I’m running for Congress. Here’s why I’m advocating for web3
I’ve always been interested in how we can make things work better. From my work as an engineer helping companies transition from fossil fuels to building a company democratizing access to funding, I’ve dedicated my career to building a better future. We have an opportunity to be at the forefront of innovation by supporting emerging technologies and bringing more and more people into the fold, and we must responsibly build and invest in 21st century digital services to continue our journey in transparency, efficiency, and access.
Web3 comes from this concept that we are in the third iteration of the internet. Eshita Nandini is a researcher at Messari and describes it best here, so I’ll share the takeaways: in the 80’s and 90’s, we came to the internet primarily to consume information. The 2000’s shaped the internet as we know it today, “…prompted by upgrades to servers, developer skills, and faster internet speeds” and it “…made space for everyone to become a content creator and consumer simultaneously.” Now, “ownership is one of the biggest features of Web3 — participants have full ownership over their content, data, and assets,” shares Eshita.
Let’s get this out there — I’m not an expert, and to be honest there are very few people who claim to be in this space because it’s constantly evolving. Thankfully, I don’t have to be. We’ve listened, researched, and learned, and were ultimately inspired by 165-page reports, GitHub policy proposals, Twitter threads, and YouTube videos from voices in the crypto community, the Blockchain Association, Digital Chambers, and yes, the SEC. As we seek to build out the 21st century economy together, we can leverage technology to include more people than ever before to not just be consumers but owners of their property, assets, identities, including art.
The first federal candidate to launch NFTs
We’re dropping NFTs for our campaign this month, and before we get into why, here’s a quick primer on what exactly a NFT is. Once again, I’m not an expert, so here’s a video that will do a much better job than I can at explaining (not that I won’t try to).
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token, so that begs the question, “what is a fungible token?” The simplest example is Bitcoin, something you might have heard of if you’ve gotten this far. A fungible token, like Bitcoin, which can be exchanged (1 BTC= 1 BTC) in the same way 1 US dollar = 1 US dollar. NFTs, on the other hand, are unique, like collectibles, and NFTs have gone mainstream this year mostly due to NFT art. And in the case of our campaign, our NFTs are our campaign merchandise. In exchange for making a contribution to the campaign, you’ll receive a congr3ss NFT, the first ever NFTs dropped by a congressional candidate.
Building the future together
With new technology comes the opportunity to solve problems in new ways, and for more people. I’ve spent the past few years working to democratize access to capital. With crypto, we can democratize access to financial services at large and use the closely intertwined relationship between technology and ownership to streamline processes, educate the American population, and encourage financial literacy, particularly for communities who have been historically disenfranchised. From the Crypto Theses for 2022, “US policy will dictate whether [or not] we have a golden decade of growth like the 90s,” and we will need our representatives in Washington DC to advocate for a future that gives us more transparency and ownership.
TradFu is arcane and inefficient
Borrowing from DeFi vs. TradFi, or decentralized finance vs. traditional finance, let’s talk about TradFu (yes, I just coined that). Otherwise known as “traditional fundraising”, the overarching strategy is arcane and limited to two types of participants: (1) donors who have been giving for a long time and get hundreds of calls from candidates, and (2) rage donors who give reactively and also get hundreds of calls (or emails, or ads) from candidates. As a candidate, you’re expected to spend 30+ hours a week on the phone — not talking to voters, but cold-calling potential donors. And you need to fundraise because it signals that you have the resources, especially in my case, to take on an incumbent who has been in office for almost three decades. Now here’s the thing: as an entrepreneur who had to work down an extra-long Google Sheet of venture capital firms to raise funding since less than 2% of VC funding goes to female entrepreneurs, and as an investor-turned-fintech operator building a platform to democratize access to capital, you can say that I’d like to do things differently.
The NFT drop will help accomplish a few things:
- Educate the American population on blockchain to continue building the bridge between crypto and politics
- Engage the crypto community to participate in the future of crypto legislation
- Help us win so we can have more crypto-literate candidates in Congress
Join us
We’ll be launching the collection on December 27th at 12:27pm on SolSea, the open NFT marketplace on Solana. Solana is a hybrid proof-of-stake and proof-of-history blockchain, and according to CleanNFTs.org, “platforms running on more energy efficient Proof-of-Stake (PoS) networks are currently the best solution for creating NFTs without impacting the environment with high energy use.” In Solana’s latest energy report, a single Solana transaction is compared to a search on Google.
After you make a contribution on SolSea, you’ll receive at least one of the 2,022 NFTs representing visions and concepts in crypto as well as potential policy agendas for the future of web3.
In order to participate, you must be at least 18 years old and a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. You can learn more and sign up to be notified of the drop here.
Contribute to our campaign in crypto here or with your credit card here.
