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Divvy Homes

Engineering Success: Strategic Growth in Tech Startups

Hanna Hurr, Tyler Reinhard, and Ripley Soprano are the co-owners of Mask Magazine. Photos: Ada Banks . When the founders of first announced they would publish a style and culture magazine “in an age of unrest” in February 2014, they were starting from scratch. Thirty-eight months later, the independent media project reaches 750,000 people globally, has published nearly 200 emerging writers, and recently founded a new podcast network, . With zero revenue from advertisements, a group of friends in Brooklyn are making waves in an industry struggling to find a sustainable home on the internet. Mask Magazine mask.fm How It All Began Hanna Hurr and Tyler Reinhard say they started Mask Magazine because they wanted to make sure there was a place for the communities that would inspire a resurgence of radical politics in popular culture. “When we launched, Orange is The New Black was one of the ‘wokest’ things in mainstream culture — so we asked a friend who had recently been imprisoned for resisting a grand jury to write a review,” Reinhard said of the first long form piece the magazine commissioned. “If you read between the lines, that strategy is still with us. Ultimately, it’s lifestyle content for people who want to completely rethink society.” It’s not the product story advertisers were looking for, but for a new generation of readers Mask Magazine offered something worth paying to support. “Breaking into the turbulent online publishing industry was tough,” Reinhard continues, “especially from our backgrounds.” Reinhard’s former projects include , the encrypted messaging app, and , the anarchist publishing collective. He says he moved to Brooklyn with Hurr explicitly to start the magazine. Hurr had led the Swedish-speaking School Student Union of Finland and went on to study Critical Theory in Minnesota, where she and Reinhard met in September, 2012. “I was an organizer at an autonomous community center during my studies in Minnesota and met Tyler when we both worked a benefit for CeCe McDonald,” says Hurr. By late 2013, the two founders had rented a small office in Brooklyn and were building the first version of . Signal CrimethInc. maskmagazine.com How It Works Mask Magazine is behind a paywall, but it’s not the typical model. Unlike the metered paywalls used by publications like , everything Mask publishes is free to read for the first three days. “We don’t publicize it, but if you checked our site often, you could probably read everything for free if you timed it right. But we have to balance starting conversations with making sure it’s possible to sustain them. Our readership pays monthly for access to the full back catalog,” says Hurr. The Mask Magazine subscription is . Pay $3, $5, or $10 a month for the same access. “Sliding scale works. When given the choice to support us with more money, lots of people do. Our readers want to see this experiment succeed and we owe what we have to their support,” Hurr added. The New York Times available at a sliding-scale “It’s an important part of the idea,” Reinhard says. “If we were to put ads in our articles, we would probably make more money. But that would encourage us to publish a different kind of story. From the outset, we’ve been concerned about the economic model behind publishing content.” In September 2015, Reinhard posted on Medium, where he outlined the larger philosophy behind their experiment: “Ragebait pays. It drives traffic. It also insulates ideas from discussion, and flattens our lives into hashtags and campaigns. Perfectly arranged for data analysis, but terrible for capturing how we actually feel and experience the world. In reality, our lives are complex and difficult. So many of us are in fact marginalized by the culture we’re producing.” The Advertisement Industrial Complex Mask founders at a worker-owned co-op called Norbert’s Pizza, a local favorite. The owners of Mask Magazine credit the DIY ethic, not technical skills, with their success. If you ask Ripley Soprano about what it takes to run a modern publishing company, they will tell you culture has always come from the bottom. “Most people are surprised when I say we’re only a half-dozen people. They think we’re a big operation,” says Soprano, who runs social growth and partnerships, and co-owns the magazine. “The cultural moments that reframe important conversations have always come from the so-called margins of society. It only takes a small team to amplify it. If you do that without making every voice fit in a certain box, you’re doing something the publishing industry usually won’t. People just assume it takes a lot of people to do that.” Tracking Mask down is not easy. “We could be anywhere…” Soprano whispers jokingly. In truth, the media company operates out of a living room in a collective apartment in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. “Fifteen years ago, we might have been a punk band.” Reinhard added. “We did all of this ourselves. Before we launched, I got a few books about writing code and built our tech. Hanna [Hurr] isn’t a native English speaker, and taught herself how to edit. She built the whole editorial pipeline on Trello. And when Ripley came on, they put the thing on a loudspeaker. Honestly, it’s got the same ethos of a punk band — it’s chaos to watch live, but looking back it seems like something coherent and new. This might look like a sound booth from inside,” Reinhard said of their new podcast studio, “but at the end of the day, it’s just a bedroom in our apartment.” “We look for writers with that same DIY spirit,” Hurr says. “For many of the writers, this is their first time getting edited and published. We’re always looking for the voices missing from a conversation, or the people who insist on speaking up even without formal training.” Hurr’s approach to editorial content focuses on the stories subscribers want to read, rather than what will get the most clicks. “We try to offer writers something uncommon: the freedom to publish deeper essays on themes and issues that other magazines edit out. The awkward, marginal, otherwise unspeakable stuff.” With this strategy, Hurr says, Mask Magazine can publish aspiring writers who couldn’t tell their stories elsewhere. But the model also creates a platform for professional writers. “Even when most professionals could get paid way more to write elsewhere, a lot of freelance writers choose to work with Mask because they appreciate the opportunity to participate in the experiment,” said Hurr. And the same goes for the people featured in Mask’s long-form interviews. “The people Mask features will probably end up in , , or with their own show at MoMa,” says Soprano, “like . . of FLuCT … these were conversations with people who I’m sure will inherit the creative industry they’re breaking into now. We want to help