The Legend of Hercules ⚡
It was a calm mid-year summer on the slopes of Mt. Kenya. The sun was scorchingly adamant and the forest shades offered an ever-welcome relief. A loner at best, my days were spread between classes, smoking with my friends Sharleen, Florence, Max, and Monica, or spent geeking out at the library. This was all I ever needed back then and I lived a relatively unbothered and happy life. I was as content as any broke college kid could be — how I miss these days. How I miss getting wasted and playing cards with them. Laughing at god knows what. Relishing the days we knew would someday be gone. Oh, to be with them again… I’d fight the world. And as fate would have it, I just might have to.
This story is about a young kid from Africa who sent ripples across the globe. How? Well, he deleted a tweet. Why? Nobody knows but this post might offer added insight if not closure to everyone involved. At the very least it may yet resurrect the very same dream that got us here in the first place. Despite the pilling ridicule at my blatant error, it’s still my choice to either fold or fight on — and momma sure as heck never raised any quitters. It’s back into the arena for me and this time we get it right.
But first, let’s go back to the beginning. It all started on a fated Friday night, sitting at my favourite spot at the library. Surfing the world wide web, earphones playing Paramore, engulfed in something far from my studies as had been my tradition on Friday nights. That’s when I first came across these things called NFTs.
Headlines of celebrities paying freakishly high prices for images on the internet piqued my interest. Cause why would they? What makes these pictures any different from regular pictures? It was there and then that Alice slid down the rabbit hole. Two years later and my goodness… what a rollercoaster. What drama. What bravery. What strength!
The following morning, buzzed to my follicles at what became the last of these fogged-up poker rings — I blurted out, “We’re gonna make millions selling pictures online.” And at first, everybody went quiet and then we all burst out laughing. Was I just delusional from the high? Maybe. Yet there was much more I had yet seen and the wheels were in their gentle turnings.
That’s the last we’ve spoken about it and since then we’ve all left school. Max and Sharleen (my year mates) graduated first, then Monica and Florence followed. I had already dropped out twice (once in each year of study) and my third attempt at a Computer Science degree had hit the wall once more due to personal reasons and I’d have to devote myself to other things if I was to have any chance at making it in life. So I dug deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole.
Fast forward to the future — just yesterday perchance, I ran into Monica and she’d just been fired from her job at a call center. We met at the cafeteria where I’d been working now for a week, making $5 a day on a 12-hour shift. I was so embarrassed that she saw me like this. Where did those millions go? I should’ve stayed in school…maybe. But in truth, I had come much closer to them than one might think. And then in a minute of fear and dread, they were gone and I was left the same. A few hours after seeing Monica I’d get fired from the cafeteria. What a week. What a year. What a life.
But the months between these two meetings with Monica have more to tell than anyone would’ve guessed by seeing me weirdly try to stay calm behind a counter of fast foods, in a hairnet and apron while she had her sights towards the exit. She was brave about it. Even made a few jokes about it. I tried to play along but how could I?
We could’ve been better off if it wasn’t for that deleted tweet. We could’ve been on a balcony somewhere only we know, listening to her RnB playlist, playing cards, making jokes, and sharing moments we knew we deserved. Life would’ve been beautiful again. But I had thrown a spanner in the works and the task at hand was now a steeper ask than could have otherwise been the case if I had seen the Solana Scribes hackathon through.
NFTs certainly changed my life in the sense that I’m now aware of why those celebrities paid such high sums of money for seemingly worthless JPGs on the internet. It’s because these images weren’t just on the web but also on a special kind of internet called the blockchain. And it was their existence on the blockchain that gave them any implied financial worth.
What’s a blockchain you ask? Well, I see it as a bucket of receipts in some way. While data on the internet seems financially homogeneous, the blockchain gives individual bits of data the ability to drive their worth independently from others. The blockchain, in my vague understanding, is a market for digital data and a conduit into global finance. Money at internet speed, as some would say.
In my year-long reconnaissance of these technologies, I found myself drawn to three in particular; Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana; the three cashketeers of crypto. But for the basis of all the things I was drawn to… Solana was the perfect fit. The vibes were great, the community was fun to be around, and the drama was neverending. Something always happened and my dull days at home weren’t as dull anymore. Spaces with Alex were comical and entertaining, and theatrics from DeGod holders were as cringe as they were humorous… wtf is a shoey even? And then came the Mad Lads. Solana’s prized jewel. The list goes on.
Yet where was I in all this? How’d these millions come so agonisingly close and yet still manage to slip away through my fingers? It’s all very simple. I was the new kid on the block. Mr hotshot from Africa was gonna drop bombs and be the next Armani or the next Frank. But I threw that away in less than 60s. To this day I still get shockwaves coursing through me as I remember how quickly it all went down.
