Since writing a post on this platform last summer—about a year and a month ago—I can confirm, web3 has indeed, expanded my soul. What that means, to me, is that the internet is no longer as boring as it once was. Web3 is basically the internet making use of blockchains, to enable digital ownership of assets. Because I came into web3, not from the perspective of seeing it only as a financial tool—instead, coming to it from the metaverse, digital architecture, and AI art; my own journey down the web3 rabbit hole (à la Alice) has been purely about the communities that organically arise around the many different chains. Ethereum was, like many, the first chain I interacted with and it seemed so mysterious and new and exciting when doing so. I just missed the PFP wave and couldn’t care less about flipping NFTs for profit. I’m here for the art and the ideas. And it was in late July of 2022, just after I wrote my first entry here on mirror.xyz, that I fell into a side room, just off the rabbit hole I had already been tumbling down: the very kind Tezos community, with its global footprint, its amazing AI, GIF, and collage artists (among many other types of artists). Never have I met so many enthusiastic people, all so excited about art, in the same ways I’ve always been. So I finally found my people. The friends I’ve made across the very diverse Tezos community are spread across the world and many of them I’ve never met in person. One nice aspect of the community is that people are very supportive of one another and genuinely interested in watching the unfolding developmental progression of an artist’s work; and they celebrate the success of other artists in the space, too. More recently I started collecting on Solana, which has its own vibe. But I’m not sure it’s my tribe. Even more recently, I have started collecting over on ZeroOne. It makes use of the Avalanche chain and is socially focused in a way that encourages minting as a prerequisite to collecting. It is not the same as Tezos; minting on ZeroOne encourages a new form of artists supporting artists; which is actually, one aspect of the Tezos community that I like most. And one reason I love it. So then, does my soul expand with every new chain I find? Not really. But the artworks I’ve collected over on Tezos since the summer of 2022, have brought me in touch with a world that literally did not exist before 2020. Being part of Tezos makes me happy, and contributing to its global community in my own way has expanded my soul; in that there is little interest in me now, in buying clothes, books; things, on the internet, etc.  Web3 is a new space, enabling my gratitude to flow into the metaverse and beyond it. And so web3, for me, isn’t about money. It’s about the people I meet there; the ideas that I find, can explore, and revel in learning more about. And it’s a place—so far, in my own experience with some of its chains—where I can be myself. And it’s a space where those I meet via these various chains, as Avalanche and Tezos, are overflowing in their abundance of enthusiasm for the new technology and what it enables, too. I found my own way in AI art, minting my works on Tezos. The works there that I have sold, are all in the collections of artists that I admire. Lifelong learning, continual creativity, and an ever-present desire to creatively think, and my extreme curiosity, are welcome there.  Web3 helps to further enable me, in my continual process of becoming, more whole. Doing so in the metaverse—the digital world—means that I’ll still need to buy things, using the internet. But unlike in prior years, they won’t be Grenson shoes. But instead, digital shoes for this new 3D world, which is still emerging. Luckily, I already have a few pairs of metaverse sneakers, designed by the talented digital fashion OG, Chad Knight.

Since entering the world of web3 this year—after hanging around the edge of the pool in 2020-2021, dipping my toes into the water but never taking the plunge and jumping in—I will admit that it’s also facilitated the expansion of my internal world.