AMA with Delegate Fnoufnou
On December 14th Elaine Egan our Senior Brand Ambassador invited Delegate Fnoufnou along for an AMA in the Solar Main Telegram channel. The AMA turned into an interesting conversation covering Solar, Blockchain and board games! Read the transcript here below.
Elaine
Firstly, why the name Fnoufnou? Please explain how you came up with the name, by the way, it’s devilishly hard to type!
Fnoufnou
Always happy to explain. Mothers and fathers out there might recognize this one. As soon as your children learn to talk, they will have many questions about the world around them. So did my kids. When they were about 6 or 7 years old, they would have many, many questions each day. All I would hear was ‘Hey dad. Hey dad. Hey dad!’ At some point I was joking with them and told them that my name was no longer dad. Instead I told them that my name was “fnoufnou”: it was the first nonsense word I could come up with that sounded as far removed from dad as possible.
Then when I started learning about blockchain and crypto in 2016 and I started joining Discord servers, I needed a nickname. Fnoufnou seemed as good as any, so it stuck.
Elaine
So, what do you do in the real world when you’re not a Solar Delegate?
Fnoufnou
Sure! So professionally, I have worked in IT all of my adult life. I started as a developer in the late 90’s. About ten years ago my developer role faded in favor of a role as solution architect. A solution architect, or cloud architect, is a technical role where you spend big parts of your day listening to clients and their challenges. Asking questions to understand their challenges. And then creating a technical proposal to tackle the challenge. So although I am not an active engineer, I need to know what tools are available to engineers and developers, and suggest a high-level solution that fits from a technology and commercial perspective. Then I either hand over the project to a development team and move on, or I stick around to be the technical go-between for the development team to understand the exact client needs.
Besides the solution architect role, I am the team lead for one of our development teams. It is a coaching role, where I help guys and girls grow in their careers as developers. And at the odd occasion I enjoy giving presentations of the IT stories I have in my head.
During the covid lockdowns, my kids actually told me: “Dad, I thought you worked with computers for your job. But instead you are just talking all day.”
Personally, when I can, I really enjoy playing board games with friends, taking a walk with our dog or hanging out with my family.
Elaine
So what you’re saying is that you are the interface between the client and the developers!
Fnoufnou
Exactly. Tell the devs what the client really needs (and then have them decide on the how, with some guidance from me). And later, tell the client what it is the devs built.
Elaine
You mentioned you liked board games. Which is your favourite?
Fnoufnou
Agricola — hands down! For anyone who has played settlers of Catan and thinks: this is a lot of fun, but I want something that will melt my brain substantially more — Agricola is for you
I wouldn’t recommend it to just anyone. But for those of you out there that have played board games with a bit more bite: Agricola is a classic.
Elaine
Moving on from board games. When and how did you get into crypto?
Fnoufnou
Well, I was introduced to crypto by a friend, who was in contact with a ‘digital gold digger’ who had joined the Lisk ecosystem, around 2016.
I quickly dove deep into blockchain, how it worked technically and mathematically, and its promises and potential. I like to know what the core benefits are of a certain technology, so I can use it when a problem surfaces.
I started my journey as a delegate initially on the Oxycoin blockchain together with a group of friends, and later on many other Lisk- and Ark-based blockchains.
The rest is mostly history.
Elaine
What excites you about blockchain technology and how do you see it being implemented in the real world in a more mainstream way ?
Fnoufnou
I am a big fan of truth, honesty, and fairness. So when blockchain came on my radar as an IT technology that is designed explicitly to be a solution to a world with limited and in some cases waning trust, I got very excited.
I see blockchain technology as a key component in supporting systems that augment our existing societies. Our governments and the various social systems, whether they are capitalist or socialist or something else, all have their benefits in keeping our world running in one way or another. Blockchain-based additional, augmenting systems could work as checks and balances on these existing structures.
Here I mean non-nation bound blockchain systems. I know many nations are adopting blockchain tech for their own benefit, for example via CBDCs.
I believe a secondary group of systems will strengthen our world and the individuals in it. When Venezuela’s national currency failed its people a few years back, bitcoin and other crypto were able to step in. It gave people a neutral alternative.
I see this working for many aspects of life, whether they are to help balance the power governments have, or corporations. Privacy solutions, provenance solutions — knowing where your food comes from — those kinds of things.
More down to earth, I believe that we should be able to open our front door, a rental car and our mail account all using our crypto wallet — our digital decentralized identity. Why do we still need to carry physical, bulky, metal keys in our pockets when we have a perfectly good identity system that is not controlled by a central organisation that could take our access away?
