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Life update: Today is my last day at Polygon The last two years have been a wild ride! I joined Polygon thanks to @dtyagi and @rahatcodes, my focus was developer education and eventually Head of Dev Rel Engineering. At Polygon, I’ve met tons of developer communities, built some strong relationships and tried to keep up with this ever changing industry. The highlight of my time here has to be zkEVM launch where I had to join a Twitter Space to answer questions on my way home from double leg surgery. The other is when @HackBugs “smuggled” me across the border when I lost my passport, fun times indeed. A lot of people fade Polygon but I’m still bullish on the tech, the long term thesis of where value accrues and the absolute banger product that is the AggLayer. Forever bullish. What next? I’m still an advisor at @DablClub so if you’re a Guild Mage, you won't not see my day-to-day but I’ll be designing programs alongside @arjxnajith and @ajaypv4 for a time. Some of you already know that I’m taking steps towards being a founder and conspiring about Africa with another L2 but I’ll share deets later. Suffice it to say: I’m in my unapologetically African era!

Coming a little out of stealth now, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve co-founded @vifi_cc alongside @varounvlogs. Why? Stablecoin usage has exploded in emerging markets as an inflation hedge, but people are not buying groceries using USDC or USDT and they likely never will. 🧵

My heart is full. 2 years ago at DevCon Bogota, @yosephayele and I couldn’t find more than 10 builders from Africa. Today, we’re 177 strong. Founders, operators, community builders are gathered today to jam at the intersection of Ethereum and Africa. Join us at Room 107B

I've been delving into in all things Zero-Knowledge since joining @0xPolygon and it's been a wild ride. I've put together this 2 part article that attempts to summarize my ZKP journey and provide a succinct guide to all zk-curious devs out there dev.to/tonyolendo/the…

Massive shout out to @nomos_paradox from @ChronicleLabs for being the only partner on deck at 3 am at @ETHGlobal. Bullish when founders get it.

Does Africa Need Its Own L2? Easy answer: No. Developers can choose any sidechain, Alt-L1, L1, L2 or L3 Real answer: Yes, absolutely yes. It’s about the ecosystem. I found myself pacing in a supermarket aisle thinking about this so someone can tell me why this is a bad idea. First thought: what is a chain ? It comes down to two things for me, technology (like being able to push an invalid state root) and secondly, ecosystem. African developers have an abundance of tech choices. Optimistic, ZK, PoS, PoA heck even Plasma. What’s been sorely lacking in Africa is the ecosystem portion; where does a project go where they don’t have to educate the people they’re pitching. Celo has done amazing work in this regard but the messaging has been more “white savior” to me, it’s giving Bono builds an EVM but I digress. The Ethereum Foundation has been trying but they need to hire and empower more Africans who live and work in Africa so that internally they don’t have to fight for recognition. All other L2s have a bit of a long way to go. Africa means business, we don’t need to “bank the unbanked”; let’s stop with the “1 dollar a day” tropes. McKinsey projects that the African Fintech sector is projected to be worth $230bn by 2025. Nigeria traded $50bn in stablecoins in the last two years. There are over 5200 startups in Fintech alone. A lot of African economies are experiencing growth in spite of the predatory IMF and EXIM banks. From a population perspective, in the next 10 years, there’ll be more people in the US that are over 65 years than those who are under 18. Meanwhile, half of the global population growth from 2022 to 2050 will occur in sub-Saharan Africa. The region’s population is currently growing three times faster than the rest of the world, and by the end of the century, it will be home to a third of all people in the world, compared to only 14 percent in 2019. Populations can be an economic boon, see India and China. Ok, so why an L2? I think why most L2s will fizzle out is that they lack a soul. They have no business existing outside of sophisticated pump and dump schemes. We know you, we see you, we’ll buy your tokens but who’s building to be around for 20 years? It’s not about just the technology. If your raison d’etre is the tech, then I’ve got bad news for you son. The tech is a means to an end. If your answer to “why use us” is technical, then you will be disrupted. You need a better reason to wake up in the morning. So why this L2? I’ll start by saying what I think this isn’t, this shouldn’t be a “chain for Africa”, it’s a chain that supports Africans to build for the world. It’s an important nuance that I hope makes sense. How do we support the next 500 @njokuScript to build the next 100 @DescentDAO to build protocols for the next 100 @farcaster_xyz? You dig? Other than founder support, there’s community and ecosystem building. For many of us, our online expressions are extensions of our identity. We have socials that represent our relationships and reputations. Apps that we use for finance, shopping, fashion, communication, security etc. Any deplatforming at any of these layers or applications may represent a significant impact on one’s quality of life. That is even more true in Africa; decentralization , permissionless-ness, censorship-resistance are not just ideals for Africa, they can be life or death. People are already turning to cryptography for some semblance of reliability, see Nigeria So the immediate verticals are payments $230bn TAM per McKinsey; consumer applications of many forms that actually require provenance and verifiability; identity oracles that can give guarantees to protocols, and CEXs. Last and most importantly, culture. Africans and Africans in the diaspora have set the bar for culture for the last 100 years. We made the music you dance to, inspired the clothes you wear, shaped how you speak and not gotten much to show for it. It’s time for that value to be captured on-chain.