It was September 2023 and the winners of the Solana hackathon had just been announced. The winners in the payments track were team Sphere. And I seem to have been drawn to them almost fortuitously. Scrolling through the winners’ list was also tedious, sigh. I needed to learn about these things from the best and I was lucky enough to have hit it off almost instantly with Sphere’s co-founder Arnold Lee. Someone I owe just as much thanks as I do apologies. Why? Well, it was he who believed in this little African kid’s ability and rallied to see me flourish — yet it was I who almost always saw to it that none of these graces were captured.
What did he see in me that was so impressive? Well in the world of blockchains, there’s one thing everybody’s tryna find and that’s product market fit. What unique set of problems can blockchains solve that the old internet isn’t capable of? Well, my answer was a market. But not just for JPGs and PNGs, but for EPUBs, PDFs, and DOCs. My big revelation was that in the same way, they already have an open market for images, the logical next step would be to have one for more complex data sets like books, music, video and more. Books became the target seeing as I was already a writer by this time with two anthologies already published.
It was amid the myriad of these ongoing exchanges between us, by which time I was already an intern for Sphere doing minor things like Discord moderation and market research, that my place in the greater Solana ecosystem started to take form. I was suddenly getting shoutouts from Shillin in his spaces and even Arnold during 2023’s Breakpoint panel.
Then came the airdrops, the first of which was $BONK on the Christmas of 2023. I’d go on to buy my very first NFTs which were .sol domains tchalla.sol and nakia.sol, I’d also bag me a Bonfida wolf not long after that and continue to blend with other domainoors in the Solana Name Service Discord. Our weekly calls became something to look forward to and the crowd became closer-knit as a result. Things were going great.
And then the Rennaisance hackathon came.
This was my moment. My chance to be seen. The moment every kid dreams of having. The world as their stage and the mic in their hands. What could go wrong? The ball was in my court and the posts were wide open. A simple tap-in to make history. How hard could it be?
It was barely a week before the Solana Scribes hackathon’s results were out. An otherwise typical Wednesday morning started with looming fears of imminent failures beyond the horizon. I wondered how long the good faith would last. Flashbacks of the timeline when SBF and FTX went belly up filled my thoughts. Would I ever find myself in a similar position? Was I ready for this next stage of my career as a project founder on one of the most vibrant and cutthroat niches on the internet? What if I lost millions on the market like Tera-Luna? Or got carried away by the waves like Sam?
One thought led to another until the mania had shaken me to my core. And what if everything went well? I had a great chance of taking the top spot on the Poetry track. I’d become an overnight sensation. Who’s this kid who writes so well? What’s his story? Does he have siblings? Shows, parties, cameras, and all the glam that comes with being an overnight success. Was I up for it? Would I be able to navigate this elevated status well enough to stay afloat for the rest of my career?
I was a local kid going global — fast, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Unless…
What followed was pure mania. My friends thought I’d been playing them. I turned into the same villain I was desperately trying not to become. The memes started coming in. Brutal ones, funny ones, half-assed ones, tokens mocking my traumas… it was a nightmare.
This was in mid-March 2023 and now it’s October. I’m one year older, decorated in battle scars from wars fought on the timeline. The dream was far from what it was meant to be and I had accomplished the exact opposite of what I’d set out to do. Yet in all this, I can’t help but be proud of myself. If for nothing else, then for the simple reason that I weathered what to a 25-year-old introvert was perhaps the worst year imaginable. I was infamous.
Yet in all this, I persevered. I’m slowly making my way back into the ecosystem and hope to someday justify the faith that was once so graciously placed on me. Above all things this year, I learned to keep my head above water. Even when the raging storm comes in from all the world over, centring itself above your stride.
NFTs changed my life because they made me a stronger human being. One who can now handle both grace and the lack thereof without losing sight of what’s most important; an undying spirit.
It was Rudyard Kipling who said that if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same — then you will be a man. I may not be the flawless project founder and child genius everybody hoped I’d be. There are wrinkles in the fabric doubtless, but to have weathered all these fortunes even when it seemed like the whole world was against me and have the bravery to dare step back into the ring is perhaps my greatest victory yet. There will be victories; I’ll win bounties, my NFT project will mint and sell out, we’ll have great successes and I’ll fight tooth and nail to keep them. But if misfortune knocks on my doors again and I fall out of favour with CT or normies who’ll always find something to not like about me — it’s good to know that I made it this far even when the same darkness was overhead.
If I do indeed live up to the expectations that my friends and mentors collectively have in me, I hope that weathering this storm and picking myself up speaks to this same promise. To know that Icarus can take a fall. To know that Achilles has hardened his heels. To see Hercules regain his place among DeGods lol, couldn’t help it.
I may not yet have the millions that I jokingly promised my friends so many moons ago but in the pursuit of this dream, I’m a stronger man because of it. LFG ⚡