This is also why I have spent very little time researching blockchains that were designed to work for governments or corporations. They are valuable in their own right, but they don’t interest me nearly as much.
Elaine
I absolutely agree with you
Fnoufnou
That’s where I’ll end my philosophical rant. There is so much potential, it is amazing to be honest.
Elaine
I have friends in Argentina and South Africa. Their rate of inflation is mind boggling and people say crypto is a ponzi scheme!
Fnoufnou
I know. The fact we can have an alternative that is available to all people out there, is amazing.
Well, I don’t think ‘crypto will take over’. I really believe crypto (and other blockchain solutions) have their rightful place. Again, augmenting the existing structure.
Elaine
Ok I think you and I can talk about this subject all night. But moving on. What made you want to be a Solar Delegate? What interests you in the project??
Fnoufnou
My biggest initial driver, which it is still to this day, is to be able to support Nayiem and the work he does. This guy is amazing. Solar exists because Nayiem and people close to him pulled together and put together an amazing, lightweight, sustainable blockchain and are working hard to build it into a serious ecosystem that will be able to compete with the big 3rd generation of blockchains.
I like how Solar is opinionated in restricting the number of active delegates, effectively restricting to a large extent the total power consumed by the whole blockchain.
One of the biggest drawbacks of some of the more traditional blockchains is their energy consumption. I believe Solar hit a sweet spot: not too centralized by having too few nodes controlled by only one or a few entities, but also not unnecessarily decentralized with hundreds or thousands of computers burning energy 24/7.
Elaine
I couldn’t find your proposal on Solar Delegates live. Is that my mistake or is there a reason?
Fnoufnou
My delegate’s page can be found on the site. It is here: https://delegates.solar.org/delegates/fnoufnou
See your delegates proposals!
Elaine
Thanks for that I’ll check it out.
Can you give us an idea of what you bring to the Solar party?
Fnoufnou
Sure! A lot of it is behind the scenes though. I am working on instructional videos for Solar together with delegate Kimchi — specifically for Ledger support. I have been asked by the District 53 team to help do voice overs for their video productions. I am planning ways of running events like a hackathon. I supported the founders with tests and tutorials for Trust Wallet. I am helping out running the competitions on Solar’s social channels. And I make sure I help out by sharing rewards with the competitions for the community, and the Solar Foundation too.
What I would love to do the most though, is to get a team of like-minded community members together and start building useful tools for the wider world based on Solar. Tools not restricted to the crypto or blockchain space, but for industries like gaming or food or healthcare. That is what will truly make an impact. If you have the skills, or are eager to learn, drop me a line. Let’s see if we can form a group!
Elaine
Instructional videos are a massive benefit imo ,the more educational materials the better.
Fnoufnou
Yes they are! I am curious to hear what the community would like to see most, when it comes to instructional videos. Maybe we should follow up. Questionnaire perhaps?
On the other hand — I know that you and the mods know exactly what is needed.
Elaine
I’ve monopolised your time already. We’ve been talking for nearly an hour. Ok horror story time. What was your biggest challenge as a Solar Delegate? Any horror stories you’d like to share with us?
Fnoufnou
The biggest horror story is that time when you realise your node is somehow not running as it should. It is the middle of the night, you just woke up, and you need to make sure you sober up as soon as possible. You need to be able to think clearly, as troubleshooting a production system means a wrong move could spell disaster. All delegates have back up machines that are running in parallel in case a main machine goes down, but the failover switch is still a manual process for me. And if you make a mistake and start to run your delegate on two machines at once, it could have effects on other delegate’s nodes too.
I also got a very unsettling feeling when one of my voters asked me why I hadn’t paid out yet for that day. I rushed to the machines to make sure I understood what might be going on, only to find I had made a mistake after maintenance the day before and the payment process wasn’t running as it should. All it took as a restart. Phew!
Thank you voters by the way — for keeping me sharp!
Elaine
What future plans do you have for your Delegate ness??
Fnoufnou
I really want to get a team together where we focus on one niche application, based on Solar, that will benefit the world outside of our Solar community. Kind of what I mentioned earlier. I hope to get in contact and brainstorm with people that either have ideas of their own, or that are willing to build on a project for the greater good.
Until then, I keep offering what I can — time, funds, knowledge, inspiration — to those who can use it to make Solar better.
Elaine
I definitely think this is the key, networking, reaching out and swapping ideas.
Fnoufnou
The more minds, the better.
Elaine
I definitely think we could keep talking all night! But we have to reopen the channel to the community. My thanks to Fnoufnou for joining me today and thanks to Chuck for moderating.
Keep checking in for more Solar Delegate AMAs in the future. If you’ve enjoyed this article please give it a clap or several!!!!
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