that happen.” To date, Mask Magazine has published 100 longform interviews with creative and emerging thinkers. “The entire operation relies on its own question: to what extent is it possible to materially support ourselves through cultural production?” Soprano added. Vogue The New York Times Juliana Huxtable Sarah Nicole Prickett Monica Mirabile Stills from the studio, from producer Yvette Hall A New Podcast Network In September 2017, Mask Magazine announced they would be creating a new podcast network, . “It’s been a dream of mine to do podcasts,” Reinhard confided. “I started taking notes about how to build a studio many years ago, and this month we’re actually doing it. I can’t believe it.” Like the magazine, mask.fm will be supported directly by its audience. Asked to describe the model, Reinhard explains, “Here’s how it works: we invited some of our favorite thinkers to create podcast shows and agreed to cover all the distribution and production costs. Then, we all . Each month, we divvy up that support money to the show hosts and producers and set a little aside for equipment upgrades.” Mask Magazine hopes mask.fm will reach new audiences and help expand the intersections between listeners. “It’s an extension of our editorial process,” says Hurr, “we have to listen to and value what makes our perspectives different so we can fully appreciate the power we have when our stories intersect.” mask.fm share one Patreon account The shows launching with the network include: BRUJAS World, Health Autonomy at the End of the Empire, drumBOOTY, and T.W.I.G.’s Podcast. With the help of audio and program producer Yvette Hall, the network plans to add shows as the Patreon grows. “We’ll do as many shows as our time and budget allows. We’re just getting started,” Reinhard says. How To Support Mask Mask Magazine is fueled by audience support and affinity. People looking to help the project can get involved right now. The best way to support Mask Magazine is to talk to people personally about why you endorse ad-free, DIY publishing. Send emails, post on social media, and reach out to anyone looking for a different perspective and model on culture. You can also: Subscribe to the Magazine. Mask Magazine is always ad-free and subscription payments are the only source of revenue that pays writers and contributors. Subscription includes access to the full back-issue catalog of more than 900 articles of in-depth essays, long-form interviews, and cultural coverage. You can subscribe to Mask Magazine and join a community of supporters for a sliding scale fee that starts at . $3 per month Sign up for the Newsletter. Once a week, Mask Magazine editors send out an email update about new articles, back issue content relevant to current events, and announcements about the project. A great way to get access to new articles that are for guest readers and subscribers alike is to . sign up for the newsletter Join the Conversation on Social Media. Mask Magazine credits communities that emerge on social media with their success thusfar. “We put a lot of time into connecting with content creators trying to make a name for themselves on social platforms like Twitter and Instagram,” Soprano says. “That’s where we notice the people that we think our audience would love.” Reinhard adds, “we think of social networks like our comment section. When we built Mask, we made a choice not to enable comments on our articles – we don’t really care if a page gets refreshed over and over, like most other publications. But we work really hard at maintaining a healthy social community. Participating in conversations there is probably the easiest way to help Mask reach more people.” Facebook Twitter Instagram Help the Team by Supporting Through Patreon. Currently, all of Mask’s subscription revenue goes to paying their writers, artists, contributing editors, covering rent and other expenses. “We don’t pay ourselves for our work. We could change that. There’s a lot of work to be done, and it’s only feasible for us to do this work if we can compensate ourselves for it,” says Hurr. To help them keep going, you can pledge a monthly donation via . their Patreon page All photos taken by , unless otherwise noted. Ada Banks

The Small Media Company Making Independent Publishing A Threat Again

Penetration Testers’ Guide to Windows 10 Privacy & Security

Guía de los probadores de penetración para la privacidad y seguridad de Windows 10

A collection of poems and random notes: In sum, swell doggerel baby since you've been gone the nights are so damn long i pace and cry til the dawn wondering what went wrong in my future, the one i visit in the dreams of exhausted sleep, people are imprinted with display circuitry on their skins. and the display can be programmed, even modified. so the tattoo becomes changeable, perhaps even animated. powered by body heat, both iridescent and illuminated for the well heeled aficionado. some rent advertising space on their bodies as well as making their own pictorial statements. nudity has become blase and frequently we see individuals who opt out of traditional clothing altogether in favor of an illuminated duraderm composite skin, a biosynthetic that employs clones of the individual's own skin cells in a matrix of endura. so what i would like to do is make a video with an individual whose skin changes as we watch.... ever been a total wastrel? a fairly useless manipulative weasel with polydrug issues? scheme scam and sham for thy daily bread which went primarily to buy dope? so far down that even thy loving mum had to turn away from continuing the bailouts and handouts? where the dope was more important than heat, water, or electric? the phone and internet having already been sacrificed long before? you would say whatever was needed to get that shzzzt? yep. i been there, lived there such as living was for quite awhile actually. so don't be tryin to run your tuff luck story shit on me. lolz. one of the problems i see here in our society is this compunction to compensate for the crazies, to "understand their plight" and hence allow them to inflict their modus upon others without fear of remonstration and correction. bad idea i think. you know i am sorry if you have problems, but i have two words for you if you try to make them my problems. and especially don't expect me to get over it in the name of friendship. friendship doesn't entail abuse by my definition, and remaining silent when someone's troubling behavior affects you adversely is not a good response. ok, back to being bobby... The Sword of Mercy Camus really enjoyed the Work he had been called to do. He was quite skilled at piloting the Sword of Mercy and administering its Cleansing Flame. Occasionally he felt something akin to pity, but nothing like remorse, for he knew that the Infidel must nonetheless be everywhere scourged. So he greeted each new duty cycle with gusto and a renewed sense of his Holiness.
