Chibi Shinobis Launch, New Job
Believe it or not, it’s been over a month since the last issue..
Thanks for your patience! Let’s get back into it.
Here’s a summary of what I’ve been up to:
Chibi Shinobis is launching TODAY!!
I’m so proud of our entire team for getting the project to this point. Matt ported our entire tech stack from Solidity / Ethereum over to Rust / Solana and built the website. Catherine wrapped up the art by working on some really cool one-of-one special pieces that we’ll be reserving for giveaways. And Valerie crafted the Discord community structure and kickstarted our Twitter presence.
No matter what happens from here, it’s a huge milestone and we’re really excited to see what we can build next.
I started a new job at Alchemy!
Alchemy is the best blockchain developer platform on the market. Basically, if you’re writing code and creating decentralized applications, Alchemy provides all the infrastructure you need to make sure things run smoothly and efficiently. It’s a great crypto company to work for because it effectively indexes the whole industry — we don’t depend on the success of one protocol or application — and right now tons of DeFi protocols, NFT marketplaces, and all kinds of dApps are powered by Alchemy. It’s like the AWS of the Web3 world! Very exciting times and I feel lucky to have this opportunity.
I joined as a Developer Advocate, and if you don’t know what that is, don’t worry I didn’t know what that was a couple months ago either. Sam Julien, a Dev Rel manager at Auth0, wrote this great guide for how to navigate a Dev Advocate career:
Tldr; I’m a still a software engineer, but I spend a lot of time outside of coding doing teaching and sharing work: making content, going to conferences, and hanging out on Twitter and Discord.
Here’s one of the first videos I’ve made for the Alchemy channel:
And here’s me throwing together a quick list of things I’ve enjoyed about working at the company so far, 1 month in:
The most epic thing is probably the mind-boggling Series C raise that was announced recently. I can’t take any credit for this, but I’m excited to help see the company (and the crypto industry as a whole) through to the next 10x :)
The Nas Academy x Metapurse Fellowship is ending
I’ve submitted my final 6 videos for the month of October and the program is ending soon! There’s a farewell ceremony on Nov 13th. I’m super grateful for what this opportunity has given me, and I hope I’ve somewhat lived up to the vision that Metapurse set out. Now it’d be awesome if I could meet up with my classmates in real life someday..
And finally.. I celebrated my birthday last week in LA
ate tons of hotpot with my family
took Catherine to a halloween party at Launch House (ty Sean for being a great host)
gave my grandpa a haircut
Challenges
Some things I’m thinking about in the next days / weeks / months:
Cut down on commitments so that I can focus on my new job. How can I help Alchemy 10x?
Keep helping new people onboard into crypto. How can I be the most effective Web3 educator / content creator / influencer possible?
Set up my home studio. How have I procrastinated so hard on this??
Get back on the gym routine. Healthy body, healthy mind.
Rebuild relationships. Covid wrecked me on this one.
Overall I’m very content but I’m also feeling very hungry. Feels like I’m officially entering the next phase of my life — a multi-year sprint to set up the foundation for how far I can go and how much I can build before I start thinking about kids and houses and that kind of stuff. Dramatic? Sure, maybe a little. But it helps to remind myself what direction I want to go in every now and then.
