Written by: John "JAYEL" Lasak
Obviously, the most important thing in the world right now is the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. I won't share too much on the news or my opinion on it besides the fact that I'm clearly against what Putin is forcing his servicemen and country into. Ukraine is valiant, inspiring and hopelessly outnumbered. It is so strange to watch this conflict unfold in the modern world of social media and internet instantaneousness. War always brings realities to life that no single man or woman ever expected beforehand--and we haven't come close to seeing these new realities, yet.
I came across one of the most fascinating resources I've discovered on the internet in a long time this evening. It's called the Institute for the Study of War.
"The Institute for the Study of War advances an informed understanding of military affairs through reliable research, trusted analysis, and innovative education. We are committed to improving the nation’s ability to execute military operations and respond to emerging threats in order to achieve U.S. strategic objectives. ISW is a non-partisan, non-profit, public policy research organization."
- ISW
The organization has amazing coverage of the situation in Ukraine (as well as Iraq, Afghanistan and others). If you are any bit like me and are fascinated by military history and strategy, then you need to start tracking the crisis on ISW. The work is reliable, real-time, educated, and powerful.
Check it out at www.understandingwar.org
If you're interested in finding ways to help, I've linked some crypto and traditional donation options below that are respectable and trustworthy to me.
- National Bank of Ukraine: Assisting Ukraine's Armed Forces
- Sovereignty NFT: Assisting multiple organizations
- Ukraine's ETH/BTC Wallets
Other non-financial ways to help can be found via ISW's very own, Nataliya Bugayova and her evolving Twitter thread.
⚛️ Pokt Network, the AWS of the future
The CEO of my company told me about this network and its coin ($POKT), and asked me to look into it. At first I was skeptical of it, because there are just so many random tokens floating around and saying different things but--most of them don't have relevance for long.
It's hard to fully understand what the network is about just by reading the website (even if you are pretty technical). I watched two really good YouTube videos that left me with a simple but still very deep understanding of why the network could be something to be excited about.
I still believe it to be speculative but, at least now there are reasons to speculative about it.
Ok, so what is it?
It has the chance to be a decentralized blockchain version of AWS (Amazon Web Services). AWS is what pretty much every software company hosts their web services on.
Pokt Network uses nodes and coins to service customer hosting requests. The nodes and coins can both be owned by people like you and me. Nodes are pretty much links in a network chain; Coins are just like Bitcoin and Ethereum (except not exactly). For nodes, imagine a bunch of internet routers and modems in different houses, and how they all connect back to the same place--the Internet Service Provider (i.e. AT&T or Verizon). Nodes are kind of the internet routers and modems in the houses, except in a decentralized blockchain, all of the internet routers and modems can talk directly to one another without needing to go back to the Internet Service Provider.
In one of the interviews I watched, the CEO of Pokt went on to make a really interesting comparison. Companies and individuals spend a lot of money to host with AWS. None of that money is retained, it is all spent to host your service. On Pokt, users of the network's capabilities are paying and staking the $POKT coin. The more you make use of the network, the more you are also able to earn and stake for use and saving. The CEO claimed the economy of its token is inflationary, which means its potential could be most easily compared to Bitcoin's inflation. I don't believe Pokt has a said they would cap the amount of coins in their ecosystem, but $POKT is definitely not meant for high-frequency trading like some other tokens are.
To host a Pokt node, you need to own 15,000 $POKT. As of March 1st, 2022 at 12:15 AM EST, 1 POKT = $0.77
It's an interesting project for sure, and I will keep looking into it further. If you want to learn more about it, it's definitely worth a check.
🌼 That's all for this week
I hope everyone has an excellent week. See you guys in the next letter. Hopefully by then, we will have some positive news out of Ukraine.
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