Web3 only has 22k developers and every protocol is fighting for their attention but very few are looking at pathways to onboard Web2 developers to Web3. Our conviction is "Every React Developer is a Web3 Developer" and we are happy to roll out this course that provides a very simple pathway to Dapp building. So if you have a React developer friend that you've been wanting to reach out to about Web3. Send them to reacttoweb3.com and we'll show them how to build for the Decentralized Web. Let's get it!

Today, @vifi_cc comes home at @ETHSafari

Ex @0xPolygon meetup with @qedk_ and @Rahatcodes. The real Agglayer is the frens we made along the way 💜💜💜

Alongside various members of the @vaspchamber and wider Kenyan crypto ecosystem, I had the great pleasure of giving my feedback to the Technical Working Group on Virtual Asset Regulation. I focused on the need for local stablecoins and various members agreed with these points 🧵

Life update: Today is my last day at Polygon The last two years have been a wild ride! I joined Polygon thanks to @dtyagi and @rahatcodes, my focus was developer education and eventually Head of Dev Rel Engineering. At Polygon, I’ve met tons of developer communities, built some strong relationships and tried to keep up with this ever changing industry. The highlight of my time here has to be zkEVM launch where I had to join a Twitter Space to answer questions on my way home from double leg surgery. The other is when @HackBugs “smuggled” me across the border when I lost my passport, fun times indeed. A lot of people fade Polygon but I’m still bullish on the tech, the long term thesis of where value accrues and the absolute banger product that is the AggLayer. Forever bullish. What next? I’m still an advisor at @DablClub so if you’re a Guild Mage, you won't not see my day-to-day but I’ll be designing programs alongside @arjxnajith and @ajaypv4 for a time. Some of you already know that I’m taking steps towards being a founder and conspiring about Africa with another L2 but I’ll share deets later. Suffice it to say: I’m in my unapologetically African era!

Coming a little out of stealth now, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve co-founded @vifi_cc alongside @varounvlogs. Why? Stablecoin usage has exploded in emerging markets as an inflation hedge, but people are not buying groceries using USDC or USDT and they likely never will. 🧵

