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It’s Sunday fam, and we are on time.

It was not lost on me that I told y'all I was back, only to ghost you for 6 weeks. To keep it authentic, here’s what I'd probably say after leaving you on read for that long:

“Oh shit, just saw this.”

Let’s get into some recaps.

ETHDenver

ETHDenver was my first crypto event since last summer’s ETHCC in Paris, and I was stoked to see a bunch of my friends. However, the reality of my new role introduced some unexpected demands that significantly changed my experience.

Between my work responsibilities and hitting up events, not a lot of time was left for hacking. The hackathon started on a Friday and went through to the following Saturday morning. Up to that point, all I had was a repo set up. We finally got down to it on Friday night, with less than 24 hours to go.

I don’t recommend this. It wasn’t fun, and we missed the Boys Club party.

The morning of submission was a total shit show. We had decided to deploy to Linea but ran into three big problems:

1. Liquidity Fragmentation: To deploy a contract on Linea, we needed ETH on the Linea network. The wallet I wanted to use had USDC on the Polygon network. To send USDC out of the Polygon network, I needed Matic, Polygon's native token. I had to buy Matic before I could even send USDC out.

2. Bridging Issues: We faced another hurdle with Linea's native bridge, which only supported transfers from the Ethereum mainnet, not from other L2s like Polygon. This forced us to buy ETH to cover L1 fees, adding further costs and delays.

3. Lack of NFT Support: After deployment, we discovered Linea wasn’t supported by Opensea, an oversight on my part. Though Linea had other marketplaces, the NFT artwork failed to show up due to metadata issues that hadn't popped up during our Ethereum testnet deployments.

At this point, it was too late to turn back because we were set on the bounties we were submitting for.

After submitting the project, I redeployed the contract to Base, because of its popularity, expecting users would already have funds on that network.

Once I redeployed and did the first airdrop, I was pumped to see the NFT’s artwork showing up right. Feeling like I had just reached the top of the mountain, I uncovered a bug.

I forgot to update the testnet price oracle contract address. This meant that I would need to re-deploy the contract and re-airdrop all the NFTs — a solution that felt spammy.

Looking back, I shouldn’t have taken it so seriously, but I ended up calling it and took the L.

Big thanks to the following 6 individuals who donated!
- Bianca: Here is your NFT
- Tom: Here is your NFT
- Cat: Here is your NFT
- Ando: Here is your NFT
- Kevin: Here is your NFT
- Cryptocomical: Here is your NFT

On a high note, I completed the ETHDenver vlog series. Check it out here.

New Job

I’m coming up on my second month at Dabl.Club and man, has it been a ride.

I’m doing things I enjoy, like having 1-on-1 calls with mages all over the world. One of my first tasks was to get on a call with the top 25 mages. I reached out to each of them, sent a Calendly link, and over the last few weeks, I’ve had sporadic 30-minute calls with individuals who, in another life, I would never meet.

They are members of their communities who want to better their communities by liaising resources to empower their people. It’s truly inspiring, and incredible because most of these people have their full-time jobs aside from being community leaders.

Another task I’ve been working on is getting an activation in Sydney for ETHGlobal. I’ve learned about different seating arrangements like boardroom vs classroom vs theatre and even picked up some negotiating tips that I’ll be able to use for future event planning.

I’ve also had a crash course in communicating internationally; for example, if WhatsApp isn’t an option, you can load a Google Voice account and make calls to Sydney for 1-3 cents, whereas if you use your mobile phone directly, you’ll be billed $50 for two, 5-minute calls.

The more you know.

Due to my geographical location, my region of focus is North America and LATAM. I’ve begun planning a few activations in South America.

First stop, Rio de Janeiro.

Post Marathon Blues

I wish I could tell you the marathon went great, but it didn’t.

Maybe it was the L still lingering from the hackathon, or maybe it was the realization of my new work responsibilities, but after a few days back from Denver I fell into a slump.