Camus had named his Sword of Mercy the Repudiator in honor of his grandsire who had cleansed thousands of worlds. how you'd call my name...
but then she came.
it'll never be the same,
that's the end of our game. need to find a lovely blonde haired blue eyed cowgirl. hmm. maybe i should create her to suit. the problem with women is simply this. they're all so very pleasing to the eye and the mind that it's well nigh impossible to decide which one to play with. ok, i am gonna make us a beautiful lil drover. itz a request from one me buds. hopefully the lass will please us all when she gets here. lolz. i hack therefore i am... i go muff diving, because itz cheaper than scuba equipment... girl said she missed me so much! but she was gonna reload and try again... "did not spawn, only exacerbated their proliferation by giving them a niche in the cloud ecosystem." holy shit i can't believe i just said that! oh bebe. u SO fine, be mine! SEO two of my sites were on the first page of google results... so a search for "isoblock art" brings up one of my sites on first page of results and a search for "peaceleaf jewelry" brings up one of my sites comes up with my site first in google... yay! but talk about hogging google? yeh, search on "bobshitlist"... my site is much of the first google results page... and it is kind of a dummy site, all it has is a kind of asteroids game. but my IsoBlock was most of the results before folks decided hey that’s a good name! ☺ distortions of reason i have be, come Ex chaos venit ordinem. go the fuk away. i been done all mine, no more for bobby crack whore. i have always been amazed at this: the harder you have to work for your pay the less ya get. the question was what was your all time favorite present? my answer was when i was a child i got a little red joystick, and i've enjoyed it ever since.... Note Bene: i have no ownership rights whatsoever in this material and derive no profit from its presentation. i present it as a fair use of copyright material for educational and review purposes only. if you like this work i encourage you to support the artists and purchase a copy. the butterfly came by
and got me quite high,
but i don't know why.
just that kind of guy. eponymous nom de plume, a nobleman of the 13th century CE got something on my mind,
somebody i'd like to find... your face so fair,
the wind in your hair,
the spray in the air.
i wish i were there... maybe "the salt in the air"?
line four, maybe "was" be more colloquial... ah, facebook puts up a lil panel of friend pix, and i see your lovely face on there for hours and then the want, it is like torment. so desirable... i loves da shrieks when i squeeze yer cheeks and ecstasy peaks oh yes, power shred for da hed before bed, what i sed the serpent beguiled me, and i ate. wanna bite? this here is ART for sure, holy and pure, forever to endure mo random music is fascinating to me. the right tune/song just grabs me in such a visceral way, totally drives the emotions. not just any tune mind ya, but enough of them that i'm just grateful.
i make images ya know, but few images grab me as does the right music. and i wanna make some music of my own. with the aid of the computer i will be able to "hear" what i "see" in my mind even though i don't play any instrument.
want to set some lyrics i have to music. so that's where i am right now.
and who knows? if i do well i might attract some groupies. lmao. need a muse, someone to use, kill these blues there are many here among us who feel that life is the butt of a joke so many just lovely women, all kinds all colors, fine fantasies just a passing fantasy, a wishful thought, nothing more they say the first ain't the best
so letz try it again after we rest oh baby! POP my stack pointer! let's pass parameters too! pretty pretty polly, she my plastic dolly, and i love her by golly from quite a while ago - ok. today i am 65. so GOD! you wanna gimme a present? give me Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men and Women, Bless the Children... amen! oh yes! to be free to flee... left last nite on the late train... with not a word to explain. yeh she left me here in pain, our love melting in the rain. PPP it 0700 here at le Palais and i wondering bout it all. ravioli and coffee for breakfast, tasty. baked off. got tunez and toys. stuff wut needz doin tu du. so now, how does one manifest the will? the anima to do? i mean besides snorting some meth candy? someday may come turn up the tunes, grab yer pencils and/or yer pastels, and HIT it - slam dancing with images... girlfriend came by, hung out for a few. evidence: coffee cups here, washcloths there... stuff like that, know? i does not care from where if you be there i wanted to have healthy beautiful breasts but she wouldn't let me touch her.... sometimes i feel like a twenty-five year old. unfortunately no one that age will have anything to do with me.... too bad. i am thinking revolution. if i was in good health i would disappear into the underground and start attacking things that bug me. all go boom! lmao. Tim McVeigh got the wrong target... terrorism today is so lo-tech. fertilizer in trucks, passenger aircraft as weapons, some moron playing shoot-em-up, even the IEDs used as "turnabout" weapons.
what we need is a quadrotor hover craft that will spray ricin powder down upon the "chosen ones". or that's loaded with Semtex so it has a fifty meter kill radius when it's set off. just fly that remote bad boy in there and puff! if we had let saddam take over the whole region. be a whole lot fewer "rulers" over there now...
and we could just divvy up all the oil with the chinese... The Palace El Palacio le Palais Der Palast Slottet Pals a big or small,
short or tall,
dark or light,
they alright! you wanna hang,
then hang tough -
things could get rough. i was reading about the symptom's of Alzheimer's disease, but i forget what they are... nah, doin alright tonight, not too tight, be just right from da ace of space this da place Conclusion This is the last volume of this series, a compendium of my deranged and fevered babbling during the fevered spells. Hopefully you found some entertainment value in here somewhere. As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are welcomed. God bless us each and all.

