Lago is an Open Source Billing API for all kinds of pricing

Lago

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Welcome to HackerNoon’s interview series, carefully curated by our Editorial team to spotlight bold and disruptive startups in Lagos, Nigeria. If you’ve been nominated, and answer these questions Startups-Of-The-Year create a brand profile here. Howdy Hackers, [Insert your Startup name] has been nominated in HackerNoon's annual awards in Lagos, Nigeria. Startup of the Year Please vote for us here: https://startups.hackernoon.com/africa/africa-lagos-nigeria Read more about us below to understand why we deserve your vote. Get to Know [insert your startup name] [insert image of your startup team, logo, product, or office, etc] [1-2 paragraphs answering what your startup is called and give us your elevator pitch] Building in Lagos [ ] 3-5 paragraphs answering: How has the startup environment in Lagos presented both advantages and obstacles to your startup's growth? Breaking Away From the Pack [ ] 2-3 paragraphs answering: What sets your startup apart from others in your Lagos? Power to the People [ ] 2-3 paragraphs answering: How is your startup impacting (or aiming to impact) the lives of the people in Lagos Crucial Milestone(s) [ ] 2-3 paragraphs answering: Can you talk about an important milestone that your startup has reached? Perhaps one that convinced you that you’re on the right track Taking on the Future [ ] 2-3 paragraphs answering: What are your plans for future growth and expansion? Why we decided to participate in HackerNoon's Startup of the Year awards [ ] 1-2 paragraphs answering why you joined Final Thoughts [ ] Wrap it up in a short 1-2 paragraph conclusion Vote for us today! https://startups.hackernoon.com/africa/africa-lagos-nigeria

Startups of the Year: Lagos Startup Interview

ATOLLS OR LAGOON-ISLANDS

Hey Hackers! I’m and I’m the Jimmy Braimah CEO @ Goodtalent. First of all, I’d like to say a huge thank you to the community for recognizing us as the winner of: HackerNoon Startup of the Year 2021: Best Start-up in Lagos, Nigeria (2021) Reporter: What does it mean for you to win this title? HackerNoon For us, this is really awesome. We are thrilled! This shows strong validation from our ecosystem for what we are building at Goodtalent.io How do you or your company intend to embrace the responsibility of this title in 2022? Well, to whom what is given, much is expected right? We will continue to lead from the front, amplifying everything we have done right and ensuring we do more for our superb team and our broader ecosystem What are some of the goals you’re looking forward to accomplishing in 2022 (whether it be through company initiatives or your personal journey)? 2022 will be a very interesting year for Goodtalent. We are democratizing the way companies hire, screen, and pay software engineers globally. We intend to work with quite a number of partners, educate our clients and make it easier and faster for companies to hire the hottest skills on the planet today - engineers! What is something special about you or your company that you’ve rarely had the chance to properly share but really wanted to? (Give this one a proper think, I’ll know if you didn’t!) Hmmm… Well, we are building a company that will be at the forefront of hiring engineers within 1-2 years. We are giving companies a choice to be flexible on their hiring strategy. We all know how startups are losing the “war for engineering talents”, as a result, we are providing the right tools to make it easier for startups with smaller budgets to compete effectively against the larger companies What song or music album are you currently enjoying? Chronic 2001 by DR Dre. They don’t make rap like this anymore. Is there anything else you’d like me to know? It can be anything. From all of us at Goodtalent, we want to say thank you to Hackernoon for this. Thank you for everything that you do! – Team. HackerNoon P.S. If you enjoy getting interviewed (AKA, the ol’ intellectual stimulation, check out some more interviews !) here For more information: Read the FAQs about or . To see all of the winners you may visit , pick any city and view the name that appears at the top. Or follow for posts with the list of names released over the course of the week of February 14, 2022. Startups here here this site this account Thank you to all of our sponsors! We truly appreciate your contribution to the tech world and thus the future! : Startups , , , , , , , , , , Blockster Brex FreeCodeCamp LaunchDarkly Coil Udacity Udemy Vercel Asia Pacific Transgender Network Bybit Everscale Network

Goodtalent is the Startup of the Year in Lagos, Nigeria

One of the main goal behind the micro services, is to build systems or subsystems that are isolated from each other where each of them have a single responsibility and by working together, bigger and more complex systems can be built. In most cases, we need communication between different services. Communication should be done in a resilient and fault tolerant way. It is important to take care of cascading failures by avoiding propagation of errors across services. Let’s compare Lagom to other widely adopted libraries. Lagom Defining micro services in Lagom is an easy task. First, we need to define our service interface or contracts. These contracts are what is going to be exposed to clients. For simplicity, let’s implement a small micro service that returns a list of countries and then use it to show some important constructs. As we can see, we are exposing and it should return a list of the class. /countries Country I don’t intend to go over how Lagom works, but you can look at Lagom docs Now, we need to implement our service. Notice that the list of countries is coming from the and the service is using the underlying data access implementation through the interface. countriesRepository ICountriesRepository When using this service, potentially from another service. Whoever uses implementation we say it is a of the service. CountriesService client At this point, we have introduced at least two points of failure, one the itself, and the second, the underlying data access that the is using. The question is how to manage failures of these dependencies so we don't cascade them making entire subsystems to fail. CountriesService CountriesService Circuits Breakers Circuit Breakers are a standard way to avoid cascading failures by stopping downstream calls once a failure has occurred on the downstream dependency. There are few things we need from a circuit breaker. It should open itself once a number of continuous errors had happened to a downstream service. It should close itself after certain time AND the downstream service has recovered. It should offer some kind of monitoring to help to understand the state of the breaker. The way to go for Circuit Breakers seems to be Hystrix, an open source library created by Netflix. Hystrix provides a solid implementation of circuit breakers that has been widely adopted by the industry. Even though Hystrix provides for a great number of circuits breaker patterns, there is an associated cost of adding such a library to an existing and ongoing project. Code complexity will tend to increase while the addition of new components requires a learning curve from the development team. Let’s do a comparison between what Hystrix offers and what we already have in the Lagom framework. Managing Data Access Failures From the point of view of , the underlying implementation of the data access to retrieve the list of countries is a potential point of failure. Network call timeouts, connection drops or degradation of the data access subsystem are only few examples of what can go wrong. CountriesService By using Hystrix we can avoid degradation of our service when there is a problem with the data access layer. From the point of view of , is a dependency and circuit breakers are a client's concern, we should manage them on the client side, in this case. CountriesService ICountriesRepository CountriesService We can create a Hystrix command that wraps the call to in the following way. ICountriesRepository Our service needs to be changed so it uses the command instead of calling directly the repository. If there is a problem accessing the underlying data that uses, the circuit breaker (the hystrix command) will be activated as expected. ICountriesRepository Notice that the complexity of this pattern increases rapidly since for every call to the we will need to create a Hystrix command. ICountriesRepository Based on the micro service principle that each micro service must own its own data, should we say that if a micro service fails to access it’s underlying storage (Cassandra, Kafka, MySQL, etc…) the micro service itself fail? Lagom takes this into consideration, and exceptions on the data layer of service can be propagated through the service which activate a circuit breaker at the service level that protects the clients of our service. This implies that the extra protection that we can get from Hystrix is redundant at this point. Data as a Service Let’s suppose our service’s data is coming from another service. In this case, our service is client of the data service. Let’s look at an alternative implementation of our service. In this case, our service is almost identical. We are wrapping the call to the dependency within a Hystrix command that manage the circuit breaker logic if there is something wrong with the dependency. In some cases, we want to provide a fallback result if our dependency is down, we can do that within the Hystrix command by implementing in the following way. getFallback() If there are errors on the ContentService dependency, the fallback value will be provided until the breaker is close, which means our dependency is ready to be used again. On the other hand, Lagom offers the same functionality already without introducing new concepts. Let’s see how. Notice that we are using to provide the fallback value. Also, Lagom activates a circuit breaker when the service dependency malfunction which is the same behavior we can get from Hystrix. At the same time, we don't need to create Hystrix command for each of the calls on the dependencies, which reduces the complexity around our code. .exceptionally Service Clients From the point of view of our client (service that call our service in order to obtain certain functionality), it does not matter what library for circuit breakers we use since circuit breakers are client responsibility, no service responsibility. Our clients should have a way to monitor exceptions coming from our service so they can take the required steps to avoid cascading failures. Is the client of our service is another Lagom service, this functionality is already built in as we saw when using . Is the client of our service, is another kind of application, they can use the circuit breaker strategy they like along with the library of their choice. Again, this a client concern, not a service concern. ContentService Conclusions If when implementing a Lagom service we need to call dependencies, these dependencies are access through managed and unmanaged Lagom services and calls to these dependencies already have circuit breakers built in and fallback functionality through the function. .exceptionally If our Lagom service access a data layer directly and this access fails, we might want our service to fail since the data is owned by the service and the service cannot perform its function appropriately. This should activate breakers in the client side of our service so they take the required measures. Hystrix is very powerful, but at this level, it does not offer different functionality from what we already have in Lagom. Lagom circuit breaker functionality is way simpler than the one offered by Hystrix, but integrates well with Lagom pieces while keeping simplicity and by reusing already known language features. When using Lagom, we should only thrown exception at the service layer to inform of an internal service error so clients of our service take the necessary steps to prevent cascading failures. We tend to throw exception to express some business logic, this should be avoided and model in a different way since exceptions activate circuit breakers logic in the upstream services and sometime there is no such failures in our service itself. If you really need to have circuit breakers around you data access calls, that is Cassandra and other, Hystrix seems to be a good choice to go with.