Does Africa Need Its Own L2? Easy answer: No. Developers can choose any sidechain, Alt-L1, L1, L2 or L3 Real answer: Yes, absolutely yes. It’s about the ecosystem. I found myself pacing in a supermarket aisle thinking about this so someone can tell me why this is a bad idea. First thought: what is a chain ? It comes down to two things for me, technology (like being able to push an invalid state root) and secondly, ecosystem. African developers have an abundance of tech choices. Optimistic, ZK, PoS, PoA heck even Plasma. What’s been sorely lacking in Africa is the ecosystem portion; where does a project go where they don’t have to educate the people they’re pitching. Celo has done amazing work in this regard but the messaging has been more “white savior” to me, it’s giving Bono builds an EVM but I digress. The Ethereum Foundation has been trying but they need to hire and empower more Africans who live and work in Africa so that internally they don’t have to fight for recognition. All other L2s have a bit of a long way to go. Africa means business, we don’t need to “bank the unbanked”; let’s stop with the “1 dollar a day” tropes. McKinsey projects that the African Fintech sector is projected to be worth $230bn by 2025. Nigeria traded $50bn in stablecoins in the last two years. There are over 5200 startups in Fintech alone. A lot of African economies are experiencing growth in spite of the predatory IMF and EXIM banks. From a population perspective, in the next 10 years, there’ll be more people in the US that are over 65 years than those who are under 18. Meanwhile, half of the global population growth from 2022 to 2050 will occur in sub-Saharan Africa. The region’s population is currently growing three times faster than the rest of the world, and by the end of the century, it will be home to a third of all people in the world, compared to only 14 percent in 2019. Populations can be an economic boon, see India and China. Ok, so why an L2? I think why most L2s will fizzle out is that they lack a soul. They have no business existing outside of sophisticated pump and dump schemes. We know you, we see you, we’ll buy your tokens but who’s building to be around for 20 years? It’s not about just the technology. If your raison d’etre is the tech, then I’ve got bad news for you son. The tech is a means to an end. If your answer to “why use us” is technical, then you will be disrupted. You need a better reason to wake up in the morning. So why this L2? I’ll start by saying what I think this isn’t, this shouldn’t be a “chain for Africa”, it’s a chain that supports Africans to build for the world. It’s an important nuance that I hope makes sense. How do we support the next 500 @njokuScript to build the next 100 @DescentDAO to build protocols for the next 100 @farcaster_xyz? You dig? Other than founder support, there’s community and ecosystem building. For many of us, our online expressions are extensions of our identity. We have socials that represent our relationships and reputations. Apps that we use for finance, shopping, fashion, communication, security etc. Any deplatforming at any of these layers or applications may represent a significant impact on one’s quality of life. That is even more true in Africa; decentralization , permissionless-ness, censorship-resistance are not just ideals for Africa, they can be life or death. People are already turning to cryptography for some semblance of reliability, see Nigeria So the immediate verticals are payments $230bn TAM per McKinsey; consumer applications of many forms that actually require provenance and verifiability; identity oracles that can give guarantees to protocols, and CEXs. Last and most importantly, culture. Africans and Africans in the diaspora have set the bar for culture for the last 100 years. We made the music you dance to, inspired the clothes you wear, shaped how you speak and not gotten much to show for it. It’s time for that value to be captured on-chain.

Web3 only has 22k developers and every protocol is fighting for their attention but very few are looking at pathways to onboard Web2 developers to Web3. Our conviction is "Every React Developer is a Web3 Developer" and we are happy to roll out this course that provides a very simple pathway to Dapp building. So if you have a React developer friend that you've been wanting to reach out to about Web3. Send them to reacttoweb3.com and we'll show them how to build for the Decentralized Web. Let's get it!

My heart is full. 2 years ago at DevCon Bogota, @yosephayele and I couldn’t find more than 10 builders from Africa. Today, we’re 177 strong. Founders, operators, community builders are gathered today to jam at the intersection of Ethereum and Africa. Join us at Room 107B

Massive shout out to @nomos_paradox from @ChronicleLabs for being the only partner on deck at 3 am at @ETHGlobal. Bullish when founders get it.

So I hear @njokuScript thinks he can beat me in Muay Thai. I plan on schooling him in Argentina. Please find a gym. Also, a friendly reminder.

Yo @developer_dao peeps. Let’s hop into vc5 at 5pm Eastern like we used to do. Tag whoever you want to come. @Rahatcodes @Kemp @dhaiwat10 @0ceans404 @razacodes @wc49358 @tonykipkemboi @kayprasla @dabit3 @codingwithmanny @mannyornothing @nazeeh21 @JoshCStein @camiinthisthang

In honor of DevConnect being in Argentina, @varounsvlogs are considering doing a Caribbean pop up city in Tobago for two weeks before the event. It’s gonna be lit, thinking nature, yachts and the most immaculate vibes. Just hit like if you’re down and we’ll see about it.