So, open source software be like standing on the shoulders of literally hundreds of people way smarter than you.

Let me give an example to illustrate the situation:

Bitcoin: exists because of tons of work on open source encryption libraries.

BTC derived Altcoins: exist because of Bitcoin

DAC Concept: exists because of a failed Peercoin project

Blurt: exists because of bitshares, and steem and Dan's mastery of C++ tooling like Boost. Enhanced by Conan and GitLab and various JS tooling in the case of Blurt.

Tendermint: exists because of the reapplication of rather old research into Byzantine fault tolerant systems for blockchain purposes by Jae Kwon. Implemented because Go provides a simple and powerful language for systems programming.

Linux: exists because Linus Torvalds is stubborn and liked to play with computers.

At a certain point, you realize that any product you make is the amalgamation of hundreds of different peoples work, all released into the commons for use.

Did you know

Facebook built a key piece of blurt?

Rocksdb, one of the things that keeps blurt graceful and fast, is a Facebook research product that examined what databases could look like because of the performance characteristics of SSD disks.

I guess what I'm betting on is that there is big potential in open value networks and in integration of fully open source systems.

Probably won't know for a year or two if the notions I'm betting on are the right ones, but I'll share my bets with you:

• Open hardware matters because of security
• POS chains are going to get smaller and will be created by teams of 3-5 people to serve the needs of individual communities
• DEXes and IBC-like protocols will make exchange listing problems a thing of the past, even for chains with small user communities