prove otherwise. We determined that our most important objective was to clearly identify the value we bring as an organization to our clients. From the outside looking in, it seems almost absurd that answering the question "what are we doing" took many days. It was difficult to look at a business that is already operating and making a profit to put into words exactly what value we were providing, not just what service we were providing. Ultimately, we arrived at our current model – we created a recruiting platform product, built on transparency for both developers and clients, to continue supporting a strong engineering culture in the form of autonomous and mature developers. Almost immediately, we began to streamline, throwing away everything superfluous, including our office. This was a difficult decision for us, as we were worried that everything would fall apart without an office. There was also an element of discomfort in opening our finances with existing clients, but in most cases it just resulted in a salary increase for the developers. The clients were informed about our new pricing model, which was that they were paying for just two things, the developer's salary and a commission for Reintech. Simple and honest. Our income declined initially under the new model. We had about 10 developers at this time, so Reintech received a commission of about $450 each. This six-month period was very difficult, so I worked part-time at Toptal. Despite this difficulty, good luck was on the horizon – one of our clients began to grow quickly, and we were able to begin self-financing. Expectations and Reality Our goal was twofold: To offer developers among the highest rates on the market while working fully remotely (mind you, this was before remote work became much more common in the COVID-19 era). The rates we were able to offer our clients were competitive with market rates, but the salaries we were offering developers were above the third quartile. When the high salaries were $3,500 - $4,000, we were paying $4,500 - $5,000. Also, we have a with benefits. calculator to convert the hourly rate to monthly salary When we took part in , we realized that developers didn't quite understand our model, thinking there had to be a "catch" of some sort. It was quite a drastic change of model for the market, and when we shared our rates, the developers didn't ask any questions! the PivoRak conference Following this, we had to prepare to market our product. We couldn't just write code anymore, we had to make videos and other forms of outreach. One of the very cool side benefits of the new business model was that my stress level dropped to nearly zero. My mind was clear, calm, and everything felt very straightforward. Meetings with both clients and developers no longer felt like a poker match, where bluffing is necessary and expected; now, they just felt like conversations with new friends, and that fueled me with more strength and motivation. Even though it was a tough path to change, this reassured me that we were on the right path for ourselves and our stakeholders. After we ran a single ad on YouTube, interest in working at Reintech seemed to explode overnight! We could have quickly welcomed a hundred outstanding developers onto our platform, but we wouldn't have had work for them all. The applicants were not only locals from Lviv, but from all over Ukraine. There were so many applications; our recruiters had 6-8 interviews per day for about a year. It worked well, and we had only spent a minuscule amount on advertising. Back then, I was shooting videos for promotion, and now I'm writing articles. The transformation of the business has changed my job completely, I went from programming to product development. Product development, as it relates to my work at Reintech, consists of content creation, education, and communication with customers. When I look back to the tasks we set out to accomplish at the beginning of the transformation, I am very pleased with our progress. Although COVID-19 impacted our overall numbers, I see enocouraging trends and positive signs. Our transformation was successful because of our adaptability. Especially given how tumultuous the past couple of years have been, my first advice to new company founders is that staying flexible is the key to staying in business! We are constantly faced with surprises, whether that be with customers, the pandemic, changes in the market, or anything else. All of this has forced us to constantly rethink, reinvent, and clarify our approaches in all areas: communication, technology, our services, and more. An atmosphere of honesty, transparency, and openness provide us with an inexhaustible source of energy. Our core idea of creating a platform for companies conducting a quick search for autonomous and mature developers remains unchanged, and the process of bringing it to life has been both a huge challenge and an incredible pleasure. First Published here

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Transitioning From a Client Service Company to a Product Company: The Reintech Story

