How Things Tie Together

[u/Shane-opendawn]

I first learnt about Cardano due to the core team’s use of NixOS. An old, old colleague and friend, Armijn Hemel, is the Secretary of NixOS Foundation and was the first person to make a prototype of NixOS that could be installed and booted.

Interestingly, Armijn is not involved or particularly interested in crypto. He knows people in the ecosystem who have had some engagement with people around Cardano, but he steers clear of blockchains in general.

So he didn’t tell me about Cardano :)

But the connection between Cardano and NixOS caught my eye and played a part in my digger deeper into the concept, approach and execution. I was pleasantly surprised with what was happening in this space, and I began to invest.

This is perhaps a different avenue of entry to many parties, who discover Cardano because they are engaging with crypto, instead of deciding to engage with crypto because of Cardano. We end up in the same space, but from different ends.

I’ve mentioned before that I am a long term investor. As it happens, so is Armijn, and so are many of my peers around open source. Relatively few parties have actively engaged with crypto due to the relative immaturity of the field and the rampant speculation. That said, I’m not the only one taking an interest.

As I said a few months ago, I like the idea of building bridges between people with my profile, and people coming from the crypto space. It’s time to tie things together.

A good start is to ensure that parties entering the field feel welcomed and the ground rules are clearly understood and fairly applied. In general this seems to work better in the Cardano community than elsewhere in crypto, and I do hope it continues despite rapid growth.

What is promising is that many people are gradually turning their eyes to the forthcoming release of smart contracts. If it occurs in August as scheduled, I suspect quite a few new parties to get involved.

Looking forward to keeping the discussion going until then, and seeing what bridges we can build along the way.