Circuit Breaker in Lagom Microservices

T o produce great results, the agile approach to product development, deployment, and adoption demands a strong relationship between development and operations teams. Peer Mountain’s Blockchain DevOps Engineer, Florian Lagouche, ensures that communication and collaboration between these groups remains clear and effective. At the age of 25, Florian already has a wealth of experience in the relatively new field of DevOps. An enthusiastic technophile, he began his studies at Epitech Graduate School of Digital Innovation in Nancy, France, in 2010. Three years later, Florian did a year of study at Beijing Jiaotong University, then completed his education at Epitech Paris. Florian’s passion for tech kept him active outside the classrooms and computer labs. He did several internships before landing his first DevOps job at Boursorama, a subsidiary of global financial giant Société Générale. Florian’s two years at the French online bank proved to be an invaluable learning experience. During that time he upgraded Boursorama’s delivery system so that his team could push code on dozens of servers in just a few seconds, and roll back to a previous version immediately if necessary. In 2016, blockchain and cryptocurrencies captured Florian’s interest; he began working for Bitcoin analytics tool provider Scorechain in October that year. Florian and his team helped other companies, mostly financial institutions, learn about, and benefit from, blockchain tech. He also automated nearly every part of the Scorechain infrastructure, enabling developers to simply push their code to the git repository to automatically get a live version of it, after which they can push to production with one click. KYC3 got in touch with Florian in late 2017. They offered him the opportunity to apply his DevOps skills and experience to their new Peer Mountain project. Florian now manages the blockchain startup’s development cluster, as well as the KYC3 production clusters. To further help Peer Mountain deliver its decentralized trust, commerce, and compliance ecosystem, Florian also manages the blockchain startup’s infrastructure and automates product delivery processes. Florian stays active both physically and mentally in his spare time. He’s an avid sportsman who enjoys running, swimming, and skiing. While he’s aware of smart home tools like Google Home and Amazon Alexa, Florian dedicates time to automating household appliances and electronics, such as lights and speakers. “I don’t trust smart home assistants from big companies,” he says, “I like understanding how these things work, so I do it myself.” To speak with Florian and learn more about , join our lively ! Peer Mountain Telegram group

This is Peer Mountain: Meet Florian Lagouche

Product-Market Fit Tips for Startups: Insights From 20 Experts

Authors: (1) Maria Rigaki, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic and maria.rigaki@fel.cvut.cz; (2) Sebastian Garcia, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic and sebastian.garcia@agents.fel.cvut.cz. Table of Links Abstract & Introduction Threat Model Background and Related Work Methodology Experiments Setup Results Discussion Conclusion, Acknowledgments, and References Appendix 8 Conclusions By employing model-based reinforcement learning, MEME generates adversarial malware samples that successfully evade antivirus systems and train a surrogate model mimicking the target classifier accurately. Our experiments show that MEME surpasses existing methods in evasion rate, suggesting its potential for various applications, such as testing model robustness and enhancing cyber security against advanced persistent threats. Future work may involve exploring ensemble surrogates and other optimizations to enhance MEME’s performance further. Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge support from the Strategic Support for the Development of Security Research in the Czech Republic 2019–2025 (IMPAKT 1) program, by the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic under No. VJ02010020 – AI-Dojo: Multi-agent testbed for the research and testing of AI-driven cyber security technologies. The authors acknowledge the support of NVIDIA Corporation with the donation of a Titan V GPU used for this research. References 1. Akiba, T., Sano, S., Yanase, T., Ohta, T., Koyama, M.: Optuna: A Next-generation Hyperparameter Optimization Framework. In: Proceedings of the 25th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery & Data Mining. pp. 2623–2631. KDD ’19, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA (Jul 2019). https://doi.org/10.1145/3292500.3330701 2. Anderson, H.S., Kharkar, A., Filar, B., Evans, D., Roth, P.: Learning to Evade Static PE Machine Learning Malware Models via Reinforcement Learning (Jan 2018). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1801.08917, arXiv:1801.08917 [cs] 3. Anderson, H.S., Roth, P.: EMBER: An Open Dataset for Training Static PE Malware Machine Learning Models (Apr 2018). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1804.04637, arXiv:1804.04637 [cs] 4. Bergstra, J., Bardenet, R., Bengio, Y., K´egl, B.: Algorithms for Hyper-Parameter Optimization. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. vol. 24. Curran Associates, Inc. (2011) 5. Brockman, G., Cheung, V., Pettersson, L., Schneider, J., Schulman, J., Tang, J., Zaremba, W.: OpenAI Gym (Jun 2016). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1606.01540, arXiv:1606.01540 [cs] 6. Ceschin, F., Botacin, M., Gomes, H.M., Oliveira, L.S., Gr´egio, A.: Shallow Security: on the Creation of Adversarial Variants to Evade Machine Learning-Based Malware Detectors. 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Pal, S., Gupta, Y., Shukla, A., Kanade, A., Shevade, S., Ganapathy, V.: ActiveThief: Model Extraction Using Active Learning and Unannotated Public Data. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 34(01), 865–872 (Apr 2020). https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v34i01.5432, number: 01 29. Phan, T.D., Duc Luong, T., Hoang Quoc An, N., Nguyen Huu, Q., Nghi, H.K., Pham, V.H.: Leveraging Reinforcement Learning and Generative Adversarial Networks to Craft Mutants of Windows Malware against Black-box Malware Detectors. In: Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Information and Communication Technology. pp. 31–38. SoICT ’22, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA (Dec 2022) 30. Quertier, T., Marais, B., Morucci, S., Fournel, B.: MERLIN – Malware Evasion with Reinforcement LearnINg (Mar 2022), arXiv:2203.12980 [cs] 31. 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Enhancing Cybersecurity with MEME: Reinforcement Learning for Adversarial Malware Evasion