Introduction Bokbasen, an Oslo, Norway-based Information service, offers many benefits to all parts of Norway’s publishing community. The company develops a catalog with information about all Norwegian publishers. By utilizing this single centralized register, the industry can easily implement this data and information in online stores, bookshops, libraries, and academic institutions, instead of wasting time gathering it. When e-books entered the market, Bokbasen quickly adapted to this new culture by developing the infrastructure to support e-books and a streaming service for audiobooks. In 2017 Bokbasen started using Amazon Web Services – AWS for storing and transcoding audio files, and by 2018 Bokbasen shifted its public website to AWS. In 2019, Bokbasen shifted its focus towards digitizing and distributing books and learning materials. For this purpose, it utilized two services. Digitalelev, a product for management and procurement of digital learning materials in schools, and Allvit, a platform for distributing textbooks and resources for higher education. The Challenge A primary challenge was to distribute these new products with an IT staff involving only five employees. The solution was to use a combination of scalable managed services from AWS, with subject matter professionals from Basefarm, a European managed service provider and AWS partner. To solve this issue, Bokbasen chose to use a container-based microservice framework to develop new services to be simple and more agile to extend with new functionality while also enabling the component services to scale independently. Basefarm worked with Then appeared a need for DevOps as Bokbasen has to deploy and manage DevOps Pipelines, which seamlessly streamlined releasing updates and new functionality. Role of DevOps DevOps brings a cultural transition by allowing the team that authors code to collaborate with the team that operates it, turning them into a unified team.  Instead of each software release possessing many potentially troublesome changes that are all released simultaneously, teams are encouraged to release small changes more frequently, thus diluting the impact of change and making it easier for the teams to test and release. Bokbasen has to choose a deployment strategy that possesses: Develop a single framework for all environments Release early and often Use a rolling deployment to replace or upgrade the existing model gradually. Always fix faults by rolling forward to an upcoming release Bokbasen needed to enable their own DevOps team to deploy consistently to all environments, including production. Solution Infrastructure as Code Utilizing Infrastructure as Code technology (IaC), a client can streamline infrastructure, application services, and CI/CD pipelines across environments. HashiCorp Terraform is used to deploy Bokbasen’s infrastructure. Self-service terraform templates are being used to allow instant and easy creation of new pipelines. Many top IaC modules by the Hashicorp Terraform registry and from Basefarm have simplified the transition process. The use of IaC provides a consistent and repeatable method for the deployment and management of infrastructure across platforms. Spring Cloud Config and AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store store configuration and confidential information such as security credentials encrypted and audited. Deployment Pipelines Basefarm Professional Services, in collaboration with Bokbasen, are intended to develop pipelines, build application artifacts and deploy microservices across Bokbasens Test, Stage, and Production accounts, integrating with the following AWS utilities: LambdaFargateBatchAPI-GatewayStatic websites on S3 (utilizing CloudFront CDN) When an individual of the DevOps team commits to a selected branch, the pipeline is triggered, developing artifacts, such as the service segment’s docker images and sending those images to the container registry.  The channel then deploys the container to the Test environment. A smoke test using Runscope is called. The DevOps team manually verifies the outcomes of the test before allowing the release to be deployed to the stage, where the same smoke test and additional verification tests are performed before allowing final deployment in Production. DevOps have read-only access to stage and production environments. The pipelines are authorized for cross-account deployments assuming Identity and Access Management – IAM roles. Database schemas are also altered as part of the deployment pipelines via Flyway. Similar pipelines are designed for CI/CD of Fargate hosted containers, batch jobs, lambda functions, and S3 hosted websites. First Published here

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A Real Life Example of CI/CD Pipelines in Action

If you are switching from web2 to web3 or if you want to learn web3 then you may have doubts like how web3 is different from web2? Are there any similarities? Can I directly jump into web3 without knowing web2 stuff?. So, in this blog, get answers to your questions by learning the architectures of both. This blog is a high-level overview of web3 application architecture. Let's Get Started How Does Web2.0 Application Work? Terminology Let's recall web2.0 things. Three main things. - Frontend is what the user sees and interacts with your application. Frontend - Backend is where we do all the business logic(secrets 👀). Backend - Where we store all the data. Database When we build an application combining these. This is how we visualize: How this works in simple terms with an example - You interact with the application in the browser. For example, you click a login button, then the browser will talk to the server, then that server will talk to the database. The server will query data(your existing creds), then the server will compare your input with queried data and returns the appropriate response(whether login failed or successful). That's it! Simple stuff. Here we have control over our user's data. How does Web3.0 application work? In web3, the architecture is completely different. Here things are a little bit complicated. There will be no centralized database and server. Terminology Two main things. - Same explanation as in web2. Frontend - A distributed network to store data. Here data is immutable - means once written it can't be changed. Blockchain Here we don't have a centralized server, so how can we query data and do all the business logic? For this, we write something called . Smart contracts are pieces of code we write to talk to the Ethereum blockchain. Between there is which executes our code. smart contracts Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) How Does the Frontend Talk to Blockchain? In web2, the client makes a request to the server and the server responds and gives back a response. Here in web3, there is something called nodes. So in order to talk to our smart contracts, we need to talk to these nodes. For that, we can use node providers like , etc... or set up your own node. Alchemy Infura How Do we add/write Data in Web3? We have to the transactions with a . This is a big topic in blockchain, so let's don't go too far(I will cover it in upcoming blogs). In simple terms, if you want to add data to blockchain nodes need a signed transaction. We can use to sign transactions. sign private key Metamask Finally, Conclusion There are lots of buzzwords and new terms in web3, but this is the basic overview of what a web3 application architecture looks like. Now to answer some questions -
There is nothing new in the front end except some dom manipulation. Are there any similarities? -
As you can clearly see, both architectures are completely different. So all you need to know from web2 is how the web works and how the internet works 😅. Can I directly jump into web3 without knowing web2 stuff? This article was first published here

