Jambo from Nairobi! It’s time for another round of Pakt’s Friday FAQs. As always, one answer is long, one medium length, and one quick hitter to punctuate the post.
If you’ve missed our previous FAQs and want to get up to speed:
FAQs #1: What’s a Chainsite? What skill level do we need to create one? What can we do to help?
For our first question, we recommend you dust off your passports—
Long Answer: Why is Pakt building in Africa?
h/t to Andy, co-founder of Degis
When a newspaperman asked Willie Sutton “Why do you rob banks?” the criminal fired off a pithy retort for the ages:
“Because that’s where the money is.”
When other blockchain startups ask us why we co-located the team in Africa, rather than continuing to work remotely, we immediately reply:
“Because that’s where the energy is.”
Pakt’s CTO has worked in blockchain for 7 years, spearheading the blockchain pilot programs for Sterling Bank, one of Nigeria’s largest banks, and GIG, one of Nigeria’s largest logistics companies, as well as serving as the Lead Software Engineer at Bitmama.
Pakt’s DevOps/Senior Architect has pushed 5 separate blockchain startups from inspiration to MVP in the past three years. (Fun aside: about an hour before we wrote this post, he and our CTO conversationally ideated an entire multiparty NFT ID + MPC profile state management solution as casually as normies swipe through Candy Crush.)
Our Lead Designer designed for Wordpress but his gut tells him there’s more opportunity in designing the Web3’s New Internet.
And each of them have vast networks of friends and former co-workers who boast senior-level blockchain experience despite only being in their 20s. How do we know? We interviewed dozens and hired two of the creme de la creme.
But it’s not just inside Pakt where African blockchain energy surges like a dynamo:
Within two days of arriving in Nairobi, an Uber driver, a real estate agent, and a landlady each eagerly offered to connect us to their blockchain builder contacts.
Here in Kenya, it feels as if around every corner some enterprising trailblazer is burning the midnight oil on their blockchain startup.
In Africa, blockchain isn’t a tech subculture, it’s front and center of the tech culture. If we had to hazard a guess as to why, it boils down to three fundamental reasons:
- Blockchain’s low-cost, transparently accounted value transmission is the perfect tool to tackle real-world African challenges such as remittances, reliable record keeping, and contract enforcement.
- Prior to blockchain’s swell into the global zeitgeist, mobile fintech platforms were the dominant regional startup category. It’s a short walk from fintech to contracting digital value via blockchain.
- THE BIGGIE: The median age in Africa is ~18 and college education rates have skyrocketed. While Africa wasn’t positioned to be a significant player in the internet boom of the early 2000s, they’re more than ready to take part in Web3… if not completely take over.
So this is why Pakt is Africa-based. If blockchain is the future, and Africa is also the future, and Pakt is building for the future… well it doesn’t take a smart contract to execute the next step in that logical progression.
Medium Answer: If I have a concept for a Chainsite who should I talk to about building it?
Us! You can apply here to be one of the very first who takes Pakt’s beta round the track. After we launch v1, our team will review the submissions and select an elite few to white-glove assist for our Chainsite pilot program.
At Pakt, we’re the first to admit we don’t have a monopoly on good ideas. In fact, we’re strong proponents of Joy’s Law: “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.”
That’s why Pakt doubles down then doubles down again on ecosystems, incentives, and above all, communication.
We want to hear your ideas and figure out how to best engineer Pakt to serve them. Full disclosure: Pakt won’t build your Chainsites for you, but we will build Pakt for you. And then, once the incentive feedback loops kick in, the entire ecosystem will build Pakt for each other.
Brief Answer: Will there be a PAKT subnet?
h/t to our frens at Ava Labs
Yes.
Perhaps many, branching off of Pakt’s main subnet, thanks to Avacloud.
Until next time…
Kwaheri,
The Pakt Crew
