Mongrov is a technology startup, specializes in customer engagement \u0026 happiness with these core spheres:\n\nDigital identity and assets\nSecure collaboration for humans and things\nInstantification and knowledge

Mongrov

mongrov

Interview with Nadja Bester, AdLunam, on finding better blockchain projects/investors & the power of the Attention Economy. There is no doubt that 2021 has been a historical year – largely a horrible year in RL, punctuated by a pandemic, political extremism and unrest, and historical economic disparity. But it has also been “the year of the NFT,” . It has been a year of new highs in investing, in cryptocurrency, and in traditional investments. according to Jordan Belfort In this environment, blockchain innovation continues to thrive and as new projects pour into the space there is a reliable demand for funding. Retail investors are eager to find new projects that can take their investments to the moon. Blockchain projects with use cases that meet real needs are looking for investors that will also be long-term supporters, keeping the value of the project steady and filling the community with support and attention. Nadja Bester believes that there is a better way to connect investors and projects, one that rewards interactions between projects and investors and allows both sides to be diligent and choose the right investor/project for them. In Q3 2021, Nadja co-founded AdLunam, a “Web 3.0 cryptocurrency investment ecosystem that allows investors to invest in early-stage and go-to-market projects via an Engage to Earn Proof of Attention model.” AdLunam plans to launch its first cohort of projects in Q1 of the new year and they hope to leverage the Attention Economy to encourage more interactions between qualified investors and projects. We spoke with Nadja concerning their new project and their goals for the new year. Nadja Bester What attracts projects to IDOs? Why not raise money privately? “To understand IDO (Initial DEX Offering) platforms, we must talk about mangroves. Mangroves are a loosely connected mishmash of tree species that share one extraordinary commonality: They grow in oxygen-poor soil that's flooded with saltwater every time the tide comes in. What makes them so remarkable is that they've managed to flourish in an environment that would kill off even the hardiest tree. Crypto in its infancy is like a mangrove estuary. So where do IDO platforms fit in? Nurseries. Mangroves are nurseries par excellence. Estuaries that form around mangroves offer juveniles from different species and taxonomies protection against predators until they're ready to venture out by themselves. Similarly, the original purpose of a launchpad was to offer investors a buffer against predatory projects. After the 2018-2019 Wild West, investors needed protection. This focus quickly expanded into offering new projects the support they need to grow independent and prosperous,” Bester said. How did AdLunam start? What was the initial idea? “When we were ideating the concept behind AdLunam, we were determined that it couldn't be just another platform to add to the body count. We held ourselves to strict parameters: Either we reinvent how IDOs are done, or we'd be better off doing something else. The problems we'd be solving… had to address real pain points that to date had remained unsolvable. Double points if it was a victim of the additive bias and could be solved without the need for millions of dollars and years down the black hole of R&D. Our solution had to benefit our two stakeholder groups equally – the projects and the investors,” Bester said. What is AdLunam offering that's new for projects? “Any project that's gone through private fundraising rounds knows how valuable it is to have negotiation discussions with VCs in terms of the value-add and how important it is to be able to decline offers from institutional investors who don't share your vision or values. The ability to vet investors is crucial in ensuring a healthy cap table, yet as soon as it hits the retail investment round, projects are going in blind, with no way of knowing whether your retail investors are good or bad actors or whether they they share the long-term vision for the project. One of our key focus areas was to extend a project's ability to do due diligence on their investors from the seed stage all the way up to IDO. With AdLunam, projects get to hand-pick the investors they want to reward allocation to, basing their decisions on a dashboard of robust data analytics that offers a detailed overview of an investor's profile,” Bester said. What is AdLunam offering that's new for buyers? “It is the Attention Economy. We've reluctantly accepted the idea that if it's free, you are the product. Crypto has flipped that model on its head, and projects are literally paying to get investor attention. Projects end up spending vast marketing budgets on haphazard AMAs and giveaways, hoping to retain investor attention past these fleeting 'retweet 'n win' moments. There are vast swaths of crypto investors out for the hunt, hoping to win $10 here, $20 there. They're not emotionally invested – or often even interested at all – in these brands... They play the odds, and the odds play them… We knew that the rules of engagement between projects and investors had to give. These days, in a lot of ways, launchpads are skewed in favor of the tokens they list, and investors often pull at the short end of the stick. Thus was born our Engage-to-Earn model, a gamified approach to engagement whereby investors are continuously rewarded for the time and energy they invest in participating in crypto discussions or creating content…,” Bester said. How is AdLunam helping to stimulate interactions between projects and supporters? “Society is based largely on a zero-sum game principle. There can only be one winner.. A non-zero-sum game is a more intelligent – and sustainable – long-term strategy… Win/win cooperation is essential if there's going to be any sort of continuity. So, a project desires a win/win relationship with its investors, namely a shared long-term loyalty to token growth. As for a launchpad, a ready-made investor community lies at its core. The question we asked ourselves was whether we could create a platform that gives both stakeholders what they deserve without depriving each other in the process. And I think we've managed to do just that,” Bester said. How does Proof of Attention work? What are the platform mechanics? “Proof of Attention is one-half of AdLunam's Investor Profile NFT offering. The other is a Wallet Scorecard. Proof of Attention is a formulaic approach to quantifying and qualifying investor engagement. Gamifi Engage to Earn forms part of our ecosystem, a type of Grand Central Station out in space.. Open to anyone, free to join and participate, an investor can build up a sizable presence here with nothing more than their social capital contributions. An investor's Wallet Scorecard, on the other hand, is a slow-burn qualifier. Our data collection includes aspects such as the age of the wallet, funds transfer frequency, and very importantly, how quickly an airdrop or allocation token is dumped. Over time, this builds up a revealing picture of an investor's behavioral patterns, and projects can take this into consideration when extending allocation. Together, an investor's Engagement and Wallet Scores is represented as a dynamic NFT (dNFT) that holds their store of value as an investor, and the value of these dNFTs increase or decrease depending on their actions within the AdLunam ecosystem. Investing into projects happens in the launchpad area of the AdLunam platform, exclusive by-invitation-only project spaces where projects can reward the top-standing investors of their choosing with airdrops, allocation, and community rewards,” Bester said. Who is the platform specifically for among buyers? Among projects? “For investors, we have a 70/30 split. For higher tiers, 70% of an IDO's allocation is guaranteed and relates to staking $LUNAM. Through our Seedpad, retail investors who lack access to early-stage deal flow will be able to connect with projects seeking sanction elements like points, badges, ranks, and leaderboards, making this a very dynamic environment in which engagement actions yield immediate results.. The Engage to Earn model is built around the other 30%... For projects, we offer a range of options. Launch your token through Launchpad. Kickstart your community early on through Seedpad. And if you're a Web 2.0 company – startup or well-established – looking to pivot your offerings into Web 3, then Space Camp takes you through the entire pipeline, from initial advisory services to growing your community and launching your IDO. We're extremely bullish on this technology and this industry and as a result, we have a vested interest in diversifying our product lines. We're not a niche launchpad and we have no intentions of shunning fantastic DeFi projects simply because the metaverse is the hype of the hour. However, personally speaking, as a female-led company in a male-dominated industry, at a time when sustainable development is necessarily inserting itself into every conversation, with a track record of supporting entrepreneurs in emerging markets, my door is open for projects who find themselves on the fringes of mainstream crypto,” Bester said. Summary The pandemic and general global hardships of 2021 have accelerated the need for economic equality and for many new retail investors including access to markets and the ability to invest in start-up projects. It has also driven the need for investment money to fuel new projects. After watching the classic ICO crash and burn, it’s natural for projects to seek new funding sources and try to find a better way of funding innovation. Launchpads like AdLunam and another step forward in looking for a more perfect exchange between investors and projects in a way that better serves both sides. There are many new entrants in the space, but the idea of tracking and rewarding interactions is clever. But 2022 is likely to be a continuation of the “show don’t tell” attitude in blockchain, so ultimately we will see based on its first cohort of projects in 2022. Lead image credit: on Pixabay.* ipicgr