This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license. Authors: (1) Ayei E. Ibor, Trustworthy Digital Infrastructure for Identity Systems, The Alan Turing Institute, United Kingdom; (2) Mark Hooper, Trustworthy Digital Infrastructure for Identity Systems, The Alan Turing Institute, United Kingdom; (3) Carsten Maple, Trustworthy Digital Infrastructure for Identity Systems, The Alan Turing Institute, United Kingdom; (4) Gregory Epiphaniou, WMG, University of Warwick, United Kingdom. Table of Links Abstract & Introduction Background Review of Literature Methodology Discussion of Findings Conclusion and Future Work & References 6. Conclusion and Future Work Trustworthy interoperability is a key enabler for identity management and widens the dimensions of e-government in developing countries. This research provided insights into the challenges, opportunities, and requirements of interoperability and highlighted the limitations of current interoperability solutions such as the Estonian X-Road and the eIDAS of the European Union. We found that each existing interoperability solution has its benefits and drawbacks, although both are targeted at a common goal. To achieve seamless communication of identification data, we proposed an approach for scoping requirements by first identifying the key processes to identity management in an interoperability context. Furthermore, we addressed the limitations of the current solutions using an architecture that considers the flexibility of identity verification and validation through an interoperable layer that is based on four interacting layers of data representation, semantics, binding, and security and privacy. For future work, an analysis of country-specific use cases for achieving interoperability in the African identity ecosystem will be performed. References African Union, 2020. The Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (2020-30), Available at https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/278587/1/GhaEcon_24.pdf, Accessed 20 May 2023. Alamillo, I., Mouille, S., Rock, A., Soumelidis, N., Tabor, M., Gorniak, S., 2023. Digital identity standards: Analysis of standardisation requirements in support of cybersecurity policy, Available at file:///C:/Users/aIbor/Downloads/Digital_Identity_Standards%20(1).pdf, Accessed 30 July 2023. Aldosary, M. and Alqahtani, N., 2021. A Survey on Federated Identity Management Systems Limitation and Solutions. International Journal of Network Security & Its Applications (IJNSA) Vol, 13. ANSSI, 2023. The EIDAS Regulation, Available at https://www.ssi.gouv.fr/en/regulation/digital-confidence/the-eidas-regulation/, Accessed 09 April 2023. Atick, J., 2016. Digital identity: the essential guide. In ID4Africa Identity Forum (Vol. 2016, pp. 1-3). Backhouse, J. and Halperin, R., 2009. Approaching interoperability for identity management systems. In The Future of Identity in the Information Society (pp. 245-268). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Bakhtina, M., Matulevičius, R., Awad, A. and Kivimäki, P., 2022. Rebooting Trust Management in X-Road, Public Report. Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS). Bhattarai, R., Pappel, I., Vainsalu, H., Yahia, S.B. and Draheim, D., 2019. The impact of the single digital gateway regulation from the citizens’ perspective. Procedia Computer Science, 164, pp.159-167. Bandura, R. and Ramanujam, S.R., 2021. Developing inclusive digital payment systems. Center for Strategic and International Studies, 21. Benaddi, H., Laaz, N., Bouhlal, A. and El Kettani, E., 2023. Data storage architecture for egovernment interoperability: Morocco case. 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How to implement the European digital single market: identifying the catalyst for digital transformation. Journal of European Integration, 44(1), pp.59-80. Sedlmeir, J., Smethurst, R., Rieger, A. and Fridgen, G., 2021. Digital identities and verifiable credentials. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 63(5), pp.603-613. Sharif, A., Ranzi, M., Carbone, R., Sciarretta, G. and Ranise, S., 2022, August. SoK: A Survey on Technological Trends for (pre) Notified eIDAS Electronic Identity Schemes. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (pp. 1-10). Sharma, R. and Panigrahi, P.K., 2015. Developing a roadmap for planning and implementation of interoperability capability in e-government. Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, 9(4), pp.426-447. Solvak, M., Unt, T., Rozgonjuk, D., Võrk, A., Veskimäe, M. and Vassil, K., 2019. Egovernance diffusion: Population level e-service adoption rates and usage patterns. Telematics and Informatics, 36, pp.39-54. Spiliotopoulos, T., Sheik, A.T., Gottardello, D. and Dover, R., 2023. Onboarding Citizens to Digital Identity Systems. arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.13511. Srinivas, J., Das, A.K. and Kumar, N., 2019. Government regulations in cyber security: Framework, standards and recommendations. Future generation computer systems, 92, pp.178-188. Tang, F., Ma, C. and Cheng, K., 2023. Privacy-preserving authentication scheme based on zero trust architecture. Digital Communications and Networks. The World Bank, 2023a. ID4D Global Dataset, Available at https://id4d.worldbank.org/global-dataset, Accessed: 17 July 2023. The World Bank, 2023b. Practitioner’s Guide: Interoperability, Available at https://id4d.worldbank.org/guide/interoperability, Accessed: 22 April 2023. Walters, R., 2023. Theft [Identity]. In Cybersecurity and Data Laws of the Commonwealth: International Trade, Investment and Arbitration (pp. 297-306). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. 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X-Road: Use Case Model for Member Communication, Available at https://docs.x-road.global/UseCases/uc-mess_x-road_member_communication_use_case_model.html#version-history, Accessed 12 April 2023. X-Road, 2023d. Technical Specification: X-Road Architecture, Available at https://docs.xroad.global/Architecture/arc-g_x-road_arhitecture.html#version-history, Accessed 12 April 2023. Yin, J., Xiao, Y., Pei, Q., Ju, Y., Liu, L., Xiao, M. and Wu, C., 2022. SmartDID: a novel privacy-preserving identity based on blockchain for IoT. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 10(8), pp.6718-6732. This paper is available on under CC 4.0 license. Arxiv

Trustworthy Interoperability and Identity Management Systems: What Comes Next

This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license. Authors: (1) Qin Wang, CSIRO Data61, Australia; (2) Shiping Chen, CSIRO Data61, Australia. Table of Links Abstract & Introduction Ethereum Accounts Account Abstraction Security Analysis Further Discussions Conclusion & References VI. CONCLUSION In this paper, we explore the notion of account abstraction (featured by EIP-4337), which is formally involved the sixth stage of Ethereum’s roadmap. We study its operating mechanism, key features, and surrounding developments. We also examine its security by assessing a set of related criteria. Our results reveal the scope and extent of the security improvements introduced by the adoption of account abstraction. To our knowledge, this work provides the first formal AA study. REFERENCES [1] G. Wood et al., “Ethereum: A secure decentralised generalised transaction ledger,” Ethereum project yellow paper, vol. 151, no. 2014, pp. 1–32, 2014. 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Account Abstraction, Analysed: Conclusion & References

