The joy and the sorrow of being a Genecoin pioneer

What dos it take to be a pioneer? Well, definitely, to endure some sorrow, on the way to joy.

We have created a promotion to give away Genecoin. We thought that people would run to get theirs. After all, it was for free.

Well, actually, not completely free. We asked people to convince other people to do some task for them and get paid in Genecoins. We thought that it would be a minor problem that, so far, it is a valueless currency. After all, scientists and researchers already execute minor (or not so minor) tasks for each other all the time. “Can you take the samples from the hot bath for me please? Would you mind runnig this gel for me please?"

Well… we were wrong.

Visitors are simply not engaging, even though they arrive at the website. One user gave us the feed back: “its mission impossible”

Even though I dispute it is a mission impossible, I agree it is far from being frictionless

We made too many assumptions, its true. But maybe the most dangerous one was that friction would be tolerated in the presence of motivation. It won’t.

It reminded me of an article I read some time ago in Scientific American by David Pogue 'Make Technology - and the World - Frictionless': "Every Web site that makes you fill in a form, or wait for a confirmation e-mail, or take some test to prove that you are human is adding friction - and losing sales. All of us, sooner or later, will wind up sitting there with a comment to make or a product to buy, see how many hoops we have to jump through and then back out: “Oh, forget it - not worth it.”

The world is indeed full of unnecessary friction. But what about the inevitable ones?

Reduce friction is one of the main goals of technology development. Because when we create something new, it is usually a prototype: something that can demonstrate functionality but it still lacks the requirements for the best possible experience. Maybe because it hasn’t been experimented yet. Prototypes are full of inevitable friction.

"In 1989, I sent my first email. In order to do so, I had to compile a version of the Unix mail program using a C compiler and Unix command-line skills. I had to set it up on the command line, type out my email, and that email was then transmitted across the great internet in an astonishing three days. 20 years later, my mother replicated that experience with a swipe of her finger on her iPad. Bitcoin today, and all of the currencies that are built using that recipe, are at the same stage that the internet was in 1992. Only now we have the internet, and so the rate of exponential growth has already started. The innovation is growing at an astonishing rate." Andreas M. Antonopoulos wrote in 'The Internet of Money 2'.

I sent my first e-mail in 1994 and even though it was not as scary as Andrea’s description above, I needed to go to an IBM mainframe terminal at the university’s library and have some line command skills to send the message. I admit it was not for everyone. It was not something my mother would do. But even though sometimes I wanted to kick the screen of that terminal (it was veeeeery slow) I was proud to be, at least compared to my friends, a pioneer. I knew how to use gopher, telnet, etc.

Well...Blockchain technology is in that same stage of the internet in 1994. It is not as scary as it was in 2008 when Satoshi and some other special people created it, but it is far from being frictionless.

It is not unnecessary friction though. Like the airline asking you to fill in a form with your name, ID and emergency contact for the nnnnnth time. It is the inevitable friction of a technology that is evolving. And it is evolving fast: it took us, literally, 5 min to create the first Genecoin token using Proof’s platform.

At this stage, getting your Genecoins won’t be friction free. However, we hope you will see this friction as the hussle you have to go through on a treasure hunt. Maybe not as fun, but as rewarding as.

If the challenge is too big, and it may as well be, than call your friends, break the challenge in parts and get through it together. There is plenty of evidence that we learn more, and better, together. Besides getting Genecoin, you will have learned something new and important. You will have participated in something interesting and cool. You will be a pioneer too.