Howard University. The Mecca. HU… We are a 150 year old community, but our network exists in the cloud. Our community is primarily virtual. We write. We publish. We promote. We shoot. We direct. We build. We meet via phones and tablets and laptops.
We friend each other on Facebook. We subscribe to each other on YouTube. We share posts via instagram and refer resumes via Gmail. Even the bison on campus today spend very little time in person with one-another. Our lecture halls are on zoom and our yard is on twitter. Nonetheless, our network is extremely tight, extremely well connected, extremely influential, and extremely well capitalized.
However, we have a problem. Our network is not ours. None of us have a stake in our network, nor the value it generates. Why not? Because our network, in its current iteration, exists in what is often called Web2. It is a network owned and completely governed by the few conglomerates that dominate the Web2 pie — Facebook, Google, Amazon and Twitter.
Our community is worth billions in data, transactions, and influence, but the lion share of this value is concentrated in the hands of a few intermediaries instead of the people who actually create the value. Web3 is a different story.
This evolution of the internet called Web3, will do to Web2 what Netflix did to Blockbuster. How? Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency are driving the development of Web3 and the decentralized movement.
Web3 applications turn users into owners by distributing to them tokens which represent ownership of the underlying protocols. The same way a restaurant owner is incentivized to grow and expand his franchise, a holder of tokens will be incentivized to grow the networks which he fractionally owns. The crypto community has coined this process, of proactively contributing to a Web3 ecosystem to drive its adoption and overall improvement, “BUIDLing” (a warping of the acronym “HODL” which means “Hold On for Dear Life”).
BUIDLing does not always mean writing code. It could mean utilizing smart contracts, beta testing products, writing articles, playing blockchain games, or using cryptocurrency wallets. BUIDLing also means sharing, connecting, influencing, and creating — everything the HU community already does exceptionally well.
Strong communities are especially powerful in this evolution of the web. If our community embraces this technology, I believe it will inspire millions of people throughout the diaspora to follow our lead. As opportunities to BUIDL become more accessible, economic gains will become more attainable. This distribution of economic gains could unleash a wave of innovation and wealth creation in the black community comparable to Black Wall Street in the 1920s.
The mission of HU DAO Labs is to start here at home by turning the HU community into a community of Web3 BUIDLers. Our journey of one thousand miles began last week with one step. The Polygon network, the leading blockchain protocol for building Ethereum compatible networks, helped us take it. With our hands held by experts, we installed Metamask wallets, we minted our first NFTs, and we staked DeFi protocols.
Within a 48 hour window, 40 of us were effectively “onboarded” into Web3. Some of us should be collecting our first weekly yield payment any moment now. I think it is important that the Howard Community lead the charge into Web3 for our broader community. Join us to turn our 40 into 400, 4,000 and eventually into 40 million.
Lets BUIDL,
JohnSlade.sol