Sylvia: 100 Days

Photo Credit, recovered from stomach illness. In original publication of this interview, “ ,” this photo was rejected in favor of . In the spirit of additional context when republishing, we added the original image above, about two dozen contextual links, and embedded a fun video at the end. David Smooke David Smooke Founder & CEO at HackerNoon — Digital Publishing Evolution, AI Impact, Content Management Innovation, Community Growth, Future Visions a kinder, more professional headshot from AI Time Journal: 1. David, can you share the origin story of HackerNoon and what motivated you to create a platform focused on technology storytelling? Flor Laorga Hey, ! Thanks for having me. I’m . I started and run We publish technology stories and build publishing software. Before HackerNoon, I was managing 400+ contributing writers on the , which is now a tech unicorn. Back then, it was cumbersome to manage the writer accounts, content, and editorial review process through existing systems. Building for the contributing writers opened doors. When I started this company, I built many sites, most failed, and HackerNoon found the right mix of community, customers, and - just a cool place to spend time on the internet. Millions visit us every month for free to read our 100k+ stories across . By offering editing and distribution, many technology practitioners, writers, and companies find value in . AI Time Journal David Smooke HackerNoon. blog for SmartRecruiters thousands of tech topics publishing their stories with us 2. With HackerNoon’s commitment to keeping its library free of paywalls and popups, how do you navigate the challenge of generating revenue while maintaining an open-access philosophy? It’s a battle! Historically, we’ve 2x-ed revenue most years of the company’s existence, and our yearly revenue is in the low millions. Media is a brutal industry, and tech’s an up-and-down world where layoffs and profits seem to coincide with each gen ai launch or full moon. Our top source of revenue right now is . Companies like Brave, NVIDIA and AWS buy monthly ads on all stories within a category, like or . Our second and third sources of revenue are and . Business blogging is about getting more readers for blog posts owned by technology companies like , , , and . We leverage our publishing system and owned media channels to improve and further distribute their content. Quality technology blog posts require a lot of effort from talented people. The labor that goes into each post on a tech company’s main blog is worth thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars - companies work with HackerNoon to get those technology blog posts more readers. In terms of writing contests, companies award the authors of the best stores on a tag ( ), pay HackerNoon to run the contest, and ultimately, more technology content enters our library to serve the readers. The intention is to create discussion about a niche technology topic. ad placements by content relevancy programming data science business blogging writing contests MinIO Ockam Blockchain Oracle Summit BrightData like how Aptible awarded $18k to best #DevOps stories 3. As AI continues to evolve, how do you see it transforming the landscape of digital publishing, especially in terms of content creation and distribution? AI’s a massive wrench into productivity and authenticity. Every current job relying on a keyboard or a phone has/will have an AI assistant, and an AI will be on deck with you in whatever UX replaces the keyboard or the phone next. On the positive side, small capable teams can have greater extensions of themselves and their work. AI and AI agents can move portions of projects forward. For example, we introduced , and had to assign every story in our 100k+ library to one category. 100k human decisions would have taken a while, but a chatgpt spreadsheet plugin was able to assign each story a technology category very easily. On the negative side, there is spamflation everywhere. Why must the builders of our generation rush to make AI tools to spam instead of AI tools to assist? In 2022, one contributing writer, , made the case that . There is just so, so much content being generated by AI. It’s human-like, but it’s not human. Which brings me to authenticity. Who authored the content will become more important in the future as it indicates trust in a uniquely human way. technology categories Jeremy Hillpot 99.99% of all content would be AI-created by 2025 4. In your experience, what are the most effective strategies for managing and growing a small team of editors, developers, and startup individuals to produce high-quality technology content? We’re still small enough that everyone’s an individual contributor first, even the C-suite and board, which are both just me and . When you’re under 20 people, everyone has to carry their own weight. When it comes to managing a small remote team, reducing meetings is a good start. Editorial, sales, and product, each only have one internal meeting a week. This provides time to do the actual work and makes the meetings we do have will carry more importance. We do highly encourage one-off, project-focused, short meetings. Weekly product meetings are the longest and loaded with demos, recaps, and debates. But it connects the group, and designers have a full view into what developers are doing and vice versa. Staff happiness and sense of purpose, or lack thereof, will show in the little actions with our community. I work to create a company where a small team of elite contributors can thrive. Linh Dao Smooke 5. Could you discuss the development process of HackerNoon’s content management system and what makes it uniquely suited for technology professionals? At , we’ve built a lot of systems to create, edit, and distribute content at scale. Technologists spend a lot of their day on the keyboard (like I am now) and understand that documenting their journey and professional expertise will lead to more long-term success. Our CMS helps you create content with help from , , and . The CMS also integrates with our email and social media distribution engines, and for good measure. We live between social media where anyone can post and traditional media where staff content production drives content creation and consumption. There is a vibrant community of millions of technologists on HackerNoon. Plus, our CMS is built to seamlessly port content around the web. For example, with the HackerNoon CMS, we’ll be launching AI-specific publications in 2024, such as , , and more. HackerNoon templates AI a human editorial review backups up all content on the blockchain FewShot.Tech TextModels.Tech 6. How has HackerNoon leveraged AI to enhance its platform? and what lessons have you learned about AI's role in spam creation and prevention? HackerNoon uses AI and machine learning to improve grammar, , , and . Maybe Clippy was ahead of its time? Writers have and will continue to have smart AI assistants. AI can not and should not replace the writer, but it should and can assist the writer and editor throughout the publishing process. We are documenting our approach to editorial at . With the rise of LLMs, we’ve seen an influx of AI story spam submissions. Other blogging platforms are hosting so much of these types of machine generated stories right now. We are actively taking steps to not become a wasteland of AI’s musings. Because every story is reviewed before publication (with about half being rejected), I think our average story quality is higher than other blogging platforms. Every story submission automatically enters into plagiarism and AI writing detection. We highlight what sections are likely, possibly, and unlikely to be written by AI. It’s all about confidence levels. Ultimately, human editors make the final call in interpreting the machines’ reports. translate stories generate featured images suggest possible headlines EditingProtocol.com 7. Given your expertise in product management and editing, how do you balance innovation with user experience when introducing new features or updates to your platform? The core has to work for any new feature to matter. Our core is the blog post. We work to publish better blog posts and build for what comes before and what comes after the blog post. New functionalities cannot come at the expense of a delightful reading experience and a smooth publishing experience. It’s got to load quickly and the relevant ads have to surface at the right place for customers. There’s always more projects that could be done to improve the core. We also have been using more API driven journalism in order to gain more traffic. What I mean by that is aggregating relevant data and business information so that we can build pages that cover , , and . By connecting stories around the web to relevant companies, technologies and currencies, we can make HackerNoon a stronger destination for technology education and discovery. In terms of what to build next, we’ve built a simple product management system within Notion, where we detail product cards, weighing which user it would benefit, the expected input/output of the project, and then generally contributors choose their own projects. tech companies technologies currencies 8. As a leader, how do you foster a culture of creativity and innovation within your team, and what practices have you found most effective in motivating and inspiring your staff? The simplest way is to lead by example. I’m contributing to projects more than managing projects. The people who make this business happen are good people. If I want people to blog with HackerNoon, I need to blog with HackerNoon. almost 300 technology stories and this year, my goal is a post a week. Our staff is remote and around the world, we have people in Munich, Goa, Florida, Hanoi, Buenos Aires, Bangkok, Michigan, Lahore, Lagos, and of course where I live in Colorado. It’s a lot of different cultures. And a lot of different ideas. Everyone on the team started by applying via our , so one thing that unites us is reading and using HackerNoon before joining HackerNoon. Everyone also has stock in the company, that helps with buy-in and enthusiasm. We agree on metrics we want to move, but we might not agree on how to get there. It generally works best when contributors choose their own paths. I’ve published careers page 9. With your insights into the future of work and career advice, what guidance would you offer to professionals aiming to break into the rapidly changing tech industry? Make things! Apps, models, prototypes, blueprints, communities, whatever - just start making. Your first technology thing probably won’t be your best or your future, but if you make more things in tech they become less like just technology things and more like just essential everyday things.  In terms of breaking in, it’s a tough market in technology/media right now with mass layoffs & unpredictable demands. Having your own functioning project, app, site, academic paper, or even just a blog can set you apart from other candidates. I recommend looking to apply at companies that make technologies or products that you use and respect. Write short and simple cold emails that explain why you’d like to work together.  Take a step back and look at our daily lives - and what you think our daily lives might be in ten years - technology isn’t going anywhere. It’s becoming more ingrained. Closer to our eyes. I’d also add that getting into tech doesn’t necessarily mean staying in tech forever, but better understanding technology will help however your career grows. 10. How do you envision the role of digital publishers like HackerNoon in shaping public discourse and understanding of complex topics like cryptocurrency, AI, and blockchain technology? We normalize it. I learned about Bitcoin from a HackerNoon story submission. . The technology’s finally caught up; let’s talk about it. I learn a lot by reading what contributors think could be next. As many people on HackerNoon are publishing about what they’re building, we usually learn about newer technologies before they reach more mainstream learning destinations. is a great blogging example for how the people making the next internet are documenting and teaching others along the way. That author, , kept writing that . Meanwhile, we kept integrating our tech stack with more Web3 technologies. Fun Easter egg, you can read . Publishing platforms are still learning how to detail where and how and when AI contributed. We add an “ on all stories where AI assisted the writer. At Meta, I see they’re implementing a , I’ll be monitoring how that goes. Publishers should provide transparency to the reader when it comes to AI content creation. Hopefully, the internet can reach reasonable standards for accrediting AI. Milton Friedman’s been talking about the need for ecash since 1999 Learn Blockchain by Building One Daniel van Flymen blog post into a book the entire HackerNoon library via blockchain signatures here AI Assisted” emoji credibility indicator watermark checking and display system for all AI generated images 11. Finally, can you share a personal story or moment from your journey with HackerNoon that has been particularly meaningful or impactful to you? Well, it’s been a long road! Hard to pick just one. Recently, meeting Pham Minh Chinh, the Prime Minister of Vietnam, stands out. He invited . Was cool to see up close how a head of state walks, talks and listens to pitches about how the country could become a bigger player in the technology industry. Another one that comes to mind is when we launched with our own CMS, it was janky, it was pixelated, and it mostly worked but didn’t work in all the right spots. It was ours and it was beautiful. HackerNoon! I’ll leave with you this : Linh to be a technology consultant as the country forms its semiconductor strategy HackerNoon.com previously unpublished video of the moment we went live https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdoh8z0NXzU&embedable=true

