First You BUIDL Then You HODL?

2021 Was The Year Of Web 3.0 And The Metaverse

This article is very much an opinion piece about what one crypto enthusiast can see unfolding in front of him and it IS a revolution. From projects that promise a future where your NFT earns you a passive income from a game to protocols that reward stakers with fair and sustainable returns for trusting them with their funds. This very much looks like the beginning of the custody transfer of value from financial and data banks back to the earners themselves and I for one am shilling this future.

P.S click every single link in this article for a ton of gems…WGMI

A Little History Of A Real Bear Market

At the end of 2017, Bitcoin began to make international noise and this was the moment I personally entered the fray. Big-eyed and full of optimism I watched as TRON soared from $0.03 to $0.25 within days, Litecoin bulldozed its way to $300, and dreams of becoming the first hundred thousandaire in my family before 30 looked as if it was about to happen. What times we had, naiive hopium was in full flow.

Within 3 months it was all gone, ALL OF IT, EVERYTHING. POOF, VAMOS, disintegrated into crypto dust as the ever-present Mcdonald’s meme became more appealing than to refresh my Blockfolio account. This wasn’t just me, it was everybody in numerous WhatsApp groups we’d spun up hunting down “quality” ICOs and “private investment rounds”. That was just the beginning of the bear market, this was the despair stage.

The 2017 ICO crowd that still participates today will all agree that you know you are truly in a bear market when nobody talks about crypto anymore. The air of negativity has disappeared because the air has disappeared. Forget CNBC having obscure discussions about Bitcoin’s price action, the dedicated cryptocurrency media outlets literally flat-packed and went on an indefinite sabbatical.

That is it, when there is no talk, the bear has destroyed all sentiment, that IS a bear market. There is no dip to buy, only a crater of unrealized profits, sucking up to bosses for the comments made about their insignificance when your portfolio was off to the moon. Something is left, however, glimmering under the dirt for those determined souls that are still looking to build a smarter and fairer future. That diamond is the knowledge that this technology DOES ACTUALLY WORK.

Getting In On Ground Zero

Listen to this AMA with Kain Warwick on the Bankless Podcast

Also, check out Anatoly on the FTX podcast

The biggest lesson to come of the 2018 bear market was clear, if you really want to win in this industry, you must immerse yourself at ground zero and do not leave until your contribution is complete. Kain, Raj and Anatoly are obvious examples of those that won the game of financial freedom via crypto but countless nameless developers, thought leaders, investors that stuck around to build this seemingly limitless market ALL benefited from their dedication and efforts.

The most important message in this article is that this opportunity to get in at ground zero is pretty much infinite. It is now, it is in the future and all it depends on is whether or not you are willing to dedicate your skills, your time, and your efforts to improving the space. No different to those mentioned above.

Opportunities To Build Communities And Projects

Working with some budding projects myself, there are a number of skills that young initiatives seem to be calling out for massively:

~ Social media management

~ Content creation

~ Developers & Programmers (Rust and Solidity in particular)

~ Community management in Discord and Telegram

~ Strategic marketing and branding

~ Artists for NFTs

These are by no means the only roles that up-and-coming projects are looking for but they do seem to be the ones that new protocols desperately need. Again simply send a message on the general chat of projects you’re interested in saying “I really would like to help build this project in any way I can” and trust me, you’ll land somewhere.

What about rewards? Will you get paid? It’s all within the discussion between you and the founders/community management. In many cases, you will be paid in native tokens or in stablecoins, or in IDO allocation but not limited to any of this. In my experience, many solid projects are pretty generous to their contributors and usually are virtuous when it comes to delivering on their promises.

Ecosystems That Are All About The BUIDL

Another budding ecosystem that has recently gotten the attention of the community is the NEAR foundation. At the end of 2021, NEAR received 800m in funding to expand the ecosystem PLUS a further $150m funding round led by 3 arrows capital. It was only earlier on in 2021 when Solana raised roughly half this amount and subsequently blew up both in price and impact. Since the investment, the price of the NEAR token is up more than 90% (at the time of writing) and they are actively reaching out to members of the community to take up careers with the foundation.

An Honorary Mention

Hawksight

You can also join the mission as Hawksight Ambassadors or Early Adopters, both of whom will get exclusive access to new DApp features, and token rewards & incentives

Join the Hawksight Community:

👾 Discord: https://discord.gg/7ZDVwAaqWk

💙 Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/hawksightco

📲 Telegram: https://t.me/hawksight

Fusotao

Join Fusotao’s community:

💙 Twitter: https://twitter.com/FusotaoProtocol

📲 Telegram: https://t.me/fusotao

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Crypto enthusiast, Podcaster, Web 3.0 educatooorrrrrr

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