Going Stellar

the story of my next chapter

I am slowly starting to comprehend that there is something more powerful than loving one’s work, which is the fundamental, unshakable belief that this must exist or this must be who I must become. — July 20, 2014

I had no interest in seeking new employment upon leaving my previous job. I wanted to travel while I think through an idea that had been seeded in my mind — creating a peer-to-peer network for self-directed learners. It was something I knew I had to do. I had been spent so much energy recovering from being disempowered by the conventional education system, and met so many others permanently scarred by similar experiences.

I had an abstract outline, but I didn’t know how or what in specifics. All I knew was that I had to start somewhere and soon.

Then, there was Joyce. We had worked together for two years, and had since established a rare friendship — one that was built on brutal, candid honesty.

I was very single-minded in wanting to build the education network that existed in my head, but she offered me an opportunity that was really hard to turn down — help her newly founded non-profit organization change the public narrative of decentralized financial networks.

Digital currency has been perceived to be an investment vehicle instead of demonstrating the future it promised, taking attention away from the true potential of the technology — a world where:

• open financial networks exists instead of the current dependence on traditional financial institutions and expensive transactional fees
• the unbanked have access to a secure financial network, else they are rendered virtually invisible in our economies, or be stuck in a vicious cycle where they have to shoulder hefty fees and risk for their basic transactional needs
• the gap between the powerful and the disadvantaged can be potentially reduced with better, more efficient capital distribution

The world has to evolve how we think about financial networks in order to make a quantum leap into the future, and the way to do it is to change the narrative that has been embedded in our heads.

There are certain things that must exist. Peer to peer networks should be the future, regardless of what we are distributing.

I want to spend the next chapter of my life changing the narrative of the disempowered, and it doesn’t matter whether it involves currency, knowledge, power or voice.

What is the story we want to tell to our future generations?

There is an acute disconnect between my ambitions and the professional role as a designer I have been carrying for the past 1.5 decades, and it is time to shape a new role for myself. It is my belief that in order to thrive as a society, there will be an increasing need of trans-disciplinary roles in this world. We are slowly beginning to realize that the world is too dynamic and diverse to depend only on specialists. We need more people acting as bridges between specialized domains.

I will be helping to shepherd the narrative we are constructing at the Stellar Development Foundation, through telling both internal and external stories, design, and open-source code among other mediums. The rest of my energy will be devoted to crystalizing my preliminary thoughts on the future of peer-to-peer education, if not the entire peer-to-peer economy.

For this is the connected world I aspire to build and live in.

I invite you to discover what we’re building at Stellar.

The story is only just beginning. Don’t miss out on the chance to be part of the early narrative.