“We are actively taking steps to not become a wasteland of AI’s musings” says HackerNoon Founder/CEO

হ্যাকারনুন প্রতিষ্ঠাতা/সিইও বলেছেন, "আমরা সক্রিয়ভাবে পদক্ষেপ নিচ্ছি যাতে AI এর মিউজিং এর বর্জ্যভূমিতে পরিণত না হয়"

„Wir unternehmen aktiv Schritte, um nicht zu einem Ödland der KI-Gedanken zu werden“, sagt HackerNoon-Gründer/CEO

"Estamos tomando medidas activamente para no convertirnos en un páramo de las reflexiones de la IA", dice el fundador y director ejecutivo de HackerNoon

"Nous prenons activement des mesures pour ne pas devenir un désert de réflexions sur l'IA", déclare le fondateur et PDG de HackerNoon.

हैकरनून के संस्थापक/सीईओ कहते हैं, "हम एआई के विचारों की बंजर भूमि न बनने के लिए सक्रिय रूप से कदम उठा रहे हैं।"

「私たちは、AI の思索の荒野にならないよう、積極的に対策を講じています」と HackerNoon 創設者兼 CEO は語る

해커눈 창업자/CEO “AI 사색의 황무지가 되지 않기 위해 적극 나서고 있다”

“Estamos tomando medidas ativamente para não nos tornarmos um terreno baldio de reflexões de IA”, diz o fundador/CEO da HackerNoon

«Мы активно предпринимаем шаги, чтобы не стать пустошью размышлений ИИ», — говорит основатель/генеральный директор HackerNoon.

HackerNoon Kurucusu/CEO'su şöyle diyor: "Yapay zekanın düşüncelerinden oluşan bir çorak araziye dönüşmemek için aktif olarak adımlar atıyoruz"

Người sáng lập/CEO của HackerNoon cho biết: “Chúng tôi đang tích cực thực hiện các bước để không trở thành vùng đất hoang của những suy ngẫm về AI”.

HackerNoon 创始人/首席执行官表示：“我们正在积极采取措施，以免成为人工智能思考的荒原”

581 Stories To Learn About Non Fiction

Generate and Pray: Using SALLMS to Evaluate the Security: Conclusion & References

