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Minimalists behind the Protocol — Luke Edwards

01 Feb 2022
Written by: Minima

In this post, as part of our introducing the Minimalists behind the Protocol Series, we’re highlighting our Head of Community, Luke Edwards. Luke has been involved in all things Community at Minima since June 2021.

Read on to find out how he first got involved and what advice he has for those looking to learn more about this exciting space.

What are you responsible for at Minima?

Luke:On the face of it, I’m responsible for the community, but it’s a pretty broad spectrum. It involves working with marketing, tech, and leadership to make sure that everything we do for the community helps grow the node count while also making sure that what we produce is in line with what the community wants. So, I’m kind of a conduit between the community and us.

These days, it looks like admin and paperwork, putting schemes in place for the company and delivering what the community expects from us. And I’m looking forward to all the exciting things we’ll finally be able to talk about soon.“

Which part of your day-to-day work do you enjoy most?

Luke:Honestly, watching the conversations that happen and how different they can be. The most rewarding thing is when you encounter someone who doesn’t necessarily understand what we’re doing and has maybe a negative opinion of us, and then just chatting to them. And helping them understand and change their mind. That’s as rewarding as it gets. “

If you had to describe Minima in three words, which ones would you pick and why?

Luke:The one I always think about is ‘groundbreaking’. I’ve been around Bitcoin since very early, and what I liked about it was the promise of freedom it could bring. Unfortunately, Satoshi underestimated the level of ingenuity that can be driven by greed and where it’d get us to.

And I resigned myself to that just being the way it is until I came across Minima. Clever minds like Paddy have come up with this protocol that addresses the shortcomings of Bitcoin, in a way that no one has thought of yet. You see that in the way people talk about the trilemma. Everyone agrees that it’s not possible to solve it. But we did it. That’s why it’s ground-breaking.

‘Exciting’ is another word, because of the promise of what we’re doing. The ways in which I see it improving so many day-to-day things that can be made simpler, in a more equitable way.

The third word is ‘needed’. The reason for that is that you have so many blockchains promising so many things. But they either go towards centralization or towards being specialized to one use-case. I understand why that happens, but that is also centralizing in a specific way. Even when the intent is right. But I think having the idea of having a platform that enables everyone to do anything is the way it should be. And I’m grateful that I get to be part of that.”

You’ve been in different industries before joining Minima, could you describe your journey?

Luke:Whenever I made a move in my career it was to do something that was interesting to me and builds on something I did before. I started off studying journalism. Realized along the way that it would be very hard to find meaningful work and pivoted to IT. I learned to code; I was a lamp stack developer. Basically Websites, SQL databases, PHP websites — building utility for customers.

That was when digital marketing as we know it now didn’t really exist yet. Social media marketing was still very new. And as a developer, you had to learn those things. I had a knack for it so moved to the digital marketing side of things. I managed teams doing development and social media marketing.

Eventually, I understood the psychology of the marketing side and the technical aspects of building to meet clients’ demands. And in my free time, I worked in communities that worked for a common interest. That led to a community job where I learned to do things at scale; thousands of people across many countries.

This brings us to today, where my interests, community & crypto, came together.”

Now at Minima, you’re running the community. Do you notice differences with other communities you’ve been involved with?

Luke:I think the biggest one is the cooperative nature, and how everybody is just so good to one another. Online communities, in general, have people with contrasting views, and usually when managing those you have to balance those factions. And that often comes down to there being a conflict in the background. Where I was before you’d need people to work together for a bug bounty for example, but they rarely would.

Here at Minima, everyone is working towards a common goal, everybody understands the project, everybody works hard for it to succeed. And you don’t often encounter that. It’s a real joy. Because you know when you ask for help from the community, they are going to work cooperatively and with you; rather than trying to make life harder.”

What was your first contact with the crypto and blockchain space?

Luke:2011/12 when I got my IT degree I heard about Bitcoin. This thing that you could mine using your GPU and that could be the future of money.

And as a nerdy type, the idea of using my own infrastructure to create value really appealed. And that was at a time when we were at the back of a bad recession, and I wasn’t sure if I could find a job after uni.

I was around when altcoins were really new, things like Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Bitcoin Gold. And I was one of the first to have an ASIC miner in the UK, which was only profitable for one week. That’s when I realized that Bitcoin hadn’t lived up to its promise. It was now more about mining, trading, and money-making. It wasn’t until lightning that utility became possible. But the world had moved on.”

As someone with experience in managing databases, what words of advice do you have for other DB admins when they try to learn about blockchain?

Luke: “To be fair, when I was working in that field, there wasn’t a lot of overlap with blockchain. The reason was that it felt quite difficult to get into it. You needed a specific type of client to have an interest in before you would work on it. You also needed the time to understand and figure out how to solve problems with it. It probably wasn’t until I moved on that Blockchain became much more understood.

Once I had a client looking at using blockchain to store sensitive data. The one thing we took away from it was that wanting blockchain to work for something doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the right choice.

So if I had one piece of advice it’s if you are interested in using blockchain to solve a problem you have, do the work first to make sure your use-case actually fits. Don’t choose it because everyone is talking about it, but because it’s suitable.”

What is the biggest challenge when it comes to explaining decentralization and the importance of it to others for you?

Luke:Usually people’s understanding of decentralization. You come across a lot of people saying we’re decentralized because we got X, Y Z nodes. It’s getting them to understand that there is no middle ground. You are either decentralized or not.

When they say I have 45,000 nodes and they are primarily in Europe and North America; like Bitcoin, they consider that decentralized. But when you point out that even fewer are actually validating and constructing, and then talk about who owns the infrastructure, it centralizes it even further.

And even if then the argument follows that X amount is owned by individuals, you must question whose infrastructure they use. Usually, it’s one of the big five.

When you get to that point, people start questioning their assumptions more.

And what also helps is when things happen like AWS going down, and taking blockchains offline. That’s as centralized as it gets.

That’s why I believe that Minima is the pinnacle of decentralization. Everyone has the entire node on their phone. Even if one phone network went down, you’d only affect a part.”

Are you keeping crypto around and trying other DeFi protocols? If yes, anything you’ve noticed about them?

Luke: “Since starting at Minima, a lot of my effort went into Minima itself. In the past I had a broad portfolio, doing research on them and looking at charts. Now I have a small amount of Bitcoin, some Cardano, and the rest is in an ETF. Beyond that, I don’t spend tons of time looking into other projects. Unless it’s newsworthy and relevant to our community.“

How do you stay on top of what’s happening in the markets?

Luke:Reddit is always a good source of information. I track the big subreddits to see what people are talking about. Interestingly, there is a lot more talk about decentralization these days. I also look at forums, and news about traditional centralized finance, because that’s a good indicator to see what’s happening in the broader ecosystem. As we see at the moment with interest rates getting out of control, markets tumbling and a lot of money getting pulled out of crypto.

I look at news media, traditional and not, without any bias to see what people are talking about.“

Any favorite quotes or thoughts that recently stuck with you?

Luke:

There are far better things ahead than any we left behind — C.S Lewis

“I think it applies well to most things in life, but particularly to what we are striving to do here at Minima. Understanding where we have come from and then looking to the future, building better.”

Which emoji, gif, sticker do you use most frequently?

Luke:The headbanging doge. I like animated stickers, they convey a lot more than just static ones.“ (* It’s a custom emoji on Discord similar to the gif below)

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