Reflections on my experience with RMRK (post-hackathon)

Since the adoption of my baby daughter in January of this year (2021) I’ve begun to consider more seriously the world and the future in 5, 10, 20 years. This “crypto” thing that flashed into my life briefly in 2017 returned and begged me for a little attention. So I looked at it again, but this time through a technological perspective, rather than a financial perspective. And it became clear that this is a space full of exceptionally smart and forward-thinking folk, those whose company I would likely be wise to find myself in.

Of course, “crypto” is a complex concept and there is a lot of noise, hype and fluff. So where do I go? I have limited time and cannot pick every path. In exploring, I found Gavin Wood’s Polkadot demo (https://youtu.be/0IoUZdDi5Is) and that seemed to speak to me. A blockchain to connect blockchains. Layer-0 as they say. The concept of “there will not be one chain but many” rang true. So I chose Polkadot.

But then, what else? Even Polkadot is a wildly complicated technology. Where to go from here? For many months, I needed a home. Some project that was just right for me. One that wasn’t “DeFi” (I don’t care about money), one that was built enough to be believed, but young enough to feel like I might be able to make a substantial contribution to. By some random click on some tweet somewhere, I found my home. It is RMRK.

So why RMRK (pronounced Remark)?

1. It’s pitch can be understood in 1 minute. I’m not generally sold on sales pitches, but RMRK’s intro video is just beautiful, and tickles the brain with the possibilities of what the future holds: https://youtu.be/wMpwGo6wi_0

2. Bruno, the primary guy behind RMRK. As with Gavin with regards to Polkadot (or Vitalik with Ethereum) I personally need strong leadership in a project or company. I find Bruno to have many important characteristics of a leader. He represents the brand enthusiastically but honestly. He is transparent about limitations, timelines, the reasoning behind decisions. His background in crypto/web3 (as I understand it at least) is rooted in the freedom of decentralization. He also has charisma in representing the brand, is clearly an expert in the crypto world, and his interviews are exciting and informative (https://youtu.be/T8z4DGnWQL8 and more recently https://youtu.be/MCNiChDSgL8)

3. The project is cool. Really cool. I won’t dive deep into what RMRK is beyond saying…consider NFTs that can own NFTs, and can change how they are experienced/seen/heard depending on various conditions (like owning an egg that can hatch into a bird, or an NFT that smiles when enough people like it). It takes the concept of digital ownership to the metaverse (whatever that is, but certainly where RMRK will be). For a better introduction see https://youtu.be/P33mYMGPbKQ.

4. You don’t need a wallet or anything to see what RMRK has done. Check out RMRKs NFT marketplace at singular.rmrk.app (it works for viewing on mobile and looks great). Or check out RMRKs demonstration of the newer RMRK2.0 standard with the kanaria birds at kanaria.rmrk.app.

5. The project is young. I think it’s under a year old at this point. I got involved about a month ago (as a hackathon participant) and feel like I have genuinely contributed to the project in a small way already.

6. The RMRK team. The Yuri’s in particular, Bruno as well…they actively and swiftly provide feedback to questions. They seem to be welcoming to new folks and kind. Also there is Christina who I think is the social media manager. She does a phenomenal job at managing the many Telegram and Discord rooms (posted below). I've asked many questions, and have been helped every time (sometimes even by community members).

7. To the moon. I couldn’t care less. The token can go to zero for all I care. The value in RMRK (for me) is how it embraces thinking differently. The implementation of Kusama is wild (we will just graffiti the blockchain). The real joy I have is knowing that many creative people will come to realize that RMRK will enable them to make insanely cool things.

I expect as I continue doing what I can to contribute to this project, I’ll find more to add to this list, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time contributing to this hackathon and felt compelled to share my experience. For full disclosure, I own about 10 RMRK tokens (I didn’t realize you can’t use them to buy a kanaria bird so now I’ll just hold them I guess). Also I don’t work for RMRK but who knows, maybe one day.

Feel free to reach me at @blocksbrandon on Twitter (I’m a person though I use it as a bot to report rmrk item sales) or on telegram @brawndojo.

RMRKs Telegram channels:

Announcement channel - https://t.me/rmrk_ann

Kanaria Trading - https://t.me/kanariaTrading

Singular - https://t.me/rmrkapp

Kanaria - https://t.me/kanaria_official

Kanaria Russian - https://t.me/Kanaria_RU_Official

For developers - https://t.me/rmrkimpl