The wait is over! - it’s time to celebrate the champion startups of the world. Shout out to all of the participants in our ! You did a wonderful job showcasing your incredible startups and powering through another year. 2023 Startups of the Year is a community-driven voting platform brought to you by HackerNoon that recognizes and celebrates tech startups changing technology and the world for the better. The award started on May 8th, 2023, where the internet nominated and voted for 30k startups around the world. The voting period remained open until December 31, 2023, and now we are here with the winner announcement after a comprehensive evaluation by the HackerNoon team. Startups of the Year 2023 To see the top 3 startups in each respective city, visit and pick a city. hackernoon.com/startups You’ll get a little surprise 😉 Here are the Startups of the Year Regional Announcements: North America Europe Asia Africa South America Oceania Misc/Remote From all of us at HackerNoon, thank YOU for your excellent campaign perseverance 🥺 This year has been awesome! Startups of the Year 2023 is concluded with 623k+ total votes, up from 215k+ votes in the inaugural startup competition. We look forward to seeing you again in the next campaign (stay tuned 😉)! Without further ado, let us kick off the announcement by celebrating the cities with top votes per region for 2023 🎉 North America (11,697 votes): Winner: Bloomfilter Cleveland, Ohio (8,835 votes) - Winner: SerpApi Austin, Texas , California (5,564 votes) - Winner: Finch San Francisco (4,258 votes) - Winner: RELAYTO SoMa, California - (3339 votes) Winner: Windscribe Toronto, Canada, North America (3304 votes) - Winner: Vouched Seattle (2716 votes) - Winner: Seccuri Palo Alto, CA, North America (2671 votes) - Winner: Salsa Valley Miami, FL, North America (2,613 votes) - Winner: Majhi Group Manhattan, New York (2423 votes) - Winner: Flieber, Inc. New York City, NY, North America See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, North America, here Europe (45,612 votes) - Winner: Algomo London, UK (2,344votes) - Winner: Data Lake Warsaw, Poland (1,955 votes) - Winner: Hoken Tech Bari, Italy (1716 votes) - Winner: Not8 Amsterdam, Netherlands (1657 votes) - Winner: KYVE Frankfurt Am Main, Germany (1566 votes) - Winner: BazaIT Kyiv, Ukraine (1496 votes) - Winner:  Unity Network Tallinn, Estonia (1,478 votes) - Winner: Volcaino Ghent, Belgium (1,288 votes) - Winner: Owl Me Dublin, Ireland (1198 votes) - Winner: Groover Paris, France See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, Europe, here Oceania (3,350 votes) - Winner: Sharepass Melbourne (2,107 votes) - Winner: The Catfisher Project Perth, Australia (220 votes) - Winner: Gemini AI Solutions Auckland, New Zealand, Oceania (213 votes) - Winner: Nexustorage Wellington, New Zealand, Oceania (138 votes) - Winner: Coviu Sydney (124 votes) - Winner: Bopple Brisbane, Australia, Oceania (124 votes) - Winner: Regional CFO New South Wales, Australia, Oceania (106 votes) - Winner: Edit on the Spot Gold Coast, Australia, Oceania (93 votes) - Winner: Knowledge Satnav Canbera, Australia, Oceania , Australia, Oceania (48 votes) - Winner: Peptalk360 North Melbourne, Melbourne See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, Oceania, here Asia (16,345 votes) - Winner: Serenity Shield Singapore (13,588 votes) - Winners: QUIXY Telangana, India (10,168 votes) - Winner: HealthySure Mumbai, India (3,865 votes) - Winner: InterviewBuddy Visakhapatnam, India (3,733 votes) - Winner: Omniflo Bengaluru, India (4589 votes) - Winner: MeNow Tel Aviv (3877 votes) - Winner: ForestVPN Dubai (2478 votes) - Winner: TechGraph Powai, Mumbai, India (1004 votes) - Winner: Reelo Ahmedabad, GJ, India (875 votes) - Winner: Debt Hunter Hong Kong, China See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, Asia, here Africa (8,179 votes) - Winner: GO PLATFORM Algiers, Algeria (767 votes) - Winner: Tudu Accra, Ghana (415 votes) - Winner: Treford Lagos, Nigeria (265 votes) - Winner: Phalconwise Ogbomosho, Nigeria (157 votes) - Winner: AbuErdan Cairo (151 votes) - Winner: Eazipay Lekki (144 votes) - Winner: KaziConnect Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (101 votes) - Winner: faceATT Gauteng, South Africa (79 votes) - Winner: Dimagi Cape Town (71 votes) - Winner: Sabi Addis Ababa See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, Africa, here South America (376 votes ) - Winner: UpGirl Santiago, Chile (217 votes) - Winner: Klever Sao Paulo, Brazil (191 votes) - Winner: Tributo Simple Buenos Aires, Argentina (127 votes) - Winner: Light-it Montevideo, Uruguay (87 votes) -Winner: Thousand Antioquia, Colombia (108 votes) - Winner: GetLavado Lima (101 votes) - Winner: Cogniflow Medellin (73 votes) - Winner: TPAGA Bogota (73 votes) - Winner: Reliv Quito (47 votes) - WInner: Quantex Cordoba See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, South America, here Misc/Remote: Featured Startups (1500 votes) - Winner: CIC Chain Remote, Earth (1193 votes) - Winner: Reship Colony US Misc (146 Votes) - Winner: Partful UK, Misc (116 votes) - Winner: GoMining British Virgin Islands Misc (283 Votes) - Winner: tomorrowSpace Germany Misc (225 votes) - Winner: Dtravel Cayman Islands See the complete announcement for Misc/Remote startups . here Once again, HUGE CONGRATULATIONS and BIG PROPS to all of the top Startups of each region this year! The whole team at HackerNoon would like to thank you for your perseverance in the campaign, and we look forward to seeing you in the next campaign. About HackerNoon’s Startups Of The Year Startups of The Year is HackerNoon’s Flagship community-driven event celebrating startups that survived and thrived in 2023. 30,000 startups across 4200+ cities and six continents participated this year to be crowned the best startup in their city. Visit our page to learn more. FAQ Companies that blog more get 67% more leads - Jumpstart your company’s blogging journey by purchasing our . Business Blogging Package The 2023 Startups Of The Year is sponsored by: . . The winners get a free .Tech Domain, a HackerNoon NFT, and a Tech Company News Page. TECH Domains

Stand Up for the Champion Startups of the Year! 

বছরের চ্যাম্পিয়ন স্টার্টআপের জন্য দাঁড়ান!

Setzen Sie sich für die Champion-Startups des Jahres ein!

¡Defiende a las startups campeonas del año!

Défendez les startups championnes de l’année !

वर्ष के चैंपियन स्टार्टअप के लिए खड़े रहें!

今年のチャンピオンスタートアップのために立ち上がろう!

올해의 챔피언 스타트업을 위해 일어서세요!

Defenda as startups campeãs do ano!

Встаньте на защиту стартапов-чемпионов года!

Yılın Şampiyon Startup'ları için Ayağa Kalkın!

Hãy ủng hộ các công ty khởi nghiệp vô địch của năm!