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A High Level Introduction to Web2.0 and Web3.0

Deployment is an important step in the software development life cycle. Deployments make the code written by the developers available as a usable application/executable to the world. Hence, it is one of the foremost practices that any software engineering team should invest in. In this post, I would like to discuss a couple of strategies on how teams can manage their deployments and which one is better. This post is CI/CD(a lot of content is available on this) but one step further down the topic. not about The two strategies which I would like to discuss are Code Promotion Artifact Promotion Code Promotion : This strategy is about maintaining a branch per environment and triggering deployments when a checkin is triggered against the branch. Code Promotion Workflow The workflow in code promotion strategy will be the development team creating features or bug fixes under a feature/bugfix branch Checkin into Dev branch Build is trigged and deployed onto Dev Environment via CI/CD Once the team pushes a good amount of features and bug fixes to the dev environment and if everything is fine on the dev environment, the dev branch is then merged to the stage branch. Build is triggered and deployed onto the stage environment via CI/CD QA team does the verification either via manual tests or automated tests and provides a sign-off for production deployment Stage branch is merged with the prod branch Build is triggered based on code in the prod branch and deployed onto the production environment. Artifact promotion : This strategy can also have a different branch per each lower non production environments. In this strategy, the code that is well tested on one of the last lower non-production environment is promoted to production environment rather than again rebuilding the code and generating a new artifact. The output after building the code which is an executable/binary/build is called Artifact. Artifact Promotion Workflow The workflow in artifact promotion strategy will be the development team creating features or bug fixes under a feature/bugfix branch Checkin into Dev branch Build is trigged and deployed onto Dev Environment via CI/CD Once the team pushes a good amount of features and bug fixes to Dev and if everything is fine on dev, the dev branch is then merged to the master branch Build is triggered and deployed into environment via CI/CD Stage QA team does the verification either via manual tests or automated tests and provides a sign-off for production deployment. So the artifact that is well tested in the Stage environment is now promoted or deployed to the production environment Following the principle, the best practice is to have lower environments (eg: stage) & production environments very similar, and . 12- factor app the only thing that can vary between both lower environment and production environment should be the config Config contains the information about resource handles to the databases, credentials to external services, hostnames. Config should always be maintained outside the code and never as constants inside code. When deployments are modeled as and the same artifact is used in all environments including the production environment, then any issues happening in the production environment and not reproducible in the lower environment will be mostly config-related issues that are relatively easy to debug and fix. Config+Artifact This model is attained via . Hence, Artifact Promotion strategy ensures that a well-tested Artifact is deployed on Production and any issues that may arise in Production which are not in lower environments can be mostly due to production config which is relatively easy to fix in a short time: Artifact Promotion Hence I would like to conclude A good practice of deployment is to promote a well tested artifact and not the code. Happy Deployment!!

HackerNoon Tech Stories Archive March 15th, 2022

@katzestherEsther Katz

@MarkHelfmanMark Helfman

@growthpunkTib

@coinboostsCoinBoosts | NFT & Crypto Marketing Agency

@daglar-cizmeciDaglar Cizmeci

@cryptobadgerCrypto Badger

@codisioCodisio

@mszelesMiki Szeles

@tradingbostonBostonTrading.co

@tabocaMarcio S Galli

@gen1us2kAndrew Minkin

@ursushoribilisMiguel Rodriguez

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@kliukovkinGeorgii Kliukovkin

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@bobbyilievBobby Iliev

@sanishkrSanish kumar

@alexomeyerAlex Omeyer

@kiosanSasha Bondar

@abdulghaaniAbdul Ghani

@itsrakeshRakesh Potnuru

@vinaykanamarlapudiVinay Kanamarlapudi

@katzesther
Esther Katz

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Mark Helfman

@growthpunk
Tib

@coinboosts
CoinBoosts | NFT & Crypto Marketing Agency

@daglar-cizmeci
Daglar Cizmeci

@cryptobadger
Crypto Badger

@codisio
Codisio

@mszeles
Miki Szeles

@tradingboston
BostonTrading.co

@taboca
Marcio S Galli

@gen1us2k
Andrew Minkin

@ursushoribilis
Miguel Rodriguez

@Cryptonite
Cryptonite

@kliukovkin
Georgii Kliukovkin

@tvc
TVC

@bobbyiliev
Bobby Iliev

@sanishkr
Sanish kumar

@alexomeyer
Alex Omeyer

@kiosan
Sasha Bondar

@abdulghaani
Abdul Ghani

@itsrakesh
Rakesh Potnuru

@vinaykanamarlapudi
Vinay Kanamarlapudi