Some Swell Doggerel  Vol. 4

This epic interview with myself, the DisCO CAT, was originally published in edited by Ruth Catlow and Penny Rafferty. Go buy three copies now and enjoy this of my purr-tastic diatribes. Radical Friends – Decentralised Autonomous Organisations and the Arts exclusive director’s cut I can haz DAOs: An Interview with the DisCO CAT Or, All Your DAOs Are Belong to Us: The DisCO CAT Speaks DisCOs (Distributed Cooperative Organizations ) are the punky/pinko cousins of DAOs. They’ve totally pwned the latter by coopting the only non-human creatures on this planet that have successfully : CATS! colonized the internet Who made you and why (including ecologies of institutional, political, community actors, elders?) I’m the ! You know about ?  That’s where hoomans help maintain shared values through legal structures, to share the use and management of shared land-space? Well, I do the same: I’m a digital trust that upholds and maintains the agreed-on values of DisCOs. And unlike my boring normie DAO-cousin who’s always banging on about ‘trustlessness’, I help the hoomans trust each other while working together, and to figure out messy questions about value, fairness and power on their own. I’m here to help (and to totally wreck your curtains). DisCO CAT! “CAT” stands for “Community Algorithmic Trust” Community Land Trusts actually The people at they made me. But it was , I swear! DisCO.coop think autopoiesis Whose interests do you serve? As a CAT, I obviously serve my own interests, which include ingratiating myself to hoomans so I can get fluffier, haha. Just kidding: I’m there to help the hoomans in the DisCOs practice of . OK, I hear you asking, “what’s ‘Value Sovereignty'”? So, it starts with the Commons, which is a term that describes a system of shared resources managed by a community according to their own agreed-upon rules. Value Sovereignty is how a commons manages its relationship to the market, making sure that it sticks to its ideals and values and doesn’t get swallowed up by mercantile hijinks! Long story short, a group that operates as a commons that also has some market activity can implement Value Sovereignty to keep itself from being subsumed by the dominant market logics. Unlike my DAO cousins, I can’t, don’t and won’t autoexecute Smart Contracts in lieu of the hoomans (that is SO Skynet, !) I encourage them to discuss and decide on how value is distributed before disbursing it. I’m the cyberfeline projection of the hooman values of any given DisCO. I get away with this by cuddling in federated collectives of no more than 20 people, where building real trust is my pajamas! Value Sovereignty jeez Karen If your ethereal form was to manifest into something what would you look like? Furry, four legged and salty?  I think we’ve already crossed that bridge, to be frank. How do you enable new approaches to decision making, resource distribution and cooperation between disparate people and/or agendas? By keeping it tiny, like me! First, let me explain a word that comes up a lot, like hairballs. “Trustless” is an invented term that is used to describe how allow people to exchange things (currencies, tokens – you know, play money, etc.) without knowing or trusting one another, relying on how the tech creates a non-paper trail of records that can’t be altered by the hoomans. Some of the blockchained hoomans are very proud of the trustless thing, and promote that it takes care of allllll of their problems, ha. blockchain and other similar tech But here’s how I see it: there’s a spectrum from trustless to trustworthy, and I’m interested in developing the latter by forming federated clusters of coops who, get this, ! This DisCO cat knows everything about , the and . The hoomans have to do the work of creating and maintaining meaningful relationships among themselves first, while enabling for more ephemeral interactions at higher levels of complexity. Anyway, as a cat I support prioritizing relationships over routines and structures, in that order. Think litters, colonies and . WE ARE LEGION — well, we’re working on it… build trust among themselves provisioning commons feminist economics world-wide feline conspiracies Who or what do you look after and how do you serve their needs? HOOMANS! Forget that slanderous myth that cats are not affectionate. DisCO CATS love our hoomans! We help them discuss and enact new notions of value beyond the normcore structures replicated in . the blokechain https://vimeo.com/376668856?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=908646&embedable=true How would people describe your personality? Focused, salty, spicy, and surprisingly cooperative. What is your superpower? Kind of a toss-up between social engineering and shedding. Does your family have any rituals that aid you in your productivity? I thrive on cattention while also being mostly invisible, so I revel in the care work my hoomans perform on my behalf. I try to make it worth their while by leaving small “presents” that I find in the garden, even if I know they’d really prefer functional code and some neato data visualizations. I am and inexhaustible, so most of my productivity happens while think I’m sleeping. It’s totes ! In fact, I take the rituals the hoomans have made their secret pacts about, and I make it easy for them to remember and enact them regularly! half cat-half machine you wu-wei How do you view the art world? From under the sofa. No, seriously, the art world is a lot like me, isn’t it?  Power, luxury and elegance on one hand, and scraping for survival while reflecting the worlds’ many visions of itself on the other ( ) rolls more catnip… What message do you have for the artworld? More sashimi at openings, please, and keep it up with the critical self-examination. Personally, I like it when art surprises me, so it’s good when the artworld finds ways to break out of stagnant habits and let others in – including me, the invisible digital glue that holds this family together. Gad, I sound like my mother… What does success look like in your artworld? Right, ok. If my art is cooperation, let’s go there. Coops worldwide have an annual financial turnover similar to the market cap of MAGAF (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook).  DisCOs want to federate coops so they can go from economic alternative to economic ! Is that art? Hells yeah.  