IDOs Work Like Mangroves

Let's learn about via these 44 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. We Building /Learn Repo 1. Is Your Social Media Actually Social? Social media is “social” in the sense it relates to society at large. People seek connection with society to find the communities they belong to, a marketplace for their services and ensure their own welfare as a member of that society. 2. Introducing the Terminal Reader App by HackerNoon This is a web application with the intention of providing a different way of reading. Yes, you will be reading in a terminal-like application. 3. Here's How I Built a Quiz App for Remote Team Building [A Step by Step Guide] The COVID-19 pandemic and statewide stay-at-home order have caused many companies, including mine, to close their offices, restrict travel, and require all employees to work remotely. 4. Going beyond StartUp Revenue and Traffic metrics! What areas of transparency do companies cover? 5. Perp v2 Goes Open Source: Including Codebase, frontend SDK, and Subgraph After months of hard work, we are pleased to announce that our Curie contract codebase, the frontend SDK and subgraph are now all open source. 6. I'm Failing at Building a Startup and Here's Why - Part 1: The Problem The problems faced and the lessons learned working on a startup and launching an app. 7. For My Dad, I Automated Bulk WhatsApp Messaging using Python - Here's How So, this Whatsapp just irritates my dad. 8. What We Learned While Designing a Mobile Payments SDK Yesterday, we released version 1.1.0 of the Nami SDK for iOS. To mark this release, we thought we’d share some details about how we approach development of the SDK including our key design goals. 9. I Created a Google Chrome Extension to Read Online Articles For You In this article I want to talk about a chrome extension that I made, it’s called WhistleX. You may have heard of it if you have read my articles because, I mentioned it, but I didn’t say that it’s mine and that I made it. 10. Pending Cops in Rubocop to Make Upgrade Easier [Project Update] Whenever a new version of Rubocop comes out, there are always some new cops. If our code is not compatible with new cops, then the rubocop build fails. With every new release, we have to spend time to make our code compatible with the new cops. Well not any more! 11. We Raised $450k For Omnisearch’s  Pre-Seed Round: Here's What We Learned Eight key takeaways from raising Omnisearch's pre-seed round. 12. Replace your Coffee with Brain Stimulation To Enhance Focus and Increase Productivity In this interview with Balder Onarheim, co-founder and CEO of PlatoScience we explore the advances in neurostimulation (Transcranial Electrical Stimulation, TES) and how it can be used to enhance focus and creativity. Can you give a quick background about you and how you got to this technology? 13. Why I Built Overbit Rewards Hub — a Game Changer for Crypto The cryptocurrency market is in the middle of transitioning into an era of mass-market flourishing, by all measures. Putting aside the fact that Bitcoin is now breaking price barriers with speed, account activity, institutional adoption, regulation — these are all pointing towards adoption. 14. How to get into Crypto Trading: An Interview with David Waslen David Waslen was finance first, then tech and, in the latter, he was influenced by his good friend and co-founder of HedgeTrade, Peter Danihel. David has studied in the States as well as in the UK, taking a number of economic degrees. 15. Here's How I Built An ETH Wallet On A Cheap NFC sticker Story of how I tried to become a cyborg, but with a geeky twist 16. I Developed A Visual Development Tool For Web Applications with React Hi, my name is Alex, I’m the author of Webcodesk. In this article, I want to tell you why I created Webcodesk and why I consider it a great tool to develop Web applications with React. 17. The GoDaddy Hack Would've Been Impossible In The Dappy System Dappy is a first of its kind open source web browser and name system that addresses at the same time the structural flaws of the Domain Name System 18. Building A Tezos's Smart Contract Dashboard Using ReactJS, TezBridge and Netlify [A How-To Guide] I always find it troublesome for me to deploy and interact with Tezos’s Smart Contract at my job as a Software Engineer in my company. So, I decided to build a tool (web app) to solve my problem. 19. Will AES-256 Withstand The Gauntlet Thrown by Quantum Computers? With quantum computers getting more powerful every year, many worry about the safety of modern encryption standards. As quantum computers improve in performance and the number of qubits used for calculations increase, current crypto systems are under more threat of attack. 20. Use My App - NFT Maker To Make Your First NFT for FREE With this Android App You can create 1 NFT for free, easy as just to fill a form 21. We Are Making Crypto More Usable In The FIAT world Bitcoin & crypto were originally intended to be used as a currency. Hardly surprising that has not happened when it’s so complex for non tech savvy and without a marketplace for buyers and sellers to transact. 22. I Built A Handy Browser Plugin To Search Docs And Packages Directly From The Address Bar Hi all. I'm so honored to introduce my product: Go Search Extension, a handy browser plugin to help every Go developer search docs and package in the address bar instantly. 23. We Built A Coronavirus Map with COVID-19 Data and Travel Restrictions Across All Countries Back in March my teammates and I switched from our regular tasks working on a travel platform to building a COVID-19 monitoring service. Here is what we’ve managed to get done so far: 24. How We Migrated From Software Factory into Product Development Studio We were in college when we decided to start a company. At that time, it didn’t matter what type of company. 25. Find and Fix Problems in .env Files With Dotenv-linter v2.2.0 We have developed dotenv-linter — a useful tool for checking .env files. It helps to find problems in .env files that you might miss at first, but which later may result in incorrect work of applications. 26. Slack Will Reject Your App: 5 Reasons From Someone Who's Been Through The Process, TWICE At a time when businesses are increasingly relying on Slack for
day-to-day operations, the Slack App Directory is thriving. These days,
there are Slack apps for everything: from polls to team recognition, to daily standups, to promoting inclusive language. There has never been a better time to be a Slack user. 27. BitBanged SPI in Go [Explained] I’m going to focus mostly on some design decisions and how I went about writing an SPI interface using Go on a Raspberry Pi. I assume my readers have a basic understanding of what a Raspberry Pi is, and how basic electronics work. If not, read on anyway and I will be sure to include some valuable resources below. 28. Could Blockchain Innovation Be The Source of Prosperity for Nation? In 2020, apart from falling cryptocurrency prices following the stock price due to being dragged by the coronavirus, we see some news in the blockchain industry that is quite encouraging for us in terms of innovation and economic growth potential. 29. I Started An Open Source Project To Help DeFi Developers and Companies Most of the DeFi projects are built on the Ethereum blockchain, so I thought that would be cool to collaborate with the community by giving some tools to make the development easier for everyone. 30. Why I Decided to Bring a New Cloud Data Warehouse to Market So we’ve all heard that “data is the new oil” way too many times. It’s been said so often that I personally feel slightly nauseous every time someone says that (sorry). 31. Text Classification in iOS using tensorflowlite [A How-To Guide] Text classification is task of categorising text according to its content. It is the fundamental problem in the field of Natural Language Processing(NLP). More general applications of text classifications are in email spam detection, sentiment analysis and topic labelling etc. 32. How learning Elixir helped me build a SaaS for Marketers In 2019, I was looking for a project. 33. Building An Ethereum-based Decentralized casino: How I Did It There are a lot of different gambling platforms out there. But there is almost no project that offers a transparent and fair experience. Let's fix that! 34. We Built A Lightweight Project Management Tool on Slack We communicated via Slack and Trello almost exclusively for the past three years at OneBar. Recently, we’ve discovered a way to reduce communications to just Slack, and the team loves the new, lighter process! It worked for us, and there’s a great chance it’ll work for you too! 35. What I Learnt About A/B Testing by A/B Testing my Landing Page In this post, I would share about my experience with and without A/B testing on Howuku landing page and how adopting A/B testing has improved my landing page conversion rates by 60%. 36. Here's Why We Built a Web App for Open Reviews with Open Source Infrastructure We built a service for online reviews that makes the insights you share accessible across any application, and that does not invade your privacy. Leave proprietary data silos behind and enter the open data ecosystem of Mangrove reviews. 37. Here's Our "So, We Decided To Start Sending Out A Newsletter" Story We’re a custom software house with a team of 25 developers. During 2020 we’ve been experimenting with different B2B marketing techniques: one of these was an email newsletter, which we trialled at the beginning of September. Here’s how it went. 38. My Roadmap For Making a Popular Workout App From Scratch First, welcome to my series of “My Roadmap For Making a Popular Workout App”. I will share with you my trip to make my workout app into a popular mobile app. 39. How We're Building an EVOLVING Blockchain The CEO of Koinos Group explains how they built a blockchain that evolves 40. Free TON: How It Started Vs. How It's Going The Durov brothers fought for a very long time with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the adoption of the Telegram Open Network (TON) in the US, which led to the official statement by Pavel Durov to close the project and stop its development. Nevertheless, the open source code of the project gave a second chance. With the help of TON repositories, a group of independent enthusiasts collected all the best that was created by the Telegram development team and released their project called Free TON with the TON Crystal cryptocurrency.Like other POS networks that have their own decentralized management, Free TON has its own declaration, which spelled out all the ideas and concepts of the community and the Free TON decentralized network. All the philosophical foundations of the project can be found in this foundation of the declaration. The Declaration on Decentralization is gradual, it was not created in a few days. And while the process of creating a full-fledged declaration was going on, more and more participants joined the project – both from the side of developers and users, and from the side of users who were interested in this project. These members have formed a very active and large crypto community in a short period of time, which is currently one of the largest independent cryptocurrency communities. How it all began? From the very beginning, there were people who were very much involved in the TON project (which was directed by Pavel Durov). They were looking forward to launching all over the world. When Pavel Durov announced the closure of the project, these people were very upset. They decided that closing a project that they had been working on for over 2 years was humiliating. A lot of people spent a huge amount of time and effort on a project, which was then closed on the grounds that the money was not collected the way someone wanted – this is nonsense. It was these people who became the one that was used, helped to gain huge publicity among ordinary people and cryptocurrency enthusiasts. On May 7, 2020, the official launch of the Free TON project took place. In addition to launching the project, the TON Labs team published the main components of TON OS on GitHub. Free TON has grown very quickly as a truly decentralized community driven project. Today, Free TON is an active community of cryptocurrency enthusiasts with over 30,000 members worldwide who contribute daily to the development of both the Free TON blockchain and TON Crystal digital coins. The Free TON community is self-sufficient. All changes within the community and the blockchain take place after the approval of the community members and nothing else. There is no centralized governing body and project community. As a result of the interaction of all these factors and the efforts of the programmers, a wide range of software developments has been provided, aimed at significantly improving tooling and changes in protocols. 41. 🎉 Deno: 1.0: A Review of Features [We're Going Live] 🤠 Introduction 42. Building a Successful Fintech by Listening to the Market (Founder Interview) When serial entrepreneur Illit Geller started telling me her story, I could instantly see why the fintech startup she founded, TradAir raised $11M in its latest funding round. 43. I Built a Crypto-Trading Bot...and Am Now Looking For People to Share My Profits With 44. I Built The One Browser Extension To Rule Them All How the Platypush web extension makes it easy to customize your browser and connect things together Thank you for checking out the 44 most read stories about We Building on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