为年度冠军初创企业挺身而出！

In the hot and bustling city of Lagos, where cars honk filled the air and merged with hurried footsteps, lived Adebola, an unassuming tech enthusiast. Adebola spends a considerable chunk of his days with the hum of his laptop, exploring the digital world, fueled by the relentless curiosity for today's technology's mysteries. Today was no different from any other day, but something interesting happened. Adebola, sitting comfortably in his worn-out armchair, was on his smartphone and came across articles that talked about Bitcoin mining. While on his phone, he clicked on a pop-up that promised to unravel the secrets of  Bitcoin mining. Little did he know that this pop-up wasn't a mere tutorial but rather a portal that defied the boundaries of time and space. And Zapped! A sudden surge of energy came from his phone, pulling him into this captivating journey across time we are about to take. Each Bitcoin mining era Adebola will explore will talk briefs on the various innovations and milestones that have shaped the evolution of Bitcoin mining. The Genesis Block (2009-2011) Adebola landed on January 3, 2009, The day that changed everything. He sees a couple of people working on their CPUs, and what he assumes is the mining process taking place. Their CPU-powered computers hummed and vibrated in the background. However, Adebola couldn’t see their faces as the soft glow of the computer screens illuminated them. He can hear them talk about how they first mined Bitcoin's genesis block (block number 0) using regular computer processors and how this rewarded them with 50 bitcoins. This was done by Satoshi Nakamoto (almost certainly a pseudonym). Also, interestingly embedded in this genesis BTC block was the text: . This text, however, refers to the . The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on the brink of the second bailout for banks Bitcoin Whitepaper published on January 3, 2009 Question:  Why was Nakamoto able to mine with just a simple computer? They were literally the only ones in the Bitcoin network. So, a simple CPU device could handle the computational power needed. Intrigued by this, Adebola tried to ask one of the women in the room a question. But all of a sudden, before he  could, he was zapped into another room. He looked at his watch, and the time was 12:35 AM. He sees a young Laszlo Hanyecz, a Floridian programmer, on his laptop navigating a forum. He was trying to buy on May 18, 2010. 2 pizzas for 10,000 BTC The pizzas were worth around $25, and Bitcoin was worth less than 8 cents back then. For context, This was the first transaction with Bitcoin; the day will later be known as Bitcoin Pizza Day. This also led to the appreciation of Bitcoin to 8 cents later in July and 10 cents later in October. Right before Adebola could say Damn! He got zapped into…. The GPU Revolution (2011-2013) Adebola wakes up in Orlando, Florida. He looks up and sees "BitPay" boldly written on the banner. He sees some young men in shorts and shirts getting into a room. I guess there is a meeting happening. He follows them. Discussion about their new milestone of 10,000 merchants is taking place and what this means for BitPay. They also discuss how much funds are left from the $2 million raised in May via the Founders Fund. One of the men in the room, deeply engrossed in the discussion, is taking notes. He's jotting down something about Nakamoto's mysterious disappearance and how he is rumored to have mined about 1 million bitcoins before handing the project to developer Gavin Andresen. Another interesting thing they were talking about is the Bitcoin halving. When Bitcoin was first mined in 2009, a block would earn 50 BTC. Later, that was halved to 25 BTC (In 2012), 12.5 BTC (2016), and 6.25 BTC (2020). Why? That is because Bitcoin has a capped supply of 21 million coins. So halving happens every 4 years or after every 210,000 blocks mined. The next one should take place in 2024. The whole idea behind the Bitcoin halving is to control the supply of new Bitcoin and manage any inflation. He tried to pick up the note and well got zapped again. Adebola finds himself in someone's basement. He isn’t quite sure who, however he can see a young lady walking down the stairs. She switched on the light, and he was amazed at the sight. It is a technological renaissance. Computers with GPUs and parallel processing capabilities are lined up. This must be the GPUs era; GPUs were the preferred mining hardware at some point. He had just read about this before he started his time journey. In this era, mining pools flourished, allowing miners to share success and create communities like Mining City. He hears another voice coming down the stairs, seemingly asking about exploring the new field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) tech and how they are much faster than GPUs, but he trips. As soon as the coffee was about to spill on Adebola, his reflexes kicked in. He used his hand to shield his face to prevent the scalding liquid from pouring on him, but luckily, he got zapped. why GPUs? GPUs were better optimized and great for parallel computing simple mathematical operations (like mining). This is much better than CPUs. Also, remember that new coins like XRP are popping up in this era, and new miners are now competing among themselves on the Bitcoin network. Question: The ASIC Age (2013-Present) As Adebola carefully withdrew his hands, he was gripped by the realization that he was in a different place. From the writing on the wall, he seems to be in China. The Television in the room is luckily on CNN. The headline reads, " "  From the news, this new technology outperforms GPUs and CPUs, revolutionizes the mining landscape, and increases the Bitcoin network's hash rate. They were built just for mining, and their chip technology has dramatically decreased in size—from 130 nm in 2013 to 7 nm in 2020. China-based computer hardware manufacturer Canaan Creative released the first set of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for bitcoin mining. He sees some documents on the table and tries to pick them up and get zapped again. This time, Adebola sees himself in an office in 2021. The name on the desk reads “Mark Zalan,” and some documents are named “GoMining.” In an attempt to pick up these documents, Adebola gets zapped, and this time, he is… Back to Reality (Present) He is back in his room. Awakened by the loud noise of the passing cars and heavy traffic outside the window. Damn! The light also went off, plunging his room into an inky blackness. It had finally dawned on him that he was back from his trip. Still curious, he picks up his laptop and searches for . He learns about how they are making Bitcoin mining more accessible to all through . Thus, he can join the mining industry without buying and maintaining any hardware; he can mine using GoMining’s Bitcoin-mining equipment at their data center. GoMining NFTs and the Liquid Bitcoin Hashrate (LBH) protocol Question: But How? By exploring their NFT mining model. You buy some NFTs (a unique token that gives one the right to own a digital asset- pictures, videos, game characters, or music- with the digital space) using . the GoMining token (GMT) Having satisfied his curiosity with a thorough web search, Adebola navigates to the Play Store and taps the download button to download the GoMining application. While he waits, he remembers the . He scrolled through, thought about his trip, and laughed as he read the comments. People were arguing about how the 10,000 BTC was small for the 2 pizzas Laszlo wanted. If only they knew how much 10,000 BTC would be worth right now, Adebola thought. Right before he closed the page, he spotted and read the last comment: " " Pizza forum discussion from Laszlo's era It is so remarkable how far this economy has progressed in such a short time; this breaks every record that I can think of. He looks back at his phone, opens the app, and starts onboarding as he anticipates the new mysteries he is about to begin within GoMining’s universe. Learn more: You can join the and learn more about . You can buy their using this . community GoMining’s project from their website GMT token Binance: Where & How to Buy Gomining (GMT) Guide