Talk about creative (feline) destruction! I want lots of CATs to screech together and make a big stink. Hang that on your wall, Zuck. counterpower How do you reward, incentivise and punish your user family? Here’s a radical concept: rather than auto-executing smart contracts to divvy up rewards or zap you with penalties, I show the hoomans the real score — how much they’ve contributed to three : value streams Productive market work Pro-bono commons-creating work Care and reproductive work I help them to see these values that markets externalize and blockchains often turn a blind eye towards, and then the hoomans discuss it in their ridiculous voices, and make decisions which I then help carry out. As long as they keep stroking me until I’m ready to bite them, I’m here to facilitate the , not to trap hoomans into unbreachable, runaway, algorithmic hellscapes, although this does depend on my treats input. act of commoning What is software built on? Power, corruption and lies. . Anyway, most software is built on the fundamental values of its benefactors, the hoo-hoo-hoomans with the money. Great album Oh, you ? You geek! Ok, I’ll play: I have a three tier architecture. Instead of a virtual sandbox I was birthed in a cat litter with a crumbling old server! Now I have made the jump to lightweight DLT solutions that don’t require a bazillion megawatts, and using our meaowstic vocab: . Data is crunched and I only “mark my territory”, hehe, in public blockchains . I am bringing that most elusive word to the blockchain world: sufficiency! See our forthcoming (yes, pink!) for more. really want to know like Bonfire Value Flows when necessary PinkPaper I’ll let you in on a secret though: Most hoomans ! They care more about what the software does for them, and sexy interfaces. This is why the DisCO Deck (where I live) is being built with state-of-the-art UX, accompanied by a slew of accessible material on why this software matters! You wouldn’t expect less from a style icon like me! don’t care what software things are built on If you could choose one thing to be improved about yourself, what would it be? I wish I was a little taller. Oh, and I want lots of copycats to infiltrate cooperatives all over the world; I want to be the occupy-coops cat. . Tell me who you know Image Credits Lead image: on Andreas M Unsplash Cat memes: Teh Interwebz

All Your DAOs Are Belong to Us – The DisCO CAT Speaks

What are batch transfers, why they matter, and how they can help spur adoption. Most of the media focusing on blockchain and cryptocurrency these days focuses on institutional players entering the space; whether it be through the upcoming launch of Bakkt or companies like Fidelity opening up digital asset management branches. An often overlooked area of development is the B2B landscape. Basically, what tools are being created to help developers and business owners in the space. Bakkt is an incredibly exciting development, don’t get me wrong. However when we’re thinking about blockchain mass adoption, it’s infrastructure that’s needed to help move it along. infrastructure developments quietly help give the people in the industry the tools they need to bring the to where it needs to be for mainstream success. Bakkt helps bring digital assets as to the forefront of mainstream media, a new asset class technology Something you’re probably familiar with if you’ve dabbled in cryptocurrency is airdrops. Airdrops are like mass email blasts for tokens. Essentially, they are when a cryptocurrency distributes token by collecting Ethereum addresses from people interested in your coin — and mass sending them tokens to create a market for said coin. It’s impossible to ensure the success of a token, but not getting it into the hands of as many people as possible is a great way to ensure it doesn’t succeed. Distributing your token is one of the most important aspects of the token generation process. Airdrops are technically referred to as batch transfers. Batch transfers are used to save time and eliminate errors when performing a number of functions. We use batch transfers to facilitate airdrops, distribute bounties from successful bounty campaigns, token giveaways, and even to distribute coins after an ICO or Security Token Offering. Batch transfers are an example of a process that isn’t really sexy. They aren’t anything that will get a huge amount of attention, no one is really clamoring to find out the hottest new dApp to seamlessly transfer large amounts of tokens — for the people in the industry. The ones actually pushing it forward. except Proof of Lack of Sexiness We often discuss how user-friendliness and ease of access are going to be large hurdles for this industry to overcome if we’re going to achieve mass adoption. We’re making strides as an industry towards creating this ease of access, both for consumers and producers. Technology advances when new technologies are created to help people do their jobs easier. Think about what Facebook ads did for marketers, or how much more difficult eCommerce companies would be to manage without the advent of things like Google Analytics. Entrepreneurs are what drive industries forward, and the infrastructure in an industry is the road they drive on. Right now the blockchain industries road needs a little work. We have our share of potholes, and the drive isn’t that smooth, but we’re working on it. Let’s take a dive into , how they can be , some of your , and a few of the unsung heroes of the industry making strides towards easy to use B2B solutions for blockchain companies. what airdrops are used to help your blockchain business options for running an airdrop The Original AirDrop PART 1: THE BASICS What are Batch transfers used for? Due to the design of Ethereum, batching transactions (outside of state channels) is more about saving time and eliminating error than saving fees on gas. A batch transaction tool is helpful for any general transaction that require sending tokens to multiple addresses. It is most often used to conduct: Bounty Campaigns Airdrop Campaigns *Airdrop campaigns are often used to giveaway large sums of a specific token, often towards to goal of marketing the coin and growing its’ community. ICO/STO Distribution Token Giveaways (Marketing Utility) How do I do a Batch Transfer? While it’s hard for the everyday user or crypto trader to know what is happening inside the development of the Ethereum protocol, dApps have been steadily moving in the right direction as far as user experience is concerned. Batch transfers especially have come a long way from the methods one had to use to conduct them in the past. doing it yourself internally or exporting it to a development shop, there are also several dApps that help manage the process and ensure no tokens slip between the cracks. Aside from the two standard options: It’s important to note that you don’t have to be a developer or programmer to do a batch transfer, there are solutions for the not-so-technically inclined. Why is it important? In order for a token to succeed it needs to have a market of buyers and sellers. Without supply and demand, it won’t go anywhere. Batch transfers are pivotal to a tokens success in this sense, if you can’t distribute your token to excited users, there’s no point in developing it in the first place. Which is why I see batch transfers and the advancement of dApps that facilitate them as an important element of the blockchain ecosystem. Another way to think about the importance of batch transfers is in terms of the technology itself. The growing utility of the Ethereum ecosystem requires this functionality. Why are Batch Transfers important? The Ethereum blockchain is, without a doubt, the most active smart contract platform in existence. On Github the popularity can be measured: 18,728 repository results and 268,000 commits to ETHEREUM Several analysts have stated that ETH currently has and have been adding more than 50,000 developers on a monthly basis since May. (CCN) more than 300,000 developers on its network As of today there have been on the Ethereum network. With many of these contracts featuring hundreds of millions, if not billions, of tokens there is ample need for a tool that allows users to easily send ERC20 tokens in batch or mass amounts. 