Introducing “Control My Life”: use my cryptocurrency $ALEX to vote on my life choices
You thought you’d seen it all in crypto? Think again.
There are many primitives in the blockchain space:
- “DeFi”, an open, global, transparent financial system,
- “DAO”, internet-ran, open-source entities,
- “NFT’, digital ownership free from third parties.
I call “primitive” things you cannot do easily, or just cannot do at all without this new technology. And what I’m about to tell you today fits into a new, exciting category: personal tokens, or selling shares of yourself.
I was the first ever person to do a human token sale on Ethereum, as seen on Forbes.
Now I’m taking this a step further: if you own my cryptocurrency $ALEX, you can vote on my life choices.
To be fair, I’m not the first one who thought about doing this: the first publicly traded person was Mike Merrill who did this back in 2008, with questions such as “Should I marry my girlfriend?”. Another, James Gallagher, let people choose his diet: pescatarian, which allows fish and seafood.
But neither of these experiments used Ethereum tokens, the missing piece that I believe will unlock countless use cases. It’s never been easier to create your own digital currency and have people speculate on it. This can unlock opportunities for anyone with a smartphone anywhere in the world, and let them raise money against their potential. Pioneer is a great example of a new opportunity for outsiders of this world, and revealed incredible people from Latin America, Africa and Asia that could not have been seen before by Silicon Valley investors.
Creating your own currency would democratize this system at scale, and without relying on a legacy platform to do so.
➡️ To access the first vote, here is the link to the beta version ⬅️
Why would I want to give my life choices away?
Great question: this voting mechanism is truly novel because only people who own $ALEX can vote. The rule is 1 $ALEX = 1 vote, meaning the more $ALEX you hold, the more invested you are into my success, and thus the bigger your vote will be in my eyes.
Technically, people invested in $ALEX should make good decisions for me, since they have money on the line and if they’re rational enough, would want to see their investment appreciate. I choose the question, so I guide them.
#Vote 1: Choose my daily habit this July
I’m kicking this off by proposing four habits that I believe would improve my life. As a founder, it’s hard to stick to a schedule because I have no one to call me out on it. So I’m letting my shareholders do the job! Here are the options that I will have to comply with everyday:
- 😩 Jog 5 km: until my move to SF later this year, I live close to a huge Paris park. Probably the hardest physically, so I would allow myself 2 rest days per week. It’ll still be hard.
- 🥩 Stop eating red meat: sorry, carnivores. Stopping red meat would make me healthier and make our planet a little greener.
- 💰 Survive only using Bitcoin: that would mean moving my current account on Revolut to BTC, and try to deal with merchants that do not take card to accept BTC, or other cryptocurrencies like ETH or $ALEX. Always nice to fully opt-out from the government’s currency.
- ⏰ Wake up at 6AM: again, hard for me who sometimes sync up with US timezones, but ultimately worth it for my productivity.
These goals seem great to showcase the goal of this: it makes me better and healthier and doesn’t take too much time. I will likely work harder as a result. These are small enough tasks so that I can commit to it, and big enough so that it does change my life. I’m also taking suggestions for my next votes, hit me up.
➡️ To access the first vote, here is the link to the beta version ⬅️
How can we check if you really commit to those goals?
I will publish daily proofs on my $ALEX Holder Telegram chat. Reminder: you need to own $ALEX to enter this bot built by James Duncan from Abridged.
But the ultimate check really is the $ALEX token price. You can check it here. If people don’t see me do it, they can sell. Currently, my market cap is $100,000 and there is $15,000 of liquidity on Uniswap, where you can buy my token.
How does the vote work?
- 1 $ALEX = 1 vote. The more $ALEX you own, the bigger your vote.
- The vote itself is free: it is a cryptographically-secured signature to prove you own $ALEX.
- Keep your $ALEX until the final count: Wednesday 17th June 12AM UTC
- Results will be shared shortly after.
This was done extremely easily thanks to Austin Thomas Griffith help. In his own words, here’s how it works:
“Using your Ethereum wallet, you sign your vote and submit it to a traditional web server. We can then count and validate votes using cryptography without ever having to make an on-chain transaction. This system allows us to use the mainnet token as voting power over and over without ever paying gas.
I’m incredibly excited about personal tokens and the tooling that will form around it out of utility. This is just another great use case for Ethereum and something that gets me excited for the future of web3. What new and exotic mechanisms will we build next!?” — Austin Griffith, Ethereum hacker.
You can see Austin’s article here, and I also open-sourced my version of it here, if you want to use it for your token.
That’s it! So go ahead, try it out for yourself!
You will need a Ethereum wallet to perform the signature needed. You can buy my token $ALEX on the website itself.
➡️ To access the first vote, here is the link to the beta version ⬅️
You can also follow me on Twitter for more updates. Thanks for reading!
— $ALEX Masmej
