jumping on the blockchain

There's a forever itch in my hippocampus which prods me to keep picking up new things—purging my ignorance one domain at a time. I keep saying I’ll take up medicine next (engineering of the human body is oh-so-fascinating), but that’s a tale for another time.

In 2022, the itch was Data Science & AI/ML. In 2024, it was web3. Truth be told, my blockchain rabbit hole actually began much earlier, back in 2021, when NFTs were the latest fever dream. As an artist-on-the-side (don't bother asking me what I do, it's the Schrödinger's everything-and-nothing-all-at-once), I figured I could not only support other artists but also tokenise my own work and put it on-chain. So, I did the complete dance: bought crypto, traded assets, swapped tokens, minted and bought NFTs—basically executed every possible function in the cryptoverse. You guessed it right - I burned not a hole in but my entire pocket, and came out with nothing (of course, no regrets), walked away and continued with my life.
 

Back to 2024, I was working in AI/ML when I reconnected with some old friends who were deep in web3. Suddenly, I found myself in conversations about L2s, and AI agents this, AI agents that. It sounded intriguing but this time, instead of jumping in headfirst, I decided to take a formal approach. Then came Maggie Love and SheFi—an introductory course on all things web3. I applied and got in. (Got a scholarship too, thanks to Celo.)

The course began. Some of the foundational material was already known to me, yet there were many novel concepts too. I’d heard the term "roll-ups" quite a bit but never actually knew what it meant until SheFi happened. And AMMs (automated market makers)—what an idea! Undoubtedly the best session. A physics lecturer of mine years ago used to speak about simple yet elegant solutions, and the mathematical model behind AMMs is precisely that—a beautifully minimalistic, self-regulating system. Had me a moment of awe just staring at the equation.

Recommend the program to anyone looking to step into web3.
 

Medicine, here I come! Time to figure out how to crack that system next.