The morning of the race.
31 at the time, and I’m still throwing a tantrum at 6am and I changed to getting ready for the race.

I threw a tantrum at 6am, refusing to change. I told Claudia I didn’t want to run the race anymore.

Claudia responded with a sympathetic but stern tone saying, I was going to run it because we had already paid a premium for it.

I ran a conservative race compared to my last marathon, where I was gassed out by mile 19 which led to shuffling and some walking.

Not wanting to relive that nightmare, I ran a comfortable race, many times slowing myself down.

It kind of paid off. In this race, I only stopped twice, both for bathroom breaks, and never did the shuffle and had to walk, however, I finished 68 seconds slower than my first marathon.

Truth is, no way in hell did I deserve anything better than that.

Mediocre training gets you mediocre results.

After the race, I was left with another L.

Tis the fking season, am I right?

The universe has a way of knowing when it needs to throw a bone at you, and that’s exactly what happened a few weeks couple of weeks later. Juan, a friend we met in Bogotá in 2022, who lives in Phoenix (small world) recently celebrated his birthday. He invited us over, and since then we’ve been hanging out more regularly.

One morning he texts me he is starting 75 hard. If you’re not familiar with it, here are the rules:
- Drink 1 gallon of water a day
- 2, 45 min workouts, 1 needs to be outside, more than 3 hours apart (consecutive workouts don’t count)
- Read 10 pages of a self-development book (audiobooks don’t count)
- Stick to a diet
- Take a progress pic every day

As soon as I read his message, it ignited something in me. I put my phone down and began to move out of bed. One leg after another stepped onto the ground and before I knew it, I was putting shoes on, heading outside for a walk.

I’m on day 14 of 75 and documenting the experience here.

What I’m Reading

Talent is Overrated

Since I needed a physical book for the 75 Hard challenge, I ran into a bit of a problem—because it was a holiday (April 1, the Monday following Easter weekend), all the libraries were closed. Not feeling like spending 30 bucks on a new book, we checked out a couple of Goodwills to find a self-development book to read.

I grabbed 'Talent is Overrated.' I’m close to finishing it, but here are a few of the key takeaways I’ve gotten:

1. Smart vs. Dedication: The author tells a story of how people often think that you need to be smart to be successful, but take this: a person who has both 10/10 smarts and 10/10 dedication can likely do anything they want.
   
   Now, as we begin to decrease the dedication, the likelihood of this smart person doing anything is dim. However, if you begin to reduce the smarts on this person but remain 10 on dedication, they can probably become a taxi medallion holder (as the author exemplified). It got me thinking it's more about what you do with what you have than what you have.

2. Nature vs. Nurture: Nobody is born a prodigy, but they can be born into the right circumstances. Two of the case studies, Tiger Woods and Beethoven, started golfing before age 3 and was composing pieces by age 12, respectively. From an outsider's perspective, we would assume they were born with this innate talent that no one else holds, but what I learned was that their 'luck' in life was having parental figures that gave them their edge. Tiger’s dad wasn’t a professional golf player, but he was a sports coach with a lot of experience and Beethoven's dad also played music.

3. Without Love, There is Nothing. Practice isn't always fun, but to engage in the hours of deliberate practice the author emphasizes, one must have a deep interest or passion for the activity. Without this, it's nearly impossible to endure the rigorous demands and sustain the effort required over a long period of time.

Mastery

On theme with 'Talent is Overrated,' I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Historically, geniuses like Galileo or Shakespeare were rare because back then, you pretty much had to be born into the perfect environment. If you were born a peasant, good luck becoming a knight.

But today? It’s a whole new world. Anyone with a smartphone and internet can chase whatever sparks their interest. We’re in the information age, where you can jump into a Philosophy lecture from Harvard Law from anywhere. Your location doesn’t box you in anymore, and visas no longer can hold you hostage.

Anyway, just started listening to this, so excited to share some more things next week.

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That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.

See ya next week.