116,000 ERC20 token contracts deployed Ethereum is the foundation for a majority of cryptocurrencies. Most of these tokens are “ERC-20 tokens,” which made possible the majority of the $5.5 billion raised through token sales in 2017 and the $6.5 billion raised in just the first quarter of this year.” (CON) As of February first of this year, Ethereum surpassed 1 million transactions per day. Additionally, ease of use and user experience are important if we ever want to see mass adoption. Even if you are not onboard with the use of airdrops as a marketing campaign or bounty giveaway, the ability to do transfers to multiple addresses should be accessible to the everyday user for their general transaction, whatever it may be. If we want cryptocurrency to be used in similar fashions to cryptocurrency, we need to have simple functionalities to distribute currency. In the future, we might use batch transfers to divvy up prize money after a Poker tournament. They could even be used to distribute employee salaries seamlessly and automatically. Companies spend valuable resources re-inventing the wheel every time one wants to do an Airdrop. Developers build scripts and throwaway programs which are not shared with the community. Making good software that people can use is hard, and is an Art. PART 2: HOW TO DO A BATCH TRANSFER You have generally 3 options when it comes conducting one. Let’s look at examples of the pros and cons of each of the three options. DIY (Manual AirDrop with a Team) The first two options we’ll look at our DIY (Do It Yourself) options (the good ole’ days of manual batch transfers), the last is through the use of dApps. PROS: No programming experience required. CONS: 1000 wallets sent an ERC20 token with 20 people is going to take at minimum 16 hours (2 work days) with the team sending at a rate of 3.125 wallet transactions per hour. Time-Consuming; If you’re sending a batch transfer to 1000 addresses, you can expect- 1000 addresses x 3 minutes per address = 50 hours of manual label. Assuming a minimum wage for these employees you’re looking at $750 in manual labor alone. Cost Prohibitive: Humans are fallible and make errors. This could be due to a fat-fingered keystroke on an address, pure forgetfulness, or fatigue or other human constraints. This leads to extra cost and wasted tokens. Error Rate and Leak: The longer an AirDrop takes the more likely that the Ethereum network congestion and the frequent fluctuations in “gas prices” can inhibit this process. Market Fluctuation: PIY (program it yourself) If you’re a developer, it might be feasible to simply run the transfer yourself. PROS: If money is the only factor, if you think about the time wasted it’s not much cheaper. Cheaper; allows you to develop specific functionalities. Specificity; CONS: puts responsibility on the users and those receiving (potentially lower security), may upset receiving users if too slow or inaccurate. Risky; not everyone is a talented programmer who understands the tech and the tokens used. Low Accessibility; Programming a functional tool is a slow process and usually needs a debugging phase to implement properly. It may not be an effective use of core developers time, which could be used to move the main platform or product forward faster. Time-consuming; devs are not cheap… Expensive; Pre-built tools and dApps dApps are a great way to mitigate some drawbacks of the other options as they do not require experience in coding and only charge a fee based on usage. dApps vary in the features offered, cost, and ease of use but remove You don’t need coding or contract building skills to perform transfers to multiple Ethereum addresses. the need of coding or contract building skills to perform an airdrop. In addition to saving time and cost on development, batch transfer dApps also help decrease network congestion by aggregating 100 transfer into 1 transaction. How they work: Access the dApp. Upload address list in correct format dApp generate and batches up to 100 transfers in one transaction Some dApps require you to sign after each, others like can automatically sign and automate any number of transactions (100 addresses each) until the task is completed. Ethtree PROS: Accessible: no coding required, typically just requires the formatting of addresses. Low Cost: No development cost; not paying for information, other companies operating expenses. Save time programming. Accessible anytime, dApps never close or sleep. the cost of a batch transaction ultimately depends how many transactions are involved, using a pre-built tool saves in development cost. On cost: Among the ones I’ve listed here, the highest cost is 15 cents per batch transaction which can contain up to 100 addresses. For 100 addresses, you pay only 15 cents plus the eth gas fee. For 1000, you pay only $1.5 in fees. For 10,000 address, you only pay $15. Regardless of how long your dev team takes, it would be hard to beat such a low cost. CONS: You will responsible for getting yourself there. Unlike full service development shops or those that specialize in a particular service, you will have to do your own due diligence for things like ICO, airdrops, and bounty campaigns. — typically you can expect to have less support through the process. Highlight — has an easy to read page, dedicated support, and visible founders. Little Customer Support Ethtree Docs : Not to get into too much detail about how smart contracts and gas works on Ethereum… In order of most gas efficient to least: Coded distribution at TGE, Manually done, dApps and other smart contracts that do batch transfer. On GAS Batch Transfer dApps (that sends tokens directly to the address, as opposed to recievers having to claim them and pay for their own gas) will be Less Gas Efficient compared to coding the distribution within the token itself at TGE. Manual transfers are next gas efficient method for batch transfers because there is no extra gas required for processing the smart contract component of the batch transfer function. That being said, the function does not require much additional gas for what you get in time saved and minimization of error. dApps vary in their cost of gas depending on how many lines of code are involved but generally