44 Stories To Learn About The "We Building" Mindset 

After a voyage of seventy-four days, the "Pilgrim" had stranded

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . VANIKORO here CHAPTER XVIII: VANIKORO This terrible spectacle was the forerunner of the series of maritime catastrophes that the was destined to meet with in its route. As long as it went through more frequented waters, we often saw the hulls of shipwrecked vessels that were rotting in the depths, and deeper down cannons, bullets, anchors, chains, and a thousand other iron materials eaten up by rust. However, on the 11th of December we sighted the Pomotou Islands, the old “dangerous group” of Bougainville, that extend over a space of 500 leagues at E.S.E. to W.N.W., from the Island Ducie to that of Lazareff. This group covers an area of 370 square leagues, and it is formed of sixty groups of islands, among which the Gambier group is remarkable, over which France exercises sway. These are coral islands, slowly raised, but continuous, created by the daily work of polypi. Then this new island will be joined later on to the neighboring groups, and a fifth continent will stretch from New Zealand and New Caledonia, and from thence to the Marquesas. Nautilus One day, when I was suggesting this theory to Captain Nemo, he replied coldly: “The earth does not want new continents, but new men.” Chance had conducted the towards the Island of Clermont-Tonnere, one of the most curious of the group, that was discovered in 1822 by Captain Bell of the Minerva. I could study now the madreporal system, to which are due the islands in this ocean. Nautilus Madrepores (which must not be mistaken for corals) have a tissue lined with a calcareous crust, and the modifications of its structure have induced M. Milne Edwards, my worthy master, to class them into five sections. The animalcule that the marine polypus secretes live by millions at the bottom of their cells. Their calcareous deposits become rocks, reefs, and large and small islands. Here they form a ring, surrounding a little inland lake, that communicates with the sea by means of gaps. There they make barriers of reefs like those on the coasts of New Caledonia and the various Pomoton islands. In other places, like those at Reunion and at Maurice, they raise fringed reefs, high, straight walls, near which the depth of the ocean is considerable. Some cable-lengths off the shores of the Island of Clermont I admired the gigantic work accomplished by these microscopical workers. These walls are specially the work of those madrepores known as milleporas, porites, madrepores, and astraeas. These polypi are found particularly in the rough beds of the sea, near the surface; and consequently it is from the upper part that they begin their operations, in which they bury themselves by degrees with the debris of the secretions that support them. Such is, at least, Darwin’s theory, who thus explains the formation of the , a superior theory (to my mind) to that given of the foundation of the madreporical works, summits of mountains or volcanoes, that are submerged some feet below the level of the sea. atolls I could observe closely these curious walls, for perpendicularly they were more than 300 yards deep, and our electric sheets lighted up this calcareous matter brilliantly. Replying to a question Conseil asked me as to the time these colossal barriers took to be raised, I astonished him much by telling him that learned men reckoned it about the eighth of an inch in a hundred years. Towards evening Clermont-Tonnerre was lost in the distance, and the route of the was sensibly changed. After having crossed the tropic of Capricorn in 135° longitude, it sailed W.N.W., making again for the tropical zone. Although the summer sun was very strong, we did not suffer from heat, for at fifteen or twenty fathoms below the surface, the temperature did not rise above from ten to twelve degrees. Nautilus On 15th of December, we left to the east the bewitching group of the Societies and the graceful Tahiti, queen of the Pacific. I saw in the morning, some miles to the windward, the elevated summits of the island. These waters furnished our table with excellent fish, mackerel, bonitos, and some varieties of a sea-serpent. On the 25th of December the sailed into the midst of the New Hebrides, discovered by Quiros in 1606, and that Bougainville explored in 1768, and to which Cook gave its present name in 1773. This group is composed principally of nine large islands, that form a band of 120 leagues N.N.S. to S.S.W., between 15° and 2° S. lat., and 164 deg. and 168° long. We passed tolerably near to the Island of Aurou, that at noon looked like a mass of green woods, surmounted by a peak of great height. Nautilus That day being Christmas Day, Ned Land seemed to regret sorely the non-celebration of “Christmas,” the family fete of which Protestants are so fond. I had not seen Captain Nemo for a week, when, on the morning of the 27th, he came into the large drawing-room, always seeming as if he had seen you five minutes before. I was busily tracing the route of the on the planisphere. The Captain came up to me, put his finger on one spot on the chart, and said this single word. Nautilus “Vanikoro.” The effect was magical! It was the name of the islands on which La Perouse had been lost! I rose suddenly. “The has brought us to Vanikoro?” I asked. Nautilus “Yes, Professor,” said the Captain. “And I can visit the celebrated islands where the Boussole and the Astrolabe struck?” “If you like, Professor.” “When shall we be there?” “We are there now.” Followed by Captain Nemo, I went up on to the platform, and greedily scanned the horizon. To the N.E. two volcanic islands emerged of unequal size, surrounded by a coral reef that measured forty miles in circumference. We were close to Vanikoro, really the one to which Dumont d’Urville gave the name of Isle de la Recherche, and exactly facing the little harbour of Vanou, situated in 16° 4′ S. lat., and 164° 32′ E. long. The earth seemed covered with verdure from the shore to the summits in the interior, that were crowned by Mount Kapogo, 476 feet high. The , having passed the outer belt of rocks by a narrow strait, found itself among breakers where the sea was from thirty to forty fathoms deep. Under the verdant shade of some mangroves I perceived some savages, who appeared greatly surprised at our approach. In the long black body, moving between wind and water, did they not see some formidable cetacean that they regarded with suspicion? Nautilus Just then Captain Nemo asked me what I knew about the wreck of La Perouse. “Only what everyone knows, Captain,” I replied. “And could you tell me what everyone knows about it?” he inquired, ironically. “Easily.” I related to him all that the last works of Dumont d’Urville had made known—works from which the following is a brief account. La Perouse, and his second, Captain de Langle, were sent by Louis XVI, in 1785, on a voyage of circumnavigation. They embarked in the corvettes Boussole and the Astrolabe, neither of which were again heard of. In 1791, the French Government, justly uneasy as to the fate of these two sloops, manned two large merchantmen, the Recherche and the Esperance, which left Brest the 28th of September under the command of Bruni d’Entrecasteaux. Two months after, they learned from Bowen, commander of the Albemarle, that the debris of shipwrecked vessels had been seen on the coasts of New Georgia. But D’Entrecasteaux, ignoring this communication—rather uncertain, besides—directed his course towards the Admiralty Islands, mentioned in a report of Captain Hunter’s as being the place where La Perouse was wrecked. They sought in vain. The Esperance and the Recherche passed before Vanikoro without stopping there, and, in fact, this voyage was most disastrous, as it cost D’Entrecasteaux his life, and those of two of his lieutenants, besides several of his crew. Captain Dillon, a shrewd old Pacific sailor, was the first to find unmistakable traces of the wrecks. On the 15th of May, 1824, his vessel, the St. Patrick, passed close to Tikopia, one of the New Hebrides. There a Lascar came alongside in a canoe, sold him the handle of a sword in silver that bore the print of characters engraved on the hilt. The Lascar pretended that six years before, during a stay at Vanikoro, he had seen two Europeans that belonged to some vessels that had run aground on the reefs some years ago. Dillon guessed that he meant La Perouse, whose disappearance had troubled the whole world. He tried to get on to Vanikoro, where, according to the Lascar, he would find numerous debris of the wreck, but winds and tides prevented him. Dillon returned to Calcutta. There he interested the Asiatic Society and the Indian Company in his discovery. A vessel, to which was given the name of the Recherche, was put at his disposal, and he set out, 23rd January, 1827, accompanied by a French agent. The Recherche, after touching at several points in the Pacific, cast anchor before Vanikoro, 7th July, 1827, in that same harbour of Vanou where the was at this time. Nautilus There it collected numerous relics of the wreck—iron utensils, anchors, pulley-strops, swivel-guns, an 18 lbs. shot, fragments of astronomical instruments, a piece of crown work, and a bronze clock, bearing this inscription—“Bazin m’a fait,” the mark of the foundry of the arsenal at Brest about 1785. There could be no further doubt. Dillon, having made all inquiries, stayed in the unlucky place till October. Then he quitted Vanikoro, and directed his course towards New Zealand; put into Calcutta, 7th April, 1828, and returned to France, where he was warmly welcomed by Charles X. But at the same time, without knowing Dillon’s movements, Dumont d’Urville had already set out to find the scene of the wreck. And they had learned from a whaler that some medals and a cross of St. Louis had been found in the hands of some savages of Louisiade and New Caledonia. Dumont d’Urville, commander of the Astrolabe, had then sailed, and two months after Dillon had left Vanikoro he put into Hobart Town. There he learned the results of Dillon’s inquiries, and found that a certain James Hobbs, second lieutenant of the Union of Calcutta, after landing on an island situated 8° 18′ S. lat., and 156° 30′ E. long., had seen some iron bars and red stuffs used by the natives of these parts. Dumont d’Urville, much perplexed, and not knowing how to credit the reports of low-class journals, decided to follow Dillon’s track. On the 10th of February, 1828, the Astrolabe appeared off Tikopia, and took as guide and interpreter a deserter found on the island; made his way to Vanikoro, sighted it on the 12th inst., lay among the reefs until the 14th, and not until the 20th did he cast anchor within the barrier in the harbour of Vanou. On the 23rd, several officers went round the island and brought back some unimportant trifles. The natives, adopting a system of denials and evasions, refused to take them to the unlucky place. This ambiguous conduct led them to believe that the natives had ill-treated the castaways, and indeed they seemed to fear that Dumont d’Urville had come to avenge La Perouse and his unfortunate crew. However, on the 26th, appeased by some presents, and understanding that they had no reprisals to fear, they led M. Jacquireot to the scene of the wreck. There, in three or four fathoms of water, between the reefs of Pacou and Vanou, lay anchors, cannons, pigs of lead and iron, embedded in the limy concretions. The large boat and the whaler belonging to the Astrolabe were sent to this place, and, not without some difficulty, their crews hauled up an anchor weighing 1,800 lbs., a brass gun, some pigs of iron, and two copper swivel-guns. Dumont d’Urville, questioning the natives, learned too that La Perouse, after losing both his vessels on the reefs of this island, had constructed a smaller boat, only to be lost a second time. Where, no one knew. But the French Government, fearing that Dumont d’Urville was not acquainted with Dillon’s movements, had sent the sloop Bayonnaise, commanded by Legoarant de Tromelin, to Vanikoro, which had been stationed on the west coast of America. The Bayonnaise cast her anchor before Vanikoro some months after the departure of the Astrolabe, but found no new document; but stated that the savages had respected the monument to La Perouse. That is the substance of what I told Captain Nemo. “So,” he said, “no one knows now where the third vessel perished that was constructed by the castaways on the island of Vanikoro?” “No one knows.” Captain Nemo said nothing, but signed to me to follow him into the large saloon. The sank several yards below the waves, and the panels were opened. Nautilus I hastened to the aperture, and under the crustations of coral, covered with fungi, syphonules, alcyons, madrepores, through myriads of charming fish—girelles, glyphisidri, pompherides, diacopes, and holocentres—I recognised certain debris that the drags had not been able to tear up—iron stirrups, anchors, cannons, bullets, capstan fittings, the stem of a ship, all objects clearly proving the wreck of some vessel, and now carpeted with living flowers. While I was looking on this desolate scene, Captain Nemo said, in a sad voice: “Commander La Perouse set out 7th December, 1785, with his vessels La Boussole and the Astrolabe. He first cast anchor at Botany Bay, visited the Friendly Isles, New Caledonia, then directed his course towards Santa Cruz, and put into Namouka, one of the Hapai group. Then his vessels struck on the unknown reefs of Vanikoro. The Boussole, which went first, ran aground on the southerly coast. The Astrolabe went to its help, and ran aground too. The first vessel was destroyed almost immediately. The second, stranded under the wind, resisted some days. The natives made the castaways welcome. They installed themselves in the island, and constructed a smaller boat with the debris of the two large ones. Some sailors stayed willingly at Vanikoro; the others, weak and ill, set out with La Perouse. They directed their course towards the Solomon Islands, and there perished, with everything, on the westerly coast of the chief island of the group, between Capes Deception and Satisfaction.” “How do you know that?” “By this, that I found on the spot where was the last wreck.” Captain Nemo showed me a tin-plate box, stamped with the French arms, and corroded by the salt water. He opened it, and I saw a bundle of papers, yellow but still readable. They were the instructions of the naval minister to Commander La Perouse, annotated in the margin in Louis XVI’s handwriting. “Ah! it is a fine death for a sailor!” said Captain Nemo, at last. “A coral tomb makes a quiet grave; and I trust that I and my comrades will find no other.” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (1994). Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/164/164-h/164-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

This terrible spectacle was the forerunner of the series of maritime catastrophes