The Time-Traveler's Journey to Bitcoin Mining: A Tale Across Mining Eras

213 Stories To Learn About Writing Prompts

Welcome to another exciting installment of our "Behind the Startup" series, where we delve deep into the stories, strategies, and visions that fuel some of the most innovative startups in the tech world. Today, we are thrilled to have Andrea Lerdo, the Executive Director of the Palm Foundation, joining us. Andrea's journey is a fascinating blend of finance, technology, and creative exploration, making her a pivotal figure in the evolving Web3 space. With her extensive background in the financial industry, including a significant role in JPMorgan’s Blockchain initiative, and her passionate involvement in blockchain technology for societal betterment, Andrea is here to share her insights and strategic vision for Palm Network. So, let's dive into the world of decentralized technology and understand how Palm Network is shaping the future of Web3! Andrea Lerdo Unveils the Visionary Future of Palm Network in Web3 Ishan Pandey: Hi Andrea, It's great to have you here for our "Behind the Startup" series. Can you share with us about your background and what inspired you to found Palm Network? Can you outline your strategic vision for the continued growth and development of Palm Network in the Web3 space? Hi Ishan, I'm Andrea Lerdo, Executive Director of the Palm Foundation. I'm excited to be here for the "Behind the Startup" series. With over 15 years in the financial industry, I've been instrumental in building new financial infrastructures and innovative products. My notable experience includes leading the digitalization of law and automating controls, and serving as part of JPMorgan’s Blockchain initiative, Onyx, as the Head of Business Architecture and Marketplace. Andrea Lerdo: The inspiration for founding the Palm Foundation came from my passion for decentralization and how blockchain can give access to people shut out of the current system by design and to uplift historically marginalized creative communities in Web3 and this Web2 space. We are missing half of culture, all the people unbanked or off the grid. My vision is for web3 and dapps to act in the same way cellphones act for landlines. Many parts of the world who could or didn’t need landlines, went directly to cell phones. In the same way the hope is for existing web users to transition to Web 3 and for new people onboarding today to skip web2 and move directly to web3 and decentralized applications. Thus, the mission of the Palm Foundation is to democratize art and technology, fostering creativity, and supporting artists from underrepresented backgrounds. Our strategy at Palm Foundation focuses on amplifying the work of creators, fans, brands and developers within the Web3 ecosystem, and broadening the usage of the Palm Network through partnerships, grants, and scholarship programs. Education is a key pillar, with our Palm Academy providing Web3 education across various topics. Looking ahead, the Palm Network is undergoing significant technological advancements. Initially using a Proof-of-Authority (PoA) mechanism, we transitioned to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) chain in August 2023, enhancing our network's security and decentralization. The next big step in 2024 is transitioning to a Polygon ZK Supernet. This move will scale our network's capacity significantly, leveraging zero-knowledge proofs (zkEVMs) to improve scalability and privacy while maintaining Ethereum compatibility. This strategic shift aligns with our goal to make NFT-related activities more accessible and efficient, particularly in the realms of creators, sports, and entertainment. So, our vision at the Palm Foundation is to create an inclusive, innovative environment where culture & creativity meets technology. We're passionate about the future and committed to making a significant impact in the Web3 space, continually adapting and growing to meet the evolving needs of our community. Ishan Pandey: What initiatives are in place to support and attract diverse projects and platforms across various creative disciplines? The Palm Foundation has developed: Andrea Lerdo: comprehensive Governance as-a-service Toolkit: the Palm Collective, marking a significant advancement in the realm of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). The Palm Collective, built and supported by both , a leading blockchain and web3 software company and , a growth and development team in support of the Polygon network, empowers users to create, manage and govern their Palm Communities by leveraging blockchain technology. It ushers in a new era where creators have control over their outputs and communities, and brands can transform user experiences into community exercises, giving users or fans a voice. The Palm Collective: Consensys Polygon Palm Foundation in partnership with Patio by ZsONAMACO: , the non-profit nurturing projects developed on Palm Network, is offering a $45,000 grant to artists selected by Patio curatorial committee. The award will be shared among artists chosen to have installations exhibited at Patio by ZsONAMACO during the Art Baja California art fair. Palm Foundation Palm Foundation in partnership with LagosMX / Momentum: The partnership introduces an expanded initiative for 2024, inviting international artists and curators from around the world to participate in the Momentum-Lagos Artist Residency Program. This collaborative initiative lies in the 20 grants offered by the Palm Foundation, providing artists with up to $750 in 2024 to support their residencies in Berlin or Mexico City. A distinctive feature of the Momentum-Lagos program is its integration of blockchain technology and (NFTs). To be eligible for a grant, artists are required to commit to creating 3-5 NFTs as part of their residency project. The Palm Foundation will provide technical assistance for NFT minting, ensuring that artists can navigate this innovative space with confidence. Non-Fungible Tokens Ishan Pandey: In what ways does PalmDAO empower individuals to shape their destiny through blockchain technology? The Palm Collective Toolkit offers a suite of tools and modules designed to overcome the limitations of traditional DAOs. This enables Palm Communities to create their unique governance systems, influencing the broader Palm Collective ecosystem while maintaining independence and developing governance structures tailored to their own needs. Andrea Lerdo: It also introduces the PalmID, a feature that lets users establish an identity on the Palm Collective protocol. This identity, backed by multiple verifiers, enhances the legitimacy of user participation and strengthens the integrity of the collective’s governance protocol. The protocol rewards users who chose to add verifiers, allowing the user to unlock more functionality. Among other advantages introduced by the User’s Toolkit will be the ability for users to create and collect soulbound tokens called Proofs like badges for their contributions to the Palm Collective, Palm Communities and/or individual initiatives. These Proofs can serve as totems of recognition and membership to the Palm Collective and Palm Communities (SubDAOs) granting exclusive access, voting rights or privileges within an ecosystem. In a significant departure from other web3 platforms, voting on the Palm Collective has little to no cost, removing barriers to participation and fostering a more inclusive environment. The platform is committed to evolving alongside the rapidly changing landscape of decentralized governance, ensuring a vibrant ecosystem of innovation. The Palm Collective incentivizes feedback from the community as new features are enabled with the aim of making the Palm Collective build and design a community driven effort. Another cool feature is the unique contribution-weighted voting system, tied to the Proofs collected by the user. In order to unlock votes, users will require both Proofs and the native $PALM token, establishing a more democratic system than traditional DAO models which match one token to one vote systems.  Together, these features ensure an democratized and impactful decision-making process, giving users the chance to have their voices heard in the management of the Palm Collective and respective Palm Communities. PolyArts Community:  an assembly of global artists representing a broad range of mediums of Polygon, invites all artists to participate in the bleeding-edge intersection of technology, art, and community. All artists are encouraged to join in celebrating a dedicated digital home for creators where value can be dictated by artists themselves. PolyArts Call for Artistic Creators Open February 15th to Feb 28rd, 2024: Collect the Poly Arts Membership Proof & Submit your art for the chance to win a $1000.00 dollar grant by the Palm Foundation. Palm Academy Community: The Palm Academy Mission is to provide high-quality education that equips people with the skills and knowledge they need to thrive in the web3 era. At the Palm Academy we are all students and we are all teachers. Ishan Pandey: Can you elaborate on Palm Foundation's plans to improve global access to Web3 education and training, and how do you intend to achieve this goal? Could you elaborate further on the factors influencing the decision to move from PoA to PoS and the current progress in migrating to a zkEVM? The Palm Academy aims to move from “upload resume” to “connect wallet”. By Collecting Attendance of Course Completed Proofs, people can show the skills they have learnt by taking Palm Academy courses, giving the broader palm community visibility of such skills. Thus, it's the community that will determine if such skills match a role or need in the broader Palm ecosystem. Moving away from a centralized form of certification / education and into a community weighted recognition of our skills. Andrea Lerdo: The Proofs collected by attending or completing Palm Academy courses will give the user the ability to unlock votes within the Palm Academy Community in order for the community to decide what courses and training they want to activate in the future. If you have something to teach and want to share it with the community, please submit your Class Syllabus at . https://academy.palmfdn.org/ Ishan Pandey: What role do you see partnerships playing in the future success of Palm Foundation and PalmDAO? Andrea Lerdo: Palm is on the road to radical decentralization which is why we migrated from a POA to a POS chain, now a fully decentralized chain on Polygon technology that allows anyone to become a validator on the network. In alliance with two of the largest technology partners in web3: Polygon and  ConsenSys. This allows for a network that is very fast and interoperable, robust with low waste, specifically designed for the needs and transactions of communities. We are democratizing the ability for creators to connect and gather their community directly through a deep investment in building low-code tools and platforms. As well as using those tools to educate people about the technology and uses of the Palm Network. Palm is the home of global sports, entertainment, and creative IP because these partners trust our foundational technology and the teams who build on it. The scale of these partners delivers immediate value, reducing the risk of creating or building with our tools and transacting in the Palm ecosystem. Ishan Pandey: How does Palm Network ensure compliance with existing and anticipated regulations related to blockchain and cryptocurrency? Andrea Lerdo: Palm understands the difficult regulatory environment we are in, which is why we are planning for the most decentralized token launch ever. At launch the early contributors of the network will mint their token allocation directly from the Genesis contract, and the remainder token supply will go directly to the Palm Collective (DAO) treasury. Additional tokens will be claimable or airdropped to the community and validator reward reserves, instead of having the token allocated to the Foundation and then from the foundation to the Contributors. Ishan Pandey: How does Palm Network contribute to the broader global impact of Web3, and what role does it play in shaping the next generation of the digital and creative landscape? Andrea Lerdo: Palm is the low code no code chain that allows for the web2 or crypto-curious user to use blockchain solutions without a developer or coding background. Ishan Pandey: What challenges do you foresee for Palm Network in the evolving Web3 space, and how do you plan to navigate these challenges? Andrea Lerdo: Onboarding and adoption are the main challenges we face as an ecosystem, we hope that the creators, brands and fans who chose to build on Palm find in our network the home for them to explore web3 in a friendly, seamless and secure way. Don’t forget to like and share the story! Vested Interest Disclosure: This author is an independent contributor publishing via our brand-as-author program. Be it through direct compensation, media partnerships, or networking, the author has a vested interest in the company/ies mentioned in this story. HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR

Behind the Startup: Andrea Lerdo's Journey from JPMorgan to Blockchain Pioneer

স্টার্টআপের পিছনে: জেপিমরগান থেকে ব্লকচেইন পাইওনিয়ার পর্যন্ত আন্দ্রে লারডোর যাত্রা

Hinter dem Startup: Andrea Lerdos Reise von JPMorgan zum Blockchain-Pionier

Detrás de la startup: el viaje de Andrea Lerdo de JPMorgan a Blockchain Pioneer

Derrière la startup : le parcours d'Andrea Lerdo de JPMorgan à Blockchain Pioneer

स्टार्टअप के पीछे: एंड्रिया लेर्डो की जेपी मॉर्गन से ब्लॉकचेन पायनियर तक की यात्रा

スタートアップの裏側: JPモルガンからブロックチェーンのパイオニアへのアンドレア・レルドの旅

스타트업 비하인드: JPMorgan에서 블록체인 개척자로 향하는 Andrea Lerdo의 여정

Por trás da startup: a jornada de Andrea Lerdo do JPMorgan ao pioneiro do Blockchain

За стартапом: путь Андреа Лердо от JPMorgan до пионера блокчейна

Startup'ın Arkasında: Andrea Lerdo'nun JPMorgan'dan Blockchain Öncülüğüne Yolculuğu

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