Digital🛢- Will you strike digital oil? Issue #1

Digital🛢(oil) is a brand-new scavenger hunt newsletter that pays you to learn about blockchains. At the end of the month you’re eligible to strike digital oil ($500 paid in USDC) if you complete all checkpoints. Solve quick (2–3 min) and simple (easy) tasks that arrive in your inbox weekly, designed to teach you how to interact with blockchains. A smart contract will select one eligible address at random every month and will send $500 in USDC to the winning address.

Why?

The scavenger hunt is designed for beginners. Quite possibly people that have never interacted with a blockchain directly. My objective is to get as many people as I can to speculate less about price of tokens they (many times) don’t understand, and actually learn how to interact with blockchains.

It is certain that our future is a decentralized one; and I want to play a part in accelerating the process, onboarding as many people as I can. And I’m willing to start small. Very small.

What do I mean by a decentralized future? I should say present and future, because it’s already happening. A decentralized future is one in which we, as a society, don’t need to trust people, just math. It’s one in which the power is not in the hands of a few people, but in the hands of THE people. It’s one in which there is financial, governmental, educational, societal, electoral, political, technological transparency.

Can you give me some examples, ser? Imagine a future in which banks don’t decide what you can and can’t do with your hard-earned money. Imagine a future in which there isn’t a doubt about the art you’re buying being original. Imagine a future in which you know for certain that a president was elected with 100% fairness. Imagine a future in which you don’t need to trust anybody to execute your will exactly as you wanted, even if you’re not alive anymore to direct the show.

What?

Each week(ish) you’ll receive a new issue of this newsletter. Each issue will have a very simple task. Every four issues, all the subscribers that completed the 4 tasks, will automatically enter into a random draw and the winner will be sent $500 in USDC. USDC is a token (stablecoin, actually) that is equivalent to $1 USD. So yes, somebody will be paid $500 worth of crypto for embarking with me on this learning journey.

How?

In the first issue, I’ll teach you how to open a crypto wallet. That wallet will have an address similar to an e-mail address. That address will be your identity on the blockchain. Your wallet will control all the crypto sent to your address. Meaning you can use it to spend, invest, or send it to a friend.

Where?

My favorite blockchain is Ethereum. However, it’s expensive to transact on what’s called L1 (layer 1) Ethereum. So, we will be using an L2 (layer 2) blockchain that settles value on Ethereum called Polygon. This means that the crypto (including USDC) that you receive on Polygon is just as good as the crypto you would have on Ethereum, and it can be bridged over whenever you want.

Just as Ethereum has its native token called Ether, Polygon has a native token called MATIC. I’ll send you enough MATIC to get you started. You’ll use this MATIC to interact with the Polygon blockchain, as every time you affect the blockchain you will need to pay for gas, and gas is paid with MATIC.

When?

We’ll spend the next week trying to get as many people as possible to sign up for this newsletter. Why should you get people to sign up if that means more competition for the $500 in USDC? Well, the first scavenger hunt initiates once we have 10 people that completed the first task, so I need your help to get as many people signed up so that we can ensure getting 10 people that will actually try and do the stuff I’m going to ask for; which again, is really really simple stuff that a 4th grader can do.

So, until then, please forward this e-mail to your friends, and share on social media.

Thanks, and you’ll see the first task in your inbox in no time.

Cheers,

Adam (0xDigitalOil)