THE EVENING SKY AT THE WINTER SOLSTICE

MAURITIUS TO ENGLAND

The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories, by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour. You have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for the rest you must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your good luck, as your taste may incline. The plant may be moribund or dead, or it may be just a respectable purchase, fair value for your money, or perhaps—for the thing has happened again and again—there slowly unfolds before the delighted eyes of the happy purchaser, day after day, some new variety, some novel richness, a strange twist of the labellum, or some subtler colouration or unexpected mimicry. Pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one delicate green spike, and, it may be, even immortality. For the new miracle of nature may stand in need of a new specific name, and what so convenient as that of its discoverer? "John-smithia"! There have been worse names. It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made Winter Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales—that hope, and also, maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual man, provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments. He might have collected stamps or coins, or translated Horace, or bound books, or invented new species of diatoms. But, as it happened, he grew orchids, and had one ambitious little hothouse. "I have a fancy," he said over his coffee, "that something is going to happen to me to-day." He spoke—as he moved and thought—slowly. "Oh, don't say that!" said his housekeeper—who was also his remote cousin. For "something happening" was a euphemism that meant only one thing to her. "You misunderstand me. I mean nothing unpleasant...though what I do mean I scarcely know. "To-day," he continued, after a pause, "Peters' are going to sell a batch of plants from the Andamans and the Indies. I shall go up and see what they have. It may be I shall buy something good unawares. That may be it." He passed his cup for his second cupful of coffee. "Are these the things collected by that poor young fellow you told me of the other day?" asked his cousin, as she filled his cup. "Yes," he said, and became meditative over a piece of toast. "Nothing ever does happen to me," he remarked presently, beginning to think aloud. "I wonder why? Things enough happen to other people. There is Harvey. Only the other week; on Monday he picked up sixpence, on Wednesday his chicks all had the staggers, on Friday his cousin came home from Australia, and on Saturday he broke his ankle. What a whirl of excitement!—compared to me." "I think I would rather be without so much excitement," said his housekeeper. "It can't be good for you." "I suppose it's troublesome. Still ... you see, nothing ever happens to me. When I was a little boy I never had accidents. I never fell in love as I grew up. Never married... I wonder how it feels to have something happen to you, something really remarkable. "That orchid-collector was only thirty-six—twenty years younger than myself—when he died. And he had been married twice and divorced once; he had had malarial fever four times, and once he broke his thigh. He killed a Malay once, and once he was wounded by a poisoned dart. And in the end he was killed by jungle-leeches. It must have all been very troublesome, but then it must have been very interesting, you know—except, perhaps, the leeches." "I am sure it was not good for him," said the lady with conviction. "Perhaps not." And then Wedderburn looked at his watch. "Twenty-three minutes past eight. I am going up by the quarter to twelve train, so that there is plenty of time. I think I shall wear my alpaca jacket—it is quite warm enough—and my grey felt hat and brown shoes. I suppose—" He glanced out of the window at the serene sky and sunlit garden, and then nervously at his cousin's face. "I think you had better take an umbrella if you are going to London," she said in a voice that admitted of no denial. "There's all between here and the station coming back." When he returned he was in a state of mild excitement. He had made a purchase. It was rare that he could make up his mind quickly enough to buy, but this time he had done so. "There are Vandas," he said, "and a Dendrobe and some Palaeonophis." He surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed his soup. They were laid out on the spotless tablecloth before him, and he was telling his cousin all about them as he slowly meandered through his dinner. It was his custom to live all his visits to London over again in the evening for her and his own entertainment. "I knew something would happen to-day. And I have bought all these. Some of them—some of them—I feel sure, do you know, that some of them will be remarkable. I don't know how it is, but I feel just as sure as if some one had told me that some of these will turn out remarkable. "That one "—he pointed to a shrivelled rhizome—"was not identified. It may be a Palaeonophis—or it may not. It may be a new species, or even a new genus. And it was the last that poor Batten ever collected." "I don't like the look of it," said his housekeeper. "It's such an ugly shape." "To me it scarcely seems to have a shape." "I don't like those things that stick out," said his housekeeper. "It shall be put away in a pot to-morrow." "It looks," said the housekeeper, "like a spider shamming dead." Wedderburn smiled and surveyed the root with his head on one side. "It is certainly not a pretty lump of stuff. But you can never judge of these things from their dry appearance. It may turn out to be a very beautiful orchid indeed. How busy I shall be to-morrow! I must see to-night just exactly what to do with these things, and to-morrow I shall set to work." "They found poor Batten lying dead, or dying, in a mangrove swamp—I forget which," he began again presently, "with one of these very orchids crushed up under his body. He had been unwell for some days with some kind of native fever, and I suppose he fainted. These mangrove swamps are very unwholesome. Every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him by the jungle-leeches. It may be that very plant that cost him his life to obtain." "I think none the better of it for that." "Men must work though women may weep," said Wedderburn with profound gravity. "Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp! Fancy being ill of fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine—if men were left to themselves they would live on chlorodyne and quinine—and no one round you but horrible natives! They say the Andaman islanders are most disgusting wretches—and, anyhow, they can scarcely make good nurses, not having the necessary training. And just for people in England to have orchids!" "I don't suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to enjoy that kind of thing," said Wedderburn. "Anyhow, the natives of his party were sufficiently civilised to take care of all his collection until his colleague, who was an ornithologist, came back again from the interior; though they could not tell the species of the orchid, and had let it wither. And it makes these things more interesting." "It makes them disgusting. I should be afraid of some of the malaria clinging to them. And just think, there has been a dead body lying across that ugly thing! I never thought of that before. There! I declare I cannot eat another mouthful of dinner." "I will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the window-seat. I can see them just as well there." The next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all the other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. He considered he was having a wonderfully eventful time. In the evening he would talk about these new orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted to his expectation of something strange. Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care, but presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. He was delighted, and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see it at once, directly he made the discovery. "That is a bud," he said, "and presently there will be a lot of leaves there, and those little things coming out here are aerial rootlets." "They look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown," said his housekeeper. "I don't like them." "Why not?" "I don't know. They look like fingers trying to get at you. I can't help my likes and dislikes." "I don't know for certain, but I don't think there are any orchids I know that have aerial rootlets quite like that. It may be my fancy, of course. You see they are a little flattened at the ends." "I don't like 'em," said his housekeeper, suddenly shivering and turning away. "I know it's very silly of me—and I'm very sorry, particularly as you like the thing so much. But I can't help thinking of that corpse." "But it may not be that particular plant. That was merely a guess of mine." His housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. "Anyhow I don't like it," she said. Wedderburn felt a little hurt at her dislike to the plant. But that did not prevent his talking to her about orchids generally, and this orchid in particular, whenever he felt inclined. "There are such queer things about orchids," he said one day; "such possibilities of surprises. You know, Darwin studied their fertilisation, and showed that the whole structure of an ordinary orchid flower was contrived in order that moths might carry the pollen from plant to plant. Well, it seems that there are lots of orchids known the flower of which cannot possibly be used for fertilisation in that way. Some of the Cypripediums, for instance; there are no insects known that can possibly fertilise them, and some of them have never been found with seed." "But how do they form new plants?" "By runners and tubers, and that kind of outgrowth. That is easily explained. The puzzle is, what are the flowers for? "Very likely," he added, "my orchid may be something extraordinary in that way. If so I shall study it. I have often thought of making researches as Darwin did. But hitherto I have not found the time, or something else has happened to prevent it. The leaves are beginning to unfold now. I do wish you would come and see them!" But she said that the orchid-house was so hot it gave her the headache. She had seen the plant once again, and the aerial rootlets, which were now some of them more than a foot long, had unfortunately reminded her of tentacles reaching out after something; and they got into her dreams, growing after her with incredible rapidity. So that she had settled to her entire satisfaction that she would not see that plant again, and Wedderburn had to admire its leaves alone. They were of the ordinary broad form, and a deep glossy green, with splashes and dots of deep red towards the base He knew of no other leaves quite like them. The plant was placed on a low bench near the thermometer, and close by was a simple arrangement by which a tap dripped on the hot-water pipes and kept the air steamy. And he spent his afternoons now with some regularity meditating on the approaching flowering of this strange plant. And at last the great thing happened. Directly he entered the little glass house he knew that the spike had burst out, although his great Paloeonophis Lowii hid the corner where his new darling stood. There was a new odour in the air, a rich, intensely sweet scent, that overpowered every other in that crowded, steaming little greenhouse. Directly he noticed this he hurried down to the strange orchid. And, behold! the trailing green spikes bore now three great splashes of blossom, from which this overpowering sweetness proceeded. He stopped before them in an ecstasy of admiration. The flowers were white, with streaks of golden orange upon the petals; the heavy labellum was coiled into an intricate projection, and a wonderful bluish purple mingled there with the gold. He could see at once that the genus was altogether a new one. And the insufferable scent! How hot the place was! The blossoms swam before his eyes. He would see if the temperature was right. He made a step towards the thermometer. Suddenly everything appeared unsteady. The bricks on the floor were dancing up and down. Then the white blossoms, the green leaves behind them, the whole greenhouse, seemed to sweep sideways, and then in a curve upward. At half-past four his cousin made the tea, according to their invariable custom. But Wedderburn did not come in for his tea. "He is worshipping that horrid orchid," she told herself, and waited ten minutes. "His watch must have stopped. I will go and call him." She went straight to the hothouse, and, opening the door, called his name. There was no reply. She noticed that the air was very close, and loaded with an intense perfume. Then she saw something lying on the bricks between the hot-water pipes. For a minute, perhaps, she stood motionless. He was lying, face upward, at the foot of the strange orchid. The tentacle-like aerial rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but were crowded together, a tangle of grey ropes, and stretched tight, with their ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands. She did not understand. Then she saw from under one of the exultant tentacles upon his cheek there trickled a little thread of blood. With an inarticulate cry she ran towards him, and tried to pull him away from the leech-like suckers. She snapped two of these tentacles, and their sap dripped red. Then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head reel. How they clung to him! She tore at the tough ropes, and he and the white inflorescence swam about her. She felt she was fainting, knew she must not. She left him and hastily opened the nearest door, and, after she had panted for a moment in the fresh air, she had a brilliant inspiration. She caught up a flower-pot and smashed in the windows at the end of the greenhouse. Then she re-entered. She tugged now with renewed strength at Wedderburn's motionless body, and brought the strange orchid crashing to the floor. It still clung with the grimmest tenacity to its victim. In a frenzy, she lugged it and him into the open air. Then she thought of tearing through the sucker rootlets one by one, and in another minute she had released him and was dragging him away from the horror. He was white and bleeding from a dozen circular patches. The odd-job man was coming up the garden, amazed at the smashing of glass, and saw her emerge, hauling the inanimate body with red-stained hands. For a moment he thought impossible things. "Bring some water!" she cried, and her voice dispelled his fancies. When, with unnatural alacrity, he returned with the water, he found her weeping with excitement, and with Wedderburn's head upon her knee, wiping the blood from his face. "What's the matter?" said Wedderburn, opening his eyes feebly, and closing them again at once. "Go and tell Annie to come out here to me, and then go for Dr. Haddon at once," she said to the odd-job man so soon as he brought the water; and added, seeing he hesitated, "I will tell you all about it when you come back." Presently Wedderburn opened his eyes again, and, seeing that he was troubled by the puzzle of his position, she explained to him, "You fainted in the hothouse." "And the orchid?" "I will see to that," she said. Wedderburn had lost a good deal of blood, but beyond that he had suffered no very great injury. They gave him brandy mixed with some pink extract of meat, and carried him upstairs to bed. His housekeeper told her incredible story in fragments to Dr. Haddon. "Come to the orchid-house and see," she said. The cold outer air was blowing in through the open door, and the sickly perfume was almost dispelled. Most of the torn aerial rootlets lay already withered amidst a number of dark stains upon the bricks. The stem of the inflorescence was broken by the fall of the plant, and the flowers were growing limp and brown at the edges of the petals. The doctor stooped towards it, then saw that one of the aerial rootlets still stirred feebly, and hesitated. The next morning the strange orchid still lay there, black now and putrescent. The door banged intermittently in the morning breeze, and all the array of Wedderburn's orchids was shrivelled and prostrate. But Wedderburn himself was bright and garrulous upstairs in the glory of his strange adventure. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. H. G. Wells (2004). The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-h/11870-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at . https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID

THE HARDINGHAM HOTEL, AND HOW WE BECAME BIG PEOPLE

The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents, by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour. You have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for the rest you must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your good-luck, as your taste may incline. The plant may be moribund or dead, or it may be just a respectable purchase, fair value for your money, or perhaps—for the thing has happened again and again—there slowly unfolds before the delighted eyes of the happy purchaser, day after day, some new variety, some novel richness, a strange twist of the labellum, or some subtler colouration or unexpected mimicry. Pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one delicate green spike, and, it may be, even immortality. For the new miracle of Nature may stand in need of a new specific name, and what so convenient as that of its discoverer? “Johnsmithia”! There have been worse names. It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made Winter-Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales—that hope, and also, maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual man, provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments. He might have collected stamps or coins, or translated Horace, or bound books, or invented new species of diatoms. But, as it happened, he grew orchids, and had one ambitious little hothouse. “I have a fancy,” he said over his coffee, “that something is going to happen to me to-day.” He spoke—as he moved and thought—slowly. “Oh, don’t say that!” said his housekeeper—who was also his remote cousin. For “something happening” was a euphemism that meant only one thing to her. “You misunderstand me. I mean nothing unpleasant ... though what I do mean I scarcely know. “To-day,” he continued, after a pause, “Peters’ are going to sell a batch of plants from the Andamans and the Indies. I shall go up and see what they have. It may be I shall buy something good, unawares. That may be it.” He passed his cup for his second cupful of coffee. “Are these the things collected by that poor young fellow you told me of the other day?” asked his cousin as she filled his cup. “Yes,” he said, and became meditative over a piece of toast. “Nothing ever does happen to me,” he remarked presently, beginning to think aloud. “I wonder why? Things enough happen to other people. There is Harvey. Only the other week; on Monday he picked up sixpence, on Wednesday his chicks all had the staggers, on Friday his cousin came home from Australia, and on Saturday he broke his ankle. What a whirl of excitement!—compared to me.” “I think I would rather be without so much excitement,” said his housekeeper. “It can’t be good for you.” “I suppose it’s troublesome. Still ... you see, nothing ever happens to me. When I was a little boy I never had accidents. I never fell in love as I grew up. Never married.... I wonder how it feels to have something happen to you, something really remarkable. “That orchid-collector was only thirty-six—twenty years younger than myself—when he died. And he had been married twice and divorced once; he had had malarial fever four times, and once he broke his thigh. He killed a Malay once, and once he was wounded by a poisoned dart. And in the end he was killed by jungle-leeches. It must have all been very troublesome, but then it must have been very interesting, you know—except, perhaps, the leeches.” “I am sure it was not good for him,” said the lady, with conviction. “Perhaps not.” And then Wedderburn looked at his watch. “Twenty-three minutes past eight. I am going up by the quarter to twelve train, so that there is plenty of time. I think I shall wear my alpaca jacket—it is quite warm enough—and my grey felt hat and brown shoes. I suppose—” He glanced out of the window at the serene sky and sunlit garden, and then nervously at his cousin’s face. “I think you had better take an umbrella if you are going to London,” she said in a voice that admitted of no denial. “There’s all between here and the station coming back.” When he returned he was in a state of mild excitement. He had made a purchase. It was rare that he could make up his mind quickly enough to buy, but this time he had done so. “There are Vandas,” he said, “and a Dendrobe and some Palaeonophis.” He surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed his soup. They were laid out on the spotless tablecloth before him, and he was telling his cousin all about them as he slowly meandered through his dinner. It was his custom to live all his visits to London over again in the evening for her and his own entertainment. “I knew something would happen to-day. And I have bought all these. Some of them—some of them—I feel sure, do you know, that some of them will be remarkable. I don’t know how it is, but I feel just as sure as if someone had told me that some of these will turn out remarkable. “That one”—he pointed to a shrivelled rhizome—“was not identified. It may be a Palaeonophis—or it may not. It may be a new species, or even a new genus. And it was the last that poor Batten ever collected.” “I don’t like the look of it,” said his housekeeper. “It’s such an ugly shape.” “To me it scarcely seems to have a shape.” “I don’t like those things that stick out,” said his housekeeper. “It shall be put away in a pot to-morrow.” “It looks,” said the housekeeper, “like a spider shamming dead.” Wedderburn smiled and surveyed the root with his head on one side. “It is certainly not a pretty lump of stuff. But you can never judge of these things from their dry appearance. It may turn out to be a very beautiful orchid indeed. How busy I shall be to-morrow! I must see to-night just exactly what to do with these things, and to-morrow I shall set to work.” “They found poor Batten lying dead, or dying, in a mangrove swamp—I forget which,” he began again presently, “with one of these very orchids crushed up under his body. He had been unwell for some days with some kind of native fever, and I suppose he fainted. These mangrove swamps are very unwholesome. Every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him by the jungle-leeches. It may be that very plant that cost him his life to obtain.” “I think none the better of it for that.” “Men must work though women may weep,” said Wedderburn with profound gravity. “Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp! Fancy being ill of fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine—if men were left to themselves they would live on chlorodyne and quinine—and no one round you but horrible natives! They say the Andaman islanders are most disgusting wretches—and, anyhow, they can scarcely make good nurses, not having the necessary training. And just for people in England to have orchids!” “I don’t suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to enjoy that kind of thing,” said Wedderburn. “Anyhow, the natives of his party were sufficiently civilised to take care of all his collection until his colleague, who was an ornithologist, came back again from the interior; though they could not tell the species of the orchid and had let it wither. And it makes these things more interesting.” “It makes them disgusting. I should be afraid of some of the malaria clinging to them. And just think, there has been a dead body lying across that ugly thing! I never thought of that before. There! I declare I cannot eat another mouthful of dinner.” “I will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the window-seat. I can see them just as well there.” The next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all the other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. He considered he was having a wonderfully eventful time. In the evening he would talk about these new orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted to his expectation of something strange. Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care, but presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. He was delighted and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see it at once, directly he made the discovery. “That is a bud,” he said, “and presently there will be a lot of leaves there, and those little things coming out here are akrial rootlets.” “They look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown,” said his housekeeper. “I don’t like them.” “Why not?” “I don’t know. They look like fingers trying to get at you. I can’t help my likes and dislikes.” “I don’t know for certain, but I don’t think there are any orchids I know that have akrial rootlets quite like that. It may be my fancy, of course. You see they are a little flattened at the ends.” “I don’t like ’em,” said his housekeeper, suddenly shivering and turning away. “I know it’s very silly of me—and I’m very sorry, particularly as you like the thing so much. But I can’t help thinking of that corpse.” “But it may not be that particular plant. That was merely a guess of mine.” His housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. “Anyhow I don’t like it,” she said. Wedderburn felt a little hurt at her dislike to the plant. But that did not prevent his talking to her about orchids generally, and this orchid in particular, whenever he felt inclined. “There are such queer things about orchids,” he said one day; “such possibilities of surprises. You know, Darwin studied their fertilisation, and showed that the whole structure of an ordinary orchid-flower was contrived in order that moths might carry the pollen from plant to plant. Well, it seems that there are lots of orchids known the flower of which cannot possibly be used for fertilisation in that way. Some of the Cypripediums, for instance; there are no insects known that can possibly fertilise them, and some of them have never be found with seed.” “But how do they form new plants?” “By runners and tubers, and that kind of outgrowth. That is easily explained. The puzzle is, what are the flowers for? “Very likely,” he added, “my orchid may be something extraordinary in that way. If so I shall study it. I have often thought of making researches as Darwin did. But hitherto I have not found the time, or something else has happened to prevent it. The leaves are beginning to unfold now. I do wish you would come and see them!” But she said that the orchid-house was so hot it gave her the headache. She had seen the plant once again, and the akrial rootlets, which were now some of them more than a foot long, had unfortunately reminded her of tentacles reaching out after something; and they got into her dreams, growing after her with incredible rapidity. So that she had settled to her entire satisfaction that she would not see that plant again, and Wedderburn had to admire its leaves alone. They were of the ordinary broad form, and a deep glossy green, with splashes and dots of deep red towards the base. He knew of no other leaves quite like them. The plant was placed on a low bench near the thermometer, and close by was a simple arrangement by which a tap dripped on the hot-water pipes and kept the air steamy. And he spent his afternoons now with some regularity meditating on the approaching flowering of this strange plant. And at last the great thing happened. Directly he entered the little glass house he knew that the spike had burst out, although his great Palaeonophis Lowii hid the corner where his new darling stood. There was a new odour in the air, a rich, intensely sweet scent, that overpowered every other in that crowded, steaming little greenhouse. Directly he noticed this he hurried down to the strange orchid. And, behold! the trailing green spikes bore now three great splashes of blossom, from which this overpowering sweetness proceeded. He stopped before them in an ecstasy of admiration. The flowers were white, with streaks of golden orange upon the petals; the heavy labellum was coiled into an intricate projection, and a wonderful bluish purple mingled there with the gold. He could see at once that the genus was altogether a new one. And the insufferable scent! How hot the place was! The blossoms swam before his eyes. He would see if the temperature was right. He made a step towards the thermometer. Suddenly everything appeared unsteady. The bricks on the floor were dancing up and down. Then the white blossoms, the green leaves behind them, the whole greenhouse, seemed to sweep sideways, and then in a curve upward. At half-past four his cousin made the tea, according to their invariable custom. But Wedderburn did not come in for his tea. “He is worshipping that horrid orchid,” she told herself, and waited ten minutes. “His watch must have stopped. I will go and call him.” She went straight to the hothouse, and, opening the door, called his name. There was no reply. She noticed that the air was very close, and loaded with an intense perfume. Then she saw something lying on the bricks between the hot-water pipes. For a minute, perhaps, she stood motionless. He was lying, face upward, at the foot of the strange orchid. The tentacle-like akrial rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but were crowded together, a tangle of grey ropes, and stretched tight with their ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands. She did not understand. Then she saw from under one of the exultant tentacles upon his cheek there trickled a little thread of blood. With an inarticulate cry she ran towards him, and tried to pull him away from the leech-like suckers. She snapped two of these tentacles, and their sap dripped red. Then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head reel. How they clung to him! She tore at the tough ropes, and he and the white inflorescence swam about her. She felt she was fainting, knew she must not. She left him and hastily opened the nearest door, and, after she had panted for a moment in the fresh air, she had a brilliant inspiration. She caught up a flower-pot and smashed in the windows at the end of the green-house. Then she re-entered. She tugged now with renewed strength at Wedderburn’s motionless body, and brought the strange orchid crashing to the floor. It still clung with the grimmest tenacity to its victim. In a frenzy, she lugged it and him into the open air. Then she thought of tearing through the sucker rootlets one by one, and in another minute she had released him and was dragging him away from the horror. He was white and bleeding from a dozen circular patches. The odd-job man was coming up the garden, amazed at the smashing of glass, and saw her emerge, hauling the inanimate body with red-stained hands. For a moment he thought impossible things. “Bring some water!” she cried, and her voice dispelled his fancies. When, with unnatural alacrity, he returned with the water, he found her weeping with excitement, and with Wedderburn’s head upon her knee, wiping the blood from his face. “What’s the matter?” said Wedderburn, opening his eyes feebly, and closing them again at once. “Go and tell Annie to come out here to me, and then go for Doctor Haddon at once,” she said to the odd-job man so soon as he brought the water; and added, seeing he hesitated, “I will tell you all about it when you come back.” Presently Wedderburn opened his eyes again, and, seeing that he was troubled by the puzzle of his position, she explained to him, “You fainted in the hothouse.” “And the orchid?” “I will see to that,” she said. Wedderburn had lost a good deal of blood, but beyond that he had suffered no very great injury. They gave him brandy mixed with some pink extract of meat, and carried him upstairs to bed. His housekeeper told her incredible story in fragments to Dr Haddon. “Come to the orchid-house and see,” she said. The cold outer air was blowing in through the open door, and the sickly perfume was almost dispelled. Most of the torn akrial rootlets lay already withered amidst a number of dark stains upon the bricks. The stem of the inflorescence was broken by the fall of the plant, and the flowers were growing limp and brown at the edges of the petals. The doctor stooped towards it, then saw that one of the akrial rootlets still stirred feebly, and hesitated. The next morning the strange orchid still lay there, black now and putrescent. The door banged intermittently in the morning breeze, and all the array of Wedderburn’s orchids was shrivelled and prostrate. But Wedderburn himself was bright and garrulous upstairs in the glory of his strange adventure. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. H. G. Wells (2004). The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12750/12750-h/12750-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org, located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents - THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID

POLLOCK AND THE PORROH MAN

Discovering Web3 Gaming with Long Do and Laura Cullell

Samsung, the electronics behemoth, may be on its way to becoming one of the most important players in Web3. Samsung has become through several partnerships and announcements over the last few years, as well as large investments. entwined with the Web3 ecosystem Samsungs Web3 Moves The 837X metaverse, the integration of the blockchain protocol Pass, the NFT gallery television, and even a reforestation project are among the company's recent blockchain and Web3 ventures. Adopting and integrating blockchain technology appears to be a top priority for large corporations lately. According to , Samsung is the 14th largest company in the world, larger than ExxonMobil, Verizon, and Walmart. The communications conglomerate is a powerful and influential figure on a global scale. Companies like this, which are taking part in Web3, are just one of the reasons why the blockchain industry is booming. Forbes Samsung and NFTs Samsung has with a number of physical retail outlets to help expand the utility of the New Galaxy NFTs. Samsung introduced this collection earlier in 2022, giving it to customers who pre-ordered certain products. Through these NFTs, the company intends to provide a wide range of utilities, including off-chain rewards and discounts. signed agreements Samsung executives have been outspoken about their views on mainstreaming blockchain and Web3 technologies. "By providing practical services to NFT-holding customers, customers will gain in-depth consumer experience with digital assets." This was the most recent official , following Samsung's Pass integration. comment This recent announcement was made possible thanks to a collaboration with , a blockchain company specializing in decentralized video API. Theta Labs Pass Identity Integration Samsung Blockchain Keystore is compatible SK Telecom's Pass security solution. Samsung previously implemented its own blockchain solution to improve phone security, which is inaccessible to the rest of the Android operating system. Keystore gives the consumer control over their data and private information, as well as a secure location to store private keys. with Samsung Blockchain The Keystore area not only isolates and protects the information, but it is also invisible to the device's Android OS and is not saved to any external clouds. The Pass security solution will improve the security and usability of these Samsung tools. The Pass solution, which is based on identity and privacy, was developed by South Korea's big three mobile operators. The ability to control personal information is the most appealing feature of the service, which is used by over a million people. Pass allows people to prove their age without revealing all of the information on their ID, as well as other similar acts that protect the consumer's identity. Blockchain integrations in cell phones will be one of the most important aspects of mainstream adoption, and a partnership with one of the world's most popular project providers is an ideal fit. Blockchain offers a convenient and simple solution that will be available to anyone. NFT TV Displays As the NFT craze grew in 2021, many businesses sought to capitalize on the new digital asset's popularity. Samsung took a slightly different approach. Samsung announced an NFT television that would function as an art gallery in early 2022. For this innovative physical product, the company formed yet another blockchain partnership with . Nifty Gateway Nifty Gateway, an Ethereum-based NFT marketplace, was acquired by Gemini Exchange in 2019. The partnership brings the Nifty marketplace to Samsung's new smart TVs. This not only enables a beautiful and convenient display of NFT collections, but also allows for marketplace buying, selling, and trading. The Nifty Gateways custodial wallet is used, and credit/debit cards are also accepted. Samsung even collaborated with the world-renowned auction house Sotheby's to display art for sale at events. This was first tried in New York, where works by Andy Warhol and Alvar Aalto were on display. Sotheby's has previously auctioned NFTs, including work by CryptoPunks and DrifterShoots, making them an ideal partner to launch that NFT display TV. Traditional art is a great addition to TVs, removing the need for expensive work to be hung on the wall while maintaining quality. For over sixteen years, Samsung has been at the of the television industry and is one of the world's largest electronics companies. One of the quickest ways to bring on global adoption of NFTs is to integrate them into products that everyone on the planet already uses and owns. top Samsung Partners With Blockchain For Reforestation Samsung has committed to planting two million coastal mangroves as part of a Madagascar project in the first quarter of 2022. The company collaborated with a blockchain-based firm to trace and track the initiative's progress. reforestation boasts that two million trees were planted, 200 hectares were restored, and over 430,000 tons of CO2 were sequestered from the atmosphere. The 200 Hectares of land will provide approximately 4,000 days of work for local tree workers, while the carbon dioxide levels captured naturally from the air are equivalent to removing nearly 100,000 cars from the road for an entire year. Veritree Veritree and Samsung provide widespread and long-term environmental benefits, demonstrating genuine initiative not only to adopt blockchain technology but also to assist the environment. Communications Giant Builds Inside The Metaverse Samsung and Decentraland joined together to create their own tiny portion of the metaverse at the beginning of January 2022. Samsung jumped into Decentraland's land-buying and construction program right away. Just two months after its debut, the experience had more than 100k users visit it, and it became more well-known thanks to its connection to the South Korean company. 837X metaverse To access 837X, users must first sign up for a Decentraland account. After signing in, the avatar will be deposited in front of Samsung's virtual 837X building. Then you can go through the doors and fully immerse yourself in the digital world. In addition to the virtual experience, the metaverse includes wearables and NFTs. The business even started a Discord group for the game. It's always encouraging to see such large organizations taking the Web3 arena so seriously by making wallet integrations on Decentraland secure and simple with Metamask. Samsung has a long history of investing in the blockchain-based industry and has a number of relationships in the area. Samsung has a hand in everything, from NFTs and metaverses to markets and developer tools. Big Web3 Investments Samsung's blockchain investments are typically made through and the company has a sizable blockchain portfolio. The following are some of Samsung's most notable investments in blockchain and Web3. Samsung Next, Yuga Labs Axie Infinity Sandbox Dapper Labs FTX Nifty Gateway Theta Labs SuperRare Bitfusion MachineFi Samsung has been investing heavily in the space, and it does not appear to be slowing down anytime soon. The industry requires massive, global corporations to enter the space from all sides. Investing, partnering, and sincerely believing in the technology are all extremely positive indicators for the future of the digital asset space. Also published here.

Samsung and Web3: A Budding Love Story 

Moby-Dick; or The Whale, by Herman Melville is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . Chapter 12: Biographical here CHAPTER 12. Biographical. Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are. When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green sapling; even then, in Queequeg’s ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth. A Sag Harbor ship visited his father’s bay, and Queequeg sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father’s influence could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained her side; with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces. In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage—this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain’s cabin. They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom—so he told me—he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they were; and more than that, still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father’s heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians; I’ll die a pagan. And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians, wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer ways about him, though now some time from home. By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and having a coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he would return,—as soon as he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre now. I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. Upon this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds. To all this I joyously assented; for besides the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was an experienced harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be of great usefulness to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, as known to merchant seamen. His story being ended with his pipe’s last dying puff, Queequeg embraced me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the light, we rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very soon were sleeping. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved April 2022 from Melville, Herman,2001. Moby-Dick: or The Whale. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm#link2HCH0012 This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Moby-Dick; or The Whale: Chapter 12: Biographical

