Open Source, Elections, AKASH Launch, and getting BASED
Brian Fox, Dr. Juan Gilbert, Akash Main Net and Getting Based
Hey everyone,
Lots of ground to cover today. We have two episodes of Follow The White Rabbit, the mainnet launch of the “Unstoppable Cloud” built by Akash, and a new project I’ve been following called “Based”.
And to kick things off, none of this is investment advice. Everything is meant for educational purposes only.
Brian J. Fox
I recently had my good friend, Brian J. Fox, on the Follow The White Rabbit podcast. Brian is the technical co-founder of Orchid, a serial entrepreneur, and an open-source advocate. I’ve had a lot of great feedback on his episode and I suggest you take a listen.
Dr. Juan Gilbert
This episode is super important. Dr. Jaun Gilbert is Chair of the CISE Dept at the University of Florida where he focuses on building open source election systems. The systems his team has built are live in a few states and he’s currently working on a solution to the long lines many will face in November when trying to vote in person.
If you care about this election, I suggest you listen to his episode and share it as widely as you can. If you have a way you think you can help him, please let me know and I can get you in touch.
Akash is launching!
I first met the founder of Akash, Greg Osuri, back in 2017 when I started working for Orchid. I immediately liked him. He’s charismatic, intelligent, an absolute hustler, and an amazing engineer. At the time, I was still getting my feet wet in the blockchain space but I knew that decentralized market places for bandwidth, compute, and storage were (and still are) huge opportunities.
Akash is a decentralized market place for computing resources. Think of it as a direct competitor to AWS where all the providers used Akash’s token to stake their services to the network and can get paid in any other token the developers choose. That’s the simple explanation but you can read more in detail from their whitepaper if you like.
One thing I was impressed with when I took a deeper look at their project was the strong traction they have with developers and their clear attention to detail when building out all the supporting development documentation. I’m a novice developer and was able to spin up an app on Akash’s test net within a few minutes.
They are also extremely scrappy. They aren’t a hardware company but one day Greg got an idea for a super sexy piece of hardware called “the supermini”. From idea to prototype, I think it was one weekend. Greg had a speaking slot at a conference in SF, put a pre-order page up, and held up the prototype during his talk to a crowd filled with engineers and crypto enthusiasts. In short order, he’d sold over 300k USD worth of these devices.
My point is, at every step of my research into this company Greg and his team have shown an ability to execute on their vision and to sell.
They are launching their mainnet soon. I fully expect 2020 to be a big year for Akash and am excited to follow their progress.
Getting Based
I was debating adding a section about Based. Mainly because few understand it. I know this is the meme of Crypto right now but I really mean it, few understand BASED.
I think the best explanation of Based came from twitter via the handle @EthVegan.
If you’re familiar with AMPL already then Based won’t’ be too big of a leap.
I’ll try to be quick in explaining what it is. First off, I’m not recommending investing at all but I do think it’s an interesting experiment to follow.
Based is a currency that attempts to maintain a value of $1. If you invest in Based, what you should follow is the Marketcap. That is the only thing that matters for Based holders.
Once a day, there is an event called “the rebase”. This happens at around 1 pm PST. At this time, the smart contract looks at the average price over the last 24 hrs. It then calibrates the supply of Based up or down. If the price is 50% over the 24 hr average then the supply increases by 50%, if it’s 50% below then the supply contracts 50% (negative rebase). The smart contract uses a TWAP oracle to do this.
The goal of Based is to eventually be a stable coin that stays very close to $1. As demand for the token increases, so will the market cap and the supply.
As a baed holder, you always maintain the same % ownership that you hold before and after the rebase events. Today the market cap is $30 million. If I own 1% of the market cap today and it increases to $100 million, I will still own 1% but the price of the token will stay at or around $1 while my holdings of Based will increase.
What drives demand for Based?
A vibrant community of “degens” and memes :). The Based team has done an amazing job creating a strong community on Telegram and elsewhere.
More importantly, they are launching a DEX. There is a teaser here about the Dex. Password = doitfordustin no spaces.
Side note.. Dustin is the main meme of the group. You can check TG to learn more on the backstory about that for a good laugh.
The theory behind Based is that if demand for the stable coin goes up then so does the market cap of the token. If the DEX workout then it should drive demand for the token.
I think this is an exciting project to watch but it is a total experiment and the founders are anonymous so play at your own risk and DYOR.
As always, love to hear everyone’s thoughts/questions and feel free to reach out if you want to connect.
Best,
Alex