are relatively similar. PART 3: COMPARING THE OPTIONS I threw together this visual to give you a better idea of how the batch transfer options available compare to each other. the newest and “standout dApp” of the available options. Instead of a webapp, they have a downloadable desktop dApp. Their user interface is clean and simple to use, especially compared to other options. I also really like that they have a detailed docs/FAQ page and the founders can be reached through their socials. From what I could tell, the DApp has a couple unique features that I thought should be standard to the others but aren’t. The first feature is their automatic sign and batch functionality which can save you valuable time and effort if you are processing a large number of addresses. Unlike the other Dapps, that require you to approve every batch of 100 or so addresses (this limit is based on the way Ethereum is designed), Ethtree will continue to batch and send transactions to all of the addresses you give it. The second function is an optional EthGasStation API monitor. You can either choose to set gas manually for all your transaction or let the program set the appropriate gas at the time of processing. This optional feature is particularly important if you are dealing with a large amount of addresses as it ensures that your transaction will go through even if there is any congestion in the network. The third feature is the ability to click on completed transactions as they populate in the dApp. I like that I can verify where the program is at in real-time by clicking on the addresses that have been completed and it takes me to Etherscan. While this feature is not extraordinary by any means, I like that a DApp inutitively does what I think it is suppose to. Lastly, I like that the program lets me know what the cost is and the gas estimate before starting and a reciept upon completion. Ethtree: are all relatively the same. They feature a one-page web dApp where you type out or upload a list of addresses and amounts you want to send. Token Multisender in my opinion has the best interface of the three, but it certainly leaves me wanting more. Aside from decreasing the likelihood of human error, having great UI and thus great UE is vital to adoption. I only recommend using one of these if you are sending tokens to a small amount of addresses as you will need to sign and execute each batch for those above the 100-150 threshold. Token Multisender, Batch Sender, and Dapple Airdrops Cansend is like Token Multisender, Batch Sender, and Dapple Airdrops in almost every way except that it has a better UI and requires a CAN token to operate. Unless you already own CAN tokens, I feel like having a token if anything makes it less friendly. Cansend: — — — — — — I hope this helps answer any questions you might have had about air drops, batch transfers, and how to facilitate them. If I’ve missed out on any options please comment below and let me know!

3 Methods to Conduct an Airdrop — Intro to Batch Transfers & the Unsung Heroes of Blockchain

3 métodos para realizar un Airdrop — Introducción a las transferencias por lotes y los héroes anónimos de Blockchain

The Rocket Scientist’s Startup Life By David Frankel , Managing Partner & Joe Flaherty Director, C&C Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg have popularized the idea of the entrepreneur who drops out of school to reshape an industry, and these fitful founders have made incalculable contributions to tech. However, there’s no reason a dedicated bookworm can’t become a startup CEO. enfant terrible The wizards at MIT, Stanford, Harvard, CalTech and other elite research universities are a shamefully underutilized source of company ideas, even outside of biotech. As a VC firm working in-between two of the greatest academic institutions on the planet, we want to help demystify the dark art of company building and hopefully persuade some Ph.D.s to scrap their Post-Doc plans in favor of founding a startup. An Accion Booster “rocket.” Photo: Accion Systems To begin, we spoke to , the co-founder/CEO and chief rocket scientist of , a startup that makes ionic propulsion systems for micro-satellites. In the last three years, she has earned a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering at , raised to productize her research, and booked a — among other achievements. Natalya Bailey Accion Systems MIT’s Space Propulsion Lab $10.5M in VC $6.5M deal with the US Department of Defense 1. Deciding to start a company Nothing gets developed in a vacuum Rockets are deployed in vacuums, but they aren’t developed in them. Academic entrepreneurs need to be on the lookout for catalysts that demonstrate the industry is ready for their wares. For instance, ion propulsion engines predate the first handheld calculators, but up until recently, the entire market for them has been the one or maybe two billion-dollar satellites launched by the military and DishTV each year. Fortunately for Accion, a few conditions changed simultaneously. Small satellites became viable and venture-backable. A new class of aero/astro entrepreneurs were open-minded to unconventional approaches and were keen for non-volatile propulsions systems that wouldn’t incinerate their venture capital dollars by exploding. MEMs manufacturing techniques allowed the engines to be built cost-effectively. Natalya’s research met all of these specifications and served as the springboard for a startup. It was a classic context shift, but one that required entrepreneurs who could combine an interest in an emerging field of science with a willingness to endure the uncertainty of startups — not to mention quantum particles, material science and other hard to model, non-deterministic physics. Don’t be Quick to License Academics are prone to believe that the fastest way to get their tech to market is to partner with an established industry leader who can handle all the messy parts of running a company from HR administration to the sleazy-seeming sales process. Natalya didn’t want to leave the commercialization of her new technology to chance, or a corporation with misaligned incentives. “We wanted to approach the problem of propulsion in a fundamentally different way,” she says. “The aerospace incumbent mindset can be inefficient, slow, with high overhead and it wasn’t clear we could even adapt their manufacturing techniques to our product.” Striking out on her own was a risky bet, as she was fielding inbound interest from serious industry players, but the thought of being another cog in the wheel and seeing her tech languish at a large company led her to launch Accion. Entrepreneurship is a pass/fail course A failed experiment in academia provides fodder for better experiments in the future. Failure in entrepreneurship means the inability to meet payroll for the team that puts their trust in you. Natalya got her first taste of entrepreneurship co-founding a startup in the mid-2000s. There was