Anais Nin lived from 1903-1977. She was an author best known for her journals and erotica books such as 'Delta of Venus'. This work was painted in oil on muslin. It's one of my favorites.
Yesterday I wrote about waiting for MyWish to deploy my contract for Rstory on EOS. They finally deployed the contract at 4am. But when I logged into MyWish today to actually mint my tokens, it didn't work. Instead of minting tokens, pressing the 'mint' button after filling out their form did nothing. I contacted their customer support several hours ago and have yet to hear back from them. Hopefully the issue will be resolved soon. At this point, having paid $250 for a service that has yet to be delivered, I'm more than a little frustrated.
I just want my token to work. But Rstory on EOS doesn't work yet because of problems with MyWish. And Rstory on Waves doesn't currently work because their wallet is apparently buggy and won't transfer custom tokens. It's like this tech that promises so much can't even deliver on the basics.
Custom tokens aren't rocket science. They're code. But more and more I've been getting the impression that the gatekeepers of this code are arrogant jerks trying to keep little guys like me out of crypto entirely. Do you know what it reminds me of? The difference between learning javascript and learning python.
Some years back, I decided to learn a programming language. Initially, I was going to learn javascript. But every time I asked a simple question about it, whether online or in person, I was told wrong information or just to google it. Obviously, I tried google before reaching out, but the javascript community was filled with knowledge gatekeepers trying to keep me out.
When I began learning python, I had a totally different experience. Whenever I'd get stuck, it was never a problem for me to find someone willing to answer my questions. In fact, most people were happy to share their knowledge. Many were even curious about the projects I was working on. Because of this, I learned python and still love using it.
My fear is that the crypto world is tilting from the openness of the python community into the gatekeeper mentality of the javascript community. If that's what's happening, it's very sad. More than that, it's wrong.
Don't misunderstand. Communities like Hive and Cryptowriter feel totally inclusive and open. But this openness is the exception when it should be the rule. Writers like me spend countless hours translating highly technical information into everyday language to make the space more open. Unfortunately, there are private clubs and corporate forces continually working in the opposite direction.
A big part of why I got into crypto in the first place was the freedom it represented. Knowledge gatekeeping threatens this freedom directly. It's bad enough that some projects have spotty or out-of-date documentation. When major projects like Waves and EOS fail to support their advertised features without the intervention of paid third-party professionals, it makes it impossible to trust these projects enough to build anything important on them.
This is one of the reasons why I chose to make Rstory as blockchain agnostic as possible. My Waves token may be frozen and my EOS token may be stuck in some weird MyWish limbo, but my Ethereum token still works. I'm not doing anything with it until Rstory on EOS gets sorted out, yet I could if I wanted to. At some point in the future, the Waves or EOS token might be the only operational version of Rstory. Having my token on multiple networks makes it resilient to problems on one or even two blockchains.
All I'm really trying to do with Rstory is create a token that represents gratitude, which can be sent to people and organizations to express this feeling. It's a super dorky ambition and I'm okay with that. The whole point of the project is that it's fun. Knowledge gatekeepers are sucking the fun out of crypto. I think this needs to change.