Stay humble and keep learning while you build it

It is already well-known that once you fall the Bitcoin rabbit hole it is a never ending process. It touches on things like economics, politics, etc. and there are a plethora of materials out there to learn and explore in cyberspace. We know it can be a little bit overwhelming sometimes but try to enjoy the journey, which is already impacting many things well beyond the asset class and monetary value. We are still very early, so that makes it even more challenging but exciting at the same time.

Let’s begin by adding some context:

KYC evolved from a standard “know your customer” practice from merchants to run their business more efficiently, to a “know you are controlled” dystopia where everyone is a criminal unless proven wrong otherwise…

… and that made me leave my “ comfortable fiat career” as a payments and risk specialist, where I thought I knew it all and for most of my experience I really thought KYC was a godsend for risk professionals. Then, gradually and then suddenly, I had my “awakening” moment which led me to build Shuken so I could contribute to the Bitcoin movement of making self-sovereignty accessible for everyone. 

There are 6 main things I remind myself everyday: 

1. One is to be humble and forget everything I knew, so that I could keep hungry and focused while building
2. In such a new industry where new projects, ideas and technologies are constantly developing, it is hard to make the right decisions  when creating a product roadmap. So you have to just be focused into building what you truly believe in and adapt very fast to any changes that do need to take place while working on it
3. Despite not feeling very “proud” of my previous fiat career, I came to realize that over 18 years of payments and risk experience in multiple industries, it is not all a lost cause
4. Working with non hard-coded bitcoiners can be challenging at the beginning. Simply  focus on their experience and motivations, as  we actually need a more skillful workforce regardless of the level or orangepilling they have
5. Stay humble and forget the noise, as it does not matter what you do, they will criticize you anyway
6. Leave your ego and fears and surround yourself with a team who shares the same level of enthusiasm and values. Leaving a legacy for the newer generations is a much bigger goal than just making money for yourself

Now that I have shared my biggest lessons so far, let’s share some conclusions that we have reached while building and studying how nodes will continue evolving:

• Most people see nodes as hard to run/understand or made just for geeks
• The use case for nodes must go beyond:
  • Supporting decentralization by running your own node
  • Potentially become an LSP (made for the big players which by nature tends to be centralized)
  • For privacy reasons, my Xpub or LN node is not being “watched”
  • Stop trusting someone else´s node for the broadcasting and receiving of your transactions
• There are more uses cases which we envision will play a much bigger role for our users, which we can summarized as:
  • Shuken Indexer/Explorer as the new standard for Wallets to connect to the Bitcoin network, beyond Electrum implementations while enabling your node to be your own “counter-chainalysis” 
  • Shuken Network rewards, so that miners are not the only noderunners with incentives (more on this on coming posts)
  • Your node is your “command center” which you can either configure and or grant access to your wallet of choice to manage the different settings/applications you can do with it.

Finally, if you happen to be a builder and or thinking of becoming one, do not forget to stay humble, keep hungry, and keep buidling!

In the meantime

Be Shuken, be Sovereign