I've never really been a fan of labels and stereotypes. In many ways, they make us stupid. We take shortcuts to save glucose and retrieve from our minds simplified versions of complex ideas. Back in 2012, I wrote how Stereotypes Make You Stupid. In 2017, I wrote about Tribalism: Our Shared Enemy, again dealing with the problem of attaching labels to our identities.
Some common labels for high performers include Managing Director or CEO. In October of this year I was asked by my friends to help present a new project to the world called Waterfall, an EVM DAG which is post-blockchain technology potentially capable of delivering on the layer 1 promises the digital ledger industry has been making for over ten years. I was also being recruited to become the CEO for the project.
Before I get into how amazing I think Waterfall is, I want to set the stage a bit. My dear friend flew me business class to Dubai (a first, for sure) and put me up in the Armani hotel in the largest building in the world.
It was incredible!
The night before myself and the lead developer gave our presentation, the first ever announcement of Waterfall to the world, I reluctantly agreed to take on the label of CEO to help this project come into reality. I was conflicted, but after listening to the Way of the Superior Man a couple times, I thought I was just feeling the normal nervous fear that comes with trying to take on something new and significant. I thought of myself as being pushed just past my comfort zone which is where we truly grow as men.
Over the rest of October and into November, I worked at figuring out how to continue as the Managing Director for the Foundation for Interwallet Operability and Evangelist for Crypto and Blockchain for Roundtable Media while taking on this CEO role. I started building the Stoked Contingent and a DAC model for high performers to replicate themselves.
I thought I could make it work.
I started feeling discouraged that I wasn't making as much forward progress on Waterfall as quickly as I intended. I thought at first it was because I had existing travel engagements and conference responsibilities at NFT NYC and the Miami Crypto Experience. Recently I realized it was more than that holding me back.
It was the label CEO.
I was really conflicted. I kept trying to push through, build my team faster, and replicate myself so I could make it all work at once. I had a fantastic counseling session with Erez Ascher which I recorded and listened to multiple times. One of the key takeaways was my fear that I would fail my friends. He reminded me sometimes you have to disappoint your friends in order to not fail them. I realized I can't go against my nature. I don't want to be attached to the label CEO for any specific project, no matter how amazing it is. Even the Managing Director title I have now with FIO Protocol was taken on reluctantly and initially part-time only.
I can only be valuable to my friends and family by being my true, authentic self. I'm not just a label or a title. I'm not just a person connected to a specific project and defined by it. I'm meant to add value in multiple places and multiple times with my connections and relationships coming together to create a world we all want to live in.
I almost denied my own nature to take on a label for a project I'm incredibly excited about. I agreed to it initially because I love my friends, and I want to see them be incredibly successful. I did it because this project is important and might fundamentally change the blockchain industry to become a post-blockchain DAG ecosystem. I now think the best way to serve this project and my friends is by not taking on labels I'm not comfortable with, while still being directly involved and helping this project come to life.
So what is an EVM DAG anyway? Why does Waterfall matter so much?
Blockchain technology is broken.
Most layer one solutions have made a compromise in either performance, security, or decentralization. Blockchains and cryptocurrency was supposed to be programmable money for the unbanked. Peer to peer digital cash. A new Internet that's decentralized, private, and secure while enabling commerce as a core fundamental. Instead we got ICO speculation, irrational exuberance, usability nightmares, and technologies that can’t scale for the real world. The fees have been too high for the large-scale transaction volume required for mass adoption.
Yes, I’m hopeful for lightning network, "Ethereum 2.0", and layer 2 solutions, but I question whether they alone can really scale to enterprise grade and serve billions of users and their billions of devices. Where are the big wins we can point to which validate our utility as an industry? Technology that doesn’t help improve the life of a human being is worthless.
What if a post-blockchain technology is the solution?
Ethereum Virtual Machine (or EVM) compatible blockchains and tooling represent some of the largest segments of the cryptocurrency ecosystem including Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and others. DeFi, smart contracts, NFTs, DACs and DAOs, and more are being built in an environment which can’t scale to meet the demand that’s coming, but still represent the bulk of innovation attention.
Waterfall is a potential solution to these challenges using a post-blockchain technology known as a Directed A-cyclical Graph or DAG. Uniquely, this DAG has at its core the Ethereum Virtual Machine (or EVM).
Waterfall has the potential to take solutions built for Ethereum that are struggling under high fees and low throughput and enable them to scale to enterprise grade performance for the masses. It can also take applications deployed on other EVM chains which have sacrificed decentralization for performance (such as Binance Smart Chain) and redeploy them on a low cost, high performance, decentralized ledger. DAG technology allows multiple blocks to be created simultaneously which eliminates the performance bottlenecks and high gas fees which are holding back enterprise adoption. This allows for post-blockchain performance without compromises towards centralization or obscure programming tooling or techniques. The low hardware requirements to run a node on Waterfall will ensure anyone can do it cheaply which is important for decentralization.
Unlike some other DAGs, Waterfall can support the existing smart contract infrastructure as a layer one solution.
Waterfall might deliver on the promises I entered this industry almost nine years ago to see realized. This stuff matters because we need more noise and less signal.
https://twitter.com/lukestokes/status/1461690409772535811
- lukestokes
If blockchain technology can't deliver, maybe post-blockchain DAG technology can. I'm looking forward to world-changing technologies standing on their own without having to be attached to a single personality. If that personality must exist, they can exist as legend like Satoshi Nakamoto. In my opinion, the most important thing isn't who has a label like CEO, but how many people believe in the mission of high performance layer 1 digital ledger technology and will show up to see that vision accomplished.
Keep any eye on https://waterfall.foundation/ and join us when we're ready.