Meet the Winners of Startups in North and Central America

Engaging to Earn with AdLunam Co-Founder Nadja Bester

The most essential difference between Libra and Saga is governance mechanism. In Saga , the owners of the currency and its "fate" so to speak are the SGA holders. Saga has a built-in democracy to prevent the case of plutocracy. I sat down with Mr Ido Sadeh-Man for an exclusive "Behind the startup" interview to talk about his story, his journey and the future of stablecoins and digital currencies. 1.   Welcome to our "Behind the Startup" series Ido Sadeh-Man, it is an honour to have you here. Can you tell us about your story and your journey into the blockchain industry? I started my professional life as a jazz musician. After transitioning into the world of tech entrepreneurship, over the last decade, I led product and development for several Israeli startups, including Odysii (sold to Gilbarco Veeder-Root), and Mobli, where I was COO. As I was about to take a break from the startup scene and go back to school and study Political Science, I realized the thing that interests me the most is how societies organize themselves. Since finance is one of the main instruments societies organize themselves around, I researched a little deeper and came to understand that the world of blockchain opens the door to the creation of a genuinely democratic means of exchange. Something that bridges between the all-decentralized world of bitcoin, and the fully-centralized world of federal money. This is how was born. Saga 2.   Can you enlighten our readers about the potential economic and financial impact of a globally recognized stable-digital currency? National currencies were designed centuries ago as a solution to a mostly national scope of commerce and economy. Our reality has changed in the past few decades with an increasingly global economy, where no single nation-state monetary and fiscal policy is enough to ensure the store of value function of money when it comes to global spending. Take a UK citizen as an example. Her government has decided to Brexit, the pound is volatile - yet it is designed to face the changes the British economy is undergoing. The prices on Amazon, on the other hand, are not reacting to Brexit. I think that the COVID 19 crisis shows us just how much the economic development is global, and with it the prices of goods and commodities - we need a global currency to address it. At the same time, there are those who will claim that we already have one - the US dollar. An America first policy, the massive money printing designed to assist the US economy proves that while it may be a terrific US currency, it is definitely not designed to be a global one. 3.  Who are the stakeholders in the Saga ecosystem, and can you explain the role of the Saga Foundation? Accredited partners and early backers of our endeavour include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mangrove Capital Partners, Vertex Ventures, Disruptive, Lool Ventures, and others have already demonstrated confidence in Saga's vision by participating in its $30M seed funding. This funding has made possible Saga's launch of the SGA token and the first steps toward the realization of Saga's vision for a fair and reliable global currency. After registering in the UK, we are no longer a foundation, but rather a UK company, limited by guarantee, working under not-for-profit principles. Saga is governed by applicable UK laws and regulations and has adopted KYC/AML procedures compliant with the strictest international standards and regulations. 4. How is Saga different from Libra? Why do you believe that Saga would not come under the lens of the regulators and the government? After Libra withdrew from its initial intention, to make its underlying asset composition of currencies in an unclear mix, and decided to rely on the SDR as well - same as we've been doing from our very inception - the main difference between us lies in the question of control over your money. In Libra, the controller and governor of the currency is the consortium of commercial conglomerates, each with its "army" of board members looking to get a return over their investment and participation in the endeavor. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, but when it comes to one's money, we at Saga believe the issuer should work solely for the holders. That's why the most essential difference between Libra and us is our governance mechanism. In Saga, the owners of the currency and its "fate" so to speak are the SGA holders. Our carefully-crafted governance structure ensures optimal alignment of incentives between the issuer, Saga, and the currency holders, and this structure is embedded into the smart contract. In other words, Saga has built a democracy to prevent the case of plutocracy. As for the concern regarding coming under regulatory scrutiny - we would gladly welcome any regulatory institution wishing to regulate us. We took upon ourselves to meet in advance and voluntarily any regulatory demand and are positive we meet the highest standards. In fact, Saga operates under the AML 5th directive standards even from before they were published and remains in full compliance with them. 5.   Can you explain the functioning of the International Monetary Fund SDR and the concept of Saga backed basket of fiat currencies? What are the similarities, and how does the architectural and economic framework of Saga ensure compliance under national and international laws? Gladly. Let's start with a quick explanation about the SDR. As mentioned, the SDR is a financial instrument introduced by the IMF some five decades ago. It is a composition of the world's five most prominent national currencies: The USD, GBP, EUR, JPY and RMB. Central bankers all over the world have been using this tool to hedge their country's reserve in national currencies against price fluctuations. It was a natural go-to in view of our vision to create a global currency. What if we could grant individuals and business entities the ability to access this tool? What if we could use the blockchain to turn this tool from a composition of currencies into one robust unit of account, with its own intrinsic value? And so, while you can't directly access SDR within the crypto economy, you can acquire its surrogate — SGA, the low volatility crypto-asset whose reserve is based on the same basket of fiat currencies and at the same ratio. There's a reason why SGA has been one of the most stable digital assets while the rest of the market has been racking up double-digit percentage losses. The low volatility crypto asset, whose reserve attestations emulate the SDR basket of currencies, proves its worth in times of economic turmoil. As for your question about Saga's compliance under national and international laws: Saga operates in the UK and is fully compliant with UK regulation in regards to AML and KYC practices. As a matter of fact, The compliance model was introduced before the 5th AML directive was published and stands to its standards and requirements. 6.  Currently, price slippage in stablecoins is a big problem. How do Saga smart contracts ensure that the price slippage does not happen? Because in future, even a 0.09% slippage price would cost a lot. Saga's smart contract serves as the primary market maker for the SGA tokens. The pricing algorithm embedded in the smart contract offers full liquidity and ensures SGA price will follow Saga's monetary model regardless of the transaction size. 7.   The FSB recently issued a report where they mentioned that stablecoins were a threat to the financial stability of the word. What are your views regarding this? Further, does Saga fall under the same categorization? The ECB document focused on two main risks: the risk of liquidity runs impairing the functioning of the stablecoin arrangement, and the risk of contagion spreading to the broader financial system as a result of an impaired stablecoin arrangement. The monetary model of SGA and the smart contract have been designed to eliminate the risk of a "run" on the currency -so that is not a worry. Since the SGA mechanism is robust, the likelihood of an "impaired arrangement "causing  contagion to the broader system is so unlikely as to be virtually non-existent. In any case, there are always present risks in the conventional fiat regulatory structure that are a much higher concern than any new risks posed by SGA. Most of the concerns regarding risks posed by the asset management inherent in backed currencies. The asset management policy of SGA is very conservative, modelled on that used by central banks themselves, and would not pose any stability risks in and of itself. The ECB document took a very narrow view; we believe that the diversification and sophisticated model behind SGA actually contribute to lower overall risk to the system, as well as to the user of SGA. 8.  According to you, what are the regulatory and compliance challenges for stablecoins ahead? Further, would governments and financial institutions be ready to adapt Saga as a stable-pegged digital currency? I believe the biggest challenge, as it was reflected by the FSB recommendation is to reach a unified, global regulatory standard for regulation and compliance. On the KYC and AML front, the European 5th directive seems to be a step in the right direction. Regulation as to reserve adequacy, custody and transparency, as well as privacy is falling behind. It is crucial though for regulation to escort the development of these currencies, their impact on stability and to regulate following the risk, rather than suffocating the possibility of innovation by halting their ability to exist and evolve. 9.  What governance model is Saga foundation employing? In regard to the governance of the blockchain ecosystem and governance by the blockchain ecosystem. We refer to SGA holders as "Saga's Participants". This is more than just a name because, in Saga, the current holders are in essence and in practice, the sovereign. Accordingly, Saga's governance was designed to facilitate the genuine representation of Participants and to generate long-term success for the currency. This is achieved through a multi-branch checks and balances governance structure. The multi-branch checks and balances structure includes – the Executive Council – the currency's executive agency; the Assembly – the Participants' deliberative entity run mainly by their chosen delegates; A Monetary Committee and other auxiliary entities. Let's put it like this: We've created a mechanism that enables Participants to remove me from my role and choose someone they find to be a better fit instead. This was my motivation from the very beginning - to create the first truly democratic and free blockchain-based currency system. I advise those who wish to read more on our governance model to read our whitepaper, , under this link 10.  Can you enlighten our readers regarding the Saga team members and its advisors? Saga is home to a community of lateral thinkers, hands-on inventors and technology explorers who share a curiosity about the potential of blockchain to unlock new forms of governance and truly transform our use of money. With us as our Chief Economist is Barry Topf, who worked for over three decades in the Bank of Israel as founding member of the Monetary Policy Committee and as Senior Advisor to the Governor, Stanley Fischer. Next to him on our Israel-based operational team is a list of product, research and marketing professionals, Among the senior members of our strong and involved advisory board can find Prof. Jacob A. Frenkel, PhD, chairman of JPMorgan Chase International and former governor of the Bank of Israel; Prof; Myron Scholes, Nobel laureate in economic sciences and professor emeritus at Stanford University; Leo Melamed, former chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME); and Prof. Dan Galai, PhD, former dean of the School of Management at Hebrew University Jerusalem. 11. What market trends do you see in the year 2020? Has the recent FATF report affected the confidence of the stablecoin industry and the market players? I believe that 2020 and 2021 will be years of recovery from the crisis and from the illusion of stability. This is an illusion is as accurate to stable coins relying on a single currency as it is to the fiat world. I expect the philosophical debate surrounding cryptocurrencies will give way to a practical one - focusing on the safety and stability of value storage. We already see such narrative in countries that grew accustomed to instability, such as Argentina, Turkey, Brazil and South Africa - leaders in adoption trends of crypto and stable coins - not because of an ideological framework, but because of a soring need to rely on a different centre of trust than their government and Central Bank. 12. How is the Saga foundation fighting the Coronavirus pandemic, and do you think that the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital currencies? We cannot "fight" the pandemic itself, but we heed to the health recommendations and wish for this crisis to recede with as little victims as possible around the world. As for its implications on the adoption of digital currencies - I believe it is still early to say because I think the masses again do not experience the results of their governments' qualitative easing measurements. This is not 2008, and the world has much less "weapons" in its monetary arsenals. Therefore, I firmly believe people will start being more concerned about maintaining the value of their money and will realize that focusing their entire assurance on one asset type is mostly like running from one burning building to another. The secret lies in diversifying one's holdings, and if cryptocurrencies will become a more significant part of this diversifying approach still remains to be seen. 13.  Do you have any suggestions or advice for young entrepreneurs and companies who are finding it challenging to remain afloat amidst the coronavirus crisis? Survive. Reset your expectation, focus on staying alive and making sure your burn rate is aligned to this new uncertain trajectory. Diversify your assets. Once you feel you have done enough to secure the survival of your company, start looking for the opportunities that this crisis created - for the gaps and challenges it has introduced into peoples lives - and solve it. The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence by asking the right questions and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions. The views in these articles are purely personal and educational; the material does not constitute any investment, financial or legal advice. Please do your research before investing in any digital assets or tokens, etc. Interviewer - Ishan Pandey, Founder Blockchain Research .

Is Saga the future of stablecoin and a new monetary regime? [Interview with Ido Sadeh-Man] 