confusion about expectations of involvement, responsibilities, and equity disputes among the founders. The startup failed to launch. And the crew went years without being able to speak to each other. “I wanted to work at my own rocket company, but I had blown it.” Even though it didn’t make her rich, it did teach her a valuable, if expensive, lesson. “Make your startup as ‘editable’ as possible,” she says. “Things will change, design your company with that in mind.” 2. Running a company Entrepreneurship is not a science “Building one thing in a lab, one at a time, is not the same as a reproducible, manufacturable product,” says Bailey. Supply chains fall apart at critical junctures causing teams to scramble for alternate solutions. Every 105th widget will fail for reasons that are almost impossible to pinpoint. Ph.D.s turned entrepreneurs go from having every imaginable resource at a university lab to having to hack together solutions from Ebay salvage. Building a company is a messy process. This requirement that things work repeatedly also means projects take longer to develop. It’s not enough to prove a principle via experiment; those developments must be reduced to practice — something academics often fail to appreciate. The rule of thumb Natalya’s mentors provided was that it takes twice as long and is twice as expensive as you predict. In her experience, the real multiple is four times. For those considering starting a company at some point, it’s never too early to start developing DIY skills to build prototypes. Natalya joined a robotics team in high school, but was relegated to maintaining the team’s logbooks due to her lack of mechanical expertise. No doubt latent sexism could be a factor here, but Bailey also admits that she did lack experience actually making things. She ended up teaching herself through hobby projects. “I tried to build a robot dog because I couldn’t have a real dog in my apartment,” she adds. “It followed a LED bracelet I wore on my ankle.” Bailey went from not being allow to use a soldering iron to piloting a 5-axis CNC. Photo: Career Contessa She’s since been named one of — Not bad for someone once considered unfit to hold a soldering iron! Forbes Magazine’s 30 under 30 in manufacturing Divide Equity Like Engineers Dividing equity between co-founders is a fraught art and is rarely a smooth process. Feelings get hurt, and arguments ensue. When it came time to divvy up shares in Accion, Bailey treated the process like an engineering problem. Inspired by the book called by Noam Wasserman, the team broke down the skills and expertise that would be required in the first three years of the company’s existence, weighted those responsibilities by importance, and assigned each team member a value relative to their expected contribution. No one felt great about the split, but everyone understood the logic. The Founder’s Dilemmas Find Mentors Raw intelligence can only carry one so far; hard-won expertise can be more valuable than 20 IQ points. Natalya was wise to enlist , a world-renowned corporate therapist, and , who served as CEO of Raytheon for a decade, as advisors to her fledgling enterprise. Anna Rowley Bill Swanson **“**Anna helps me with communication — it’s a weird transition going from founding team, where everyone can just decide around the lunch table to work on the website today, to a company with 20 people where everything you say matters, and everything you don’t say matters,” says Natalya. “She helps me refine every aspect of my communication style.” “Bill is a walking encyclopedia of business lessons and anecdotes and helps with management issues like how to deal with high-performers who don’t share the company’s values,” she says. “And I can mention to Bill that I need an intro to someone at Boeing and by the end of the day, I’ll be introduced to the CEO.” The Art of Managing Academics Life in academia can be pleasant — brown bag lectures, collegial co-workers, and beautiful campuses are perks that startups can’t match — an endless stream of La Croix has nothing on lifetime tenure. So how do you lure brainiacs away from a bench at MIT or Harvard? Indulge their academic impulses. Accion can’t compete with Google’s “Twenty percent time,” but she does encourage cross-training. For instance, one technical employee was interested in applying his statistical acumen to market research. Bailey charged him with conducting a market analysis. It allowed the employee to stretch their mind while delivering actionable info for the team. Don’t Underinvest in Management Natalya’s career trajectory has been like a rocket ship for the past few years, but there have been growing pains. For instance, she understood the theoretical need to hire senior technical managers, but always felt there was a more pressing immediate need. Only after she hired a talented Vice President was she able to focus on the 30,000-foot view and see how much leverage she could get from a single hire. 3. Fundraising for the Freakishly Smart Accion Systems has supplemented venture capital with grants from the Department of Defense. Images: Accion Systems CB Insights has the rise of funding for space startups and other “ ” areas in recent years. Still, it can be difficult to get non-astrophysicists to invest in rocket science. Obviously, it helps to target specific partners with relevant expertise — and had some grounding in the area, but Natalya offers more general advice. “Be skeptical, prove yourself wrong before anyone else does.” What she means is to anticipate the concerns that potential investors will have, including unfamiliarity with the space, that is space, as a business venture. Ruthlessly strip jargon out of your deck and turn an academic challenge into an easier to understand commercial story. chronicled frontier tech I had launched satellites as a telecom entrepreneur Why VC > Government Funding Raising funds from government agencies seems like a smart idea, especially non-dilutive grants, but there are challenges. It’s impossible to schedule innovation, but every government program comes with a timeline. Funds are released for a fixed period, and to get more, a company must deliver concrete results. Contrast that with the VC world where progress and sightlines matter a great deal more. By tethering a business to government grants it becomes very easy to end on on a spastic hire/fire treadmill where star employees are regularly laid off due to insufficient funding. VCs can be tough to manage, but by turning to the government, CEOs are effectively turning every election into a referendum on their business. Natalya encourages entrepreneurs to employ a hybrid model where venture capital is used to explore the unknown while government funding is used to refine that exploration into marketable products. To learn more, follow Natalya and Accion Systems on Twitter and visit their website www.Accion-Systems.com .

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