We built a service for online reviews that makes the insights you share accessible across any application, and that does not invade your privacy. Leave proprietary data silos behind and enter the open data ecosystem of Mangrove reviews. Our goal for this blog post is to show you around in the newly released : this is a brief summary of its capabilities at a glance. Mangrove web app But before we dive in, let's have a quick look at the bigger picture. The insights that people share with each other via online word-of-mouth are an important, if not the only, way for us to discover, evaluate, and select the experiences that best fit our needs. Things become less risky for us to try ourselves, if someone else has already tried them before and has shared an opinion about them. The world is becoming increasingly interconnected, with an unprecedented amount of offerings on a global scale. This creates complexity, and oftentimes even a paralysis of choice. But with tools that make discoverability easier, reduce risk, and augment consumer voices, this rich offering can lead to better experiences for the individual, and drive targeted improvement of products and services. Word-of-mouth is a fundamental, age-old form of human collaboration. To make use of it on a global scale and to reap its potential to help us navigate the world, we need to apply technology smarter than we do today. In brief, we are working on tools that enable the following: Stop adding reviews into data silos where the insights are partitioned and the user bases are divided Stop making these invaluable crowd-sourced insights proprietary and only usable by a handful of dominant platforms Allow individuals, researchers, startups, and more, to experiment with this data, and to develop new ways to source insight from it Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts where we share more about our vision for . creating an open data ecosystem for reviews So, what can the Mangrove web app do for you? In brief, it lets you read and write reviews! But what’s different to the well-known proprietary services out there? These things are currently: places on the map such as restaurants, hotels, touristic sites; but also companies, websites, and books. In Mangrove you can share with people a wider range of your experiences if you like, all in one profile. You can read/write reviews for many more things that matter to people, all in one place. where it can be useful for many more purposes than proprietary services allow. On proprietary platforms, you can only  'consume' the data. In an open dataset it can be a rich source for research, open innovation and entrepreneurial activity. The valuable insight you share with others is under a free license because it is not an asset of one corporation, but a . Adding your insight to an open dataset means it can and will be integrated into a variety of applications and websites. If any of them shuts down, there will be many left that mirror the same data and make your contribution still accessible. Your contribution can never be sold off or shut down, free cultural work We are strong advocates for privacy, and we developed a way to create accounts without requiring registration. You don’t need to entrust yet another service with your name, email, birth date, address, etc.. The Mangrove web app and website don’t have any trackers, third-party cookies, or ads. You share any information consciously and voluntarily, directly with the public open dataset. Read/write reviews without being exploited for your personal information. Now, let's explore it! Start your tour of Mangrove by entering something you are looking for into the search box. This can be the restaurant where you ate last night, or a website you love and really want to recommend ...or a book worth sharing your thoughts about. Search Let’s try “Bürgenstock”, a picturesque little settlement and touristic spot on a hill above Lake Lucerne that we’ve recently visited. Press enter, and the Results page appears. On the left you will see a list of subjects from different categories that are related to your search word. For “Bürgenstock” there are places, companies and books coming up. You can use the category filters to display only the relevant results, in this case “Places”. Once you click on the subject of your interest, you will see on the right its details and all reviews that have been submitted for it. If it’s a place, you will also see its location on the map. You can use the map to navigate to a different place and select that instead. Each of the categories that can be reviewed draw their identifiers from other open datasets. Places for instance use to identify a point of interest or geographic location. For books we use ISBN via the . For companies we use the provided by GLEIF. Websites are identified by their URL. OpenStreetMap Open Library Legal Entity Identifier and is not part of just one corporate’s data treasure trove that can be sold off or shut down at the whim of its owners. Now, let’s share some experiences and insights - where if not here, in the public, where it belongs to humanity as a whole Writing a review Clicking the “Write a review” button opens the review form. It is slightly different for each category. Let’s look at one for books. What should be familiar from proprietary services are the stars, the text box to describe your experience, as well as the “I agree to the Terms of Service” confirmation. What is, however, significantly different is that in Mangrove you are in full control of what information you share about yourself. Privacy In today’s dominant proprietary review services you share one type of information openly on the platform for other users to see. That’s the voluntary part. But you share a whole lot more information in the background. While being logged in on the platform, you are exposed to trackers, and first and third-party cookies that record your search and browsing history, as well as your online behavior to determine predictive patterns that make you an easier target for advertising and political campaigns. This data is shared across a plethora of intertwined parties with contractual relationships that are practically impossible to dissect. Harvard Professor Shoshana Zuboff, the author of the best-selling book 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’, has called this a 'form of tyranny that feeds on people but is not of the people'. Our approach is different. Once submitted, it goes directly into the open dataset, with no intermediary collecting anything in the background. In Mangrove, there is just one type of information shared by users: the one entered consciously and voluntarily in the review form. The dataset is open for everyone to inspect, and the whole code base of Mangrove, comprising the , as well as the and the , are open source and allow for scrutiny by the community to ensure that it does what it promises. standard, the server, the user interface APIs JS client library Account, redefined In a reviews system, identity and reputation play an important role in ensuring reliable ratings. To allow for persistent identity while ensuring high privacy standards we introduced a new way for users to create their identity. It does not require any central party to keep track of it. Users interact directly with the database. Mangrove leverages public-key cryptography to enable that. The user's device generates a secure password (a cryptographic private key), allowing them to write reviews under a unique identifier (symbolized by an avatar), and to authenticate themselves as its rightful owner. This mechanism does not require any intermediaries. Simply saving the private key, ideally in a password manager, and re-entering it in case the browser’s local storage was erased, allows users to access their account at all times, from any device. The aggregation algorithm that computes ratings based on individual reviews gives higher weight to reviewers with a , i.e., a track record of high-quality reviews. good reputation Reputation is built by a number of things, such as contributing regularly reviews that display a differentiated assessment, by other users marking reviews as “useful” or “confirming” the reviews as matching with their own experience, or by providing proofs of purchase (e.g., pictures, scans of bills). Reputation is diminished in cases where users flag a review as inappropriate, or if a reviewer displays behaviour that violates the Terms of Service. Reviews can also be commented on or replied to by other users. This is particularly interesting for owners of businesses or websites interacting with their customers, as well as authors replying to readers. Build your profile on Mangrove Are you a passionate traveler and would like to share your recommendations and experiences freely with others, outside of proprietary data silos? Mangrove is made for that! Not only can the insights you share be integrated into your website or app, they can also be leveraged freely by travel & tourism blogs, online magazines, and more - so that many more people can read and benefit from your experiences. In Mangrove, you can enrich your recommendations for places with reviews for books, websites, and more, to create a more rounded view on what matters to you. Check out this new user's : travel recommendations to Argentina and Uruguay Integrate Mangrove into your app or website This open-source infrastructure is built for integration. Ultimately, we’ve got to build successful ecosystems around open data to get to the scale at which we can speak of meaningful alternatives to proprietary systems. Check out how you can into your application or website, and stay tuned for a dedicated blog post about this topic. integrate Mangrove Contribute Mangrove is a non-profit service hosted and supported by a community of businesses, developers and interested parties around the world. You can support this project by spreading the word and letting others know of its existence. If you are using apps or websites that could benefit from a reviews layer (any navigation map alternative to Google Maps, tourism websites, online libraries, and many more), please get in touch with us or with them directly to let them know. And finally, financial sponsorships and donations help us to get more reach and grow the ecosystem. All finances of the project are managed transparently in the . Mangrove Open Collective Get in touch Twitter: @mangroveReviews Mastodon: @mangroveReviews@mas.to LinkedIn: PlantingSpace Join our chat: Riot Email: mangrove@planting.space Website: mangrove.reviews

Here's Why We Built a Web App for Open Reviews with Open Source Infrastructure

As consumer choice proliferates, people will rely even more on online reviews to inform their decisions. This makes reviews an increasingly powerful tool and valuable source of insight for individuals and businesses alike. The problem is that hundreds of millions of people are feeding their valuable insights currently into proprietary data silos of a few dominant platforms. We all benefit from leveraging the experiences of others for our own decision-making. We feel an intrinsic need to share with others information about things we used and experienced, and to make use of such information ourselves before we invest resources. The world is growing more complex, and so are the choices that we have to make each day. The number of services, products, media outlets, books, travel destinations, websites, apps, is growing, and it takes more effort to navigate the global range of offerings. We increasingly look up information online when we want to buy something or go somewhere, and we actively search for other people's opinions in order to form our own (research studies performed by or have quantified this trend). IMC BrightLocal In addition, the opinions of customers in the form of online reviews have become crucial for businesses. Online word-of-mouth impacts businesses' reputation, their ranking in search results, and ultimately their profitability, as consumers are willing to pay more for products for which reviews are available. Companies such as Google, Yelp, Facebook, TripAdvisor, or TrustPilot have recognized this trend already years ago, and offered business listing platforms on which users could leave reviews as well as read other people's reviews for free. By now, these services boast hundreds of millions of consumer reviews in their applications. The crowd-sourced data has become a well-guarded asset for these companies, based on which they generate revenues, predominantly from advertising and sharing the personal data of their users. A threat to free competition and possibly to free will As the amount of available review data is growing, and with it the dependence of people and organizations on the insights that can be generated from it, the restricted access to this data not only stifles innovation, but locks us in even further. The opportunities arising to create new products and technologies will only be open to those with access to the data, threatening free market competition, and possibly even free will. Suppose all review data was openly accessible and could be shared freely. Something like a commons, available free of charge and without restrictions to all. Think of Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, or OpenStreetMap. Assume in addition that there was a way to let people write reviews without requiring them to provide any personal data; that people could create an identity within the open reviews ecosystem that control and that cannot be linked to their real-world identity, but that nevertheless allow the system to track reputation. they The potential for innovation would be multiplied by orders of magnitude compared to the current state in which only a small number of engineers at aforementioned companies have access to such data, partitioned across several silos. Imagine how it would be if people could build their reputation in a privacy-preserving manner, not influenced by their gender, their sexual preferences, or the color of their skin, but purely based on their actions within the system, by how useful millions of other users find their content. Imagine if everyone with an interesting idea for a new mapping or navigation service could integrate a reviews layer into their map, so that people looking for “a restaurant nearby” would not all have to use Google for it, but would actually have an alternative. Imagine more people could experiment with AI-driven recommendation services that are privacy-preserving and respectful to the user. This would allow us to use this nascent technology more safely, and more to our genuine benefit than to the benefit of advertisers. From one open dataset containing insights from hundreds of millions of people such systems could compile more accurate recommendations than what is currently possible with the information silos we have. It could also surface interesting new niche products based on genuine popularity among people or the preferences you choose to set, instead of surfacing those items that have the highest advertising budget. Most importantly, you would not have to choose whose service you want to trust based on the size of the network they control, but --- based on innovation and open access to data. you could choose the product that has the highest technological merit Recommendation services are already being marketed by Amazon, Google, Foursquare and others, mostly to the benefits of their advertising partners. These technologies are still in their infancy, but as they become better, people will start relying on them in order to manage complexity in their lives. Driven by pressure to generate profits combined with their reliance on advertising-based business models, we all might end up being at the mercy of closed-source algorithms that might bombard us with things to buy that we don’t need -- . but can’t resist Not having an alternative is, for me at least, a nightmare To be able to use technology in a way that actually helps us and releases creative and innovative energy, I believe that we need to rethink some of the fundamental architectures that internet services are built on today. Most importantly, . we need people to create alternatives have founded to work on new approaches and technologies that we ourselves would like to see in the world. Open reviews are one of them. We PlantingSpace We are proposing an architecture that allows to disentangle the data layer from the layer of value adding services and products. To create the data layer for an ecosystem of open reviews, we launched the initiative. It aims at providing the infrastructure that enables everyone in the world with an internet access to contribute and help create an open dataset for reviews that can be used by individuals, organisations, businesses, researchers, or entrepreneurs. Mangrove The goal of Mangrove is to enable the creation of alternatives to proprietary services Mangrove’s roadmap consists of three main steps: Create an for reviews that can be shaped by the community to ensure easy interoperability. open data format Build an (server, aggregation algorithms, APIs) that can enable an ecosystem of applications to interact with the open dataset (e.g., navigation and mapping services, e-commerce services, local businesses, reputation management services, listing services for companies, books, charging stations, and others) open source infrastructure Make it to a large variety of users (UI, documentation, promotion). accessible and attractive You can check out and give input to step (1) in our on GitLab. repository Currently, we are working on steps (2) and (3), and hope to release a first demo soon, consisting of a web-based UI and an API. With step (3) in mind, we make use of a number of highly valuable open datasets, such as , ‘s Legal Entity Identifier, and Internet Archive‘s , so that people can review places on the map such as restaurants or hotels, companies, books, or websites. Finally, Mangrove has high privacy standards, and uses public key cryptography in order to avoid storing personal data. It will not require a registration process. OpenStreetMap GLEIF Open Library Mangrove is a non-profit initiative and a community project, funded by donations and grants. Its finances will be managed transparently in an Open Collective , with PlantingSpace as its fiscal host. The Mangrove dataset is licensed under the free and open Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. If you like this initiative follow Mangrove on Twitter (@mangroveReviews) or Mastodon (@ mangroveReviews@mas.to ). Please get in touch at hello(at)planting(dot)space if you would like to contribute, share feedback or ideas, or if you consider integrating reviews and recommendations into your products.

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