As a bit of background, I only started my crypto journey uh six or seven months ago. Um I, before that I worked in a completely different industry. So that's what I'm going to speak to you about today.First of all, I want to tell you that Web Three, and I'll explain what Web Three is. It's very cool and exciting and I want you all to leave this session knowing how to get started and then it in it, I'll tell you quickly about myself. Uh My name is Grana Sims. I work at Wells Simple. Um I've illustrated some of my past careers using uh Julia Roberts. I was a lawyer. Um I've been a teacher, that's the Mona Lisa Smile one, I've worked um in restaurants and bakeries and I've been a librarian and none of this really matters because it doesn't uh prevent you from joining Web three. Web three is for everyone and any skills that you bring to Web three are going to be useful because it's really creating a whole ecosystem. I started in Web Three by getting a job in crypto operations last December. And since then I've just been going very far down the rabbit hole. So if I seem at all and knowledgeable and you know, the tech difficulties to start us off might count against that.

If I seem at all knowledgeable by the end of this, it's because um I spent six months just uh using the internet to research, so you can absolutely do the same. So, just a quick five minute overview of what web three and crypto is. Web One was back in the geocities era where um you could basically go to someone's page and, and read a blog that was Yahoo. And um and all of those web two was when platforms came in and allowed you to create content via Facebook or youtube or even Wikipedia. So you could both read others content and write your own web three is about owning the content that you create and participating in the ecosystem. So, rather than um Facebook, Google owning all the data um profiting off of all of your search history and really owning that instead, all of the things that are being created, you cannot just read and write others, but you can take it with you and move it around um and really participate and profit off of the ecosystem that you're building.

So that's Web three, it's very cool. Um A quick primer on some basic concepts and I'll hopefully save some time for questions at the end. Blockchain is like a big database. Every entry or block is just a line um with data that records the data and anyone can see that big ledger. So every time you do a transaction, it puts another line in this big ledger. That's what the Blockchain is at a very simple level cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin. Those are the two big ones you might have heard of already. Um are ways of storing value in a ledger. So it basically assigns a certain amount of E or BT C which are the tokens, the token cryptocurrencies, it basically assigns a value to an address and that's your address, that's your wallet. Um So that's how cryptocurrencies work. The value is um just like any currency based on the value people believe in it. But the innovation is that it's all transparent and you can see all the money movements so you can really prevent um you know, uh untrusted transactions. As I said, transactions are just any information that's recorded. Um Sometimes it's recording the amount of the token that's being sent and tokens can be programmed to be anything. I'll talk a little bit later about non fungible tokens versus fungible tokens.

Um Smart contracts are ways of executing things on the Blockchain instead of a contract that you write out and say things like I promise to give you X. Once you do Y you type it into code and then once Y is deemed done under the program X will automatically send. So it's just, um, automating contracts and wallets are how you store value. So, wallets an alphanumeric string, um, that's basically your address. That's where all your assets are. And in order to send back and forth, you'll see on the big Blockchain ledger. Uh, the, your wallet, your public wallet address transacted to this other wallet address and now it's in that other wallet or vice versa. And, um, cold wallets are kind of disconnected from the internet. So they're less hackable hot wallets are more connected and interfaced and therefore less secure. Some basic lingo. Um NFTS are non fungible tokens. So NFTS um are those pictures of apes that you've seen around?

And you're like, why are people spending $300,000 on this uh non fungible? Just basically means not substitutable. So, fungible tokens uh If you can think of a loony, I'm from Canada. So loony, um A loony is fungible. I could exchange one loony for your other looney and those would both be worth one Canadian dollar. Um If someone had handmade a loony and it was therefore worth $10. Um because it was a piece of art that's not fungible, there's only one like it. Um it's not exchangeable, that's what that means. So when you look at these NFTS, the value that people put in them is that they're unique. And because um the Blockchain can record ownership of a certain piece of information if the NFT is put on the Blockchain. Um You can tell who owns it and that makes it, it's like saying, um you know, the Mona Lisa now you can definitely identify who owns the real one instead of the copies. A dow is a decentralized autonomous organization. This is a new way of governing. So I mentioned in web three that the uh one of the benefits is that you can participate in ownership of the platforms that you use and the systems that you're using. Um And a dow is a way of contributing to that. I won't go too far into it, but they're very interesting. Um gm this just means good morning. You'll see it all over Twitter if you join Twitter and I it's, it's a little bit overwhelming the crypto Twitter, but you'll see that everywhere.

Wag me and Hole are other um acronyms, wag me means we are gonna make it. It's kind of a hopeful like um it's si similar to Good morning. It's just a nice thing to say. Hole means hold on for dear life. This refers to the practice of buying a Cryptocurrency. Um Watching it go very down because the markets all over the place and still holding on for dear life and hoping it goes back up and hoping it goes to the moon, which means it goes really high in value and suddenly you're rich. Alpha is kind of insider secrets. So if you're part of an exclusive group, like the board Ape yacht club. Those are the Monkey NFT pictures that you might have seen. Um Part of the reason that those are so valuable is because that community is a lot of crypto insiders. So you get a lot of alpha or um insider info from, from being part of that community. So uh another thing is decentralization and decentralized finance or dey, this is the idea that we don't have to rely on centralized banks or governments to control things like currency and identity. We can rely on these um trust less uh apps or platforms that are decentralized.

But because everyone can see the code and it's all verified on Blockchain, we don't need the trust that we give to the governments and banks. We can put it in this um very so you don't need to trust it because it's all um transparent. I just want to give you some more cool things to get excited about in Web three. So one is that creators can profit off their content. Um There's a very interesting report that I'll add to these slides and, and share them around afterwards if anyone's interested. Um But it shows that for example, if you're a musician on Spotify, you earn maybe 10 cents a year. Whereas musicians in web three have made um something to the order of 100,000% more profit from their work because they can absolutely control who pays for it, who gets it? Who um is allowed to see it and, and how much they charge. So this is a really big space to watch for creators. Another thing is your own identity and, and social network. So you can actually um rather than having, you know, your Twitter followers and now you're stuck on Twitter or your Instagram followers and you're stuck on Instagram in web three, you could own your followers, own your content.

And if you don't like Instagram, you can pick up all of that stuff that you've created and move it to a different um social network. Uh This is the third one that I put here is um again, the Decentralized Autonomous organization, these are groups of people building stuff they believe in and getting rewarded for the stuff they're building by getting a cut of the profits and getting to make decisions. The final thing is it's still early. Um You know, especially for women. Um This is very much still unknown and a very new area. So don't worry that you've missed all the fun stuff. I want to quickly make a case for. I see. I've doubled this up. So sorry about the slides. Um For women in web three, we know that only 9% of um people investing in crypto assets are women. That's a bigger disparity than any other asset class. Uh And I think it's because crypto seems overwhelming um untrustworthy and just confusing, which is fair part of why I'm doing this and I'm happy to stay a resource afterwards if anyone wants to get in touch, the key thing I think for on boarding women instead of men into the space.

Um My opinion is that men join things uh often for competition or um to, to really hone a special interest, whereas women are often more confident when it comes from a place of belonging. So um rather than just throwing a bunch of information at you, I think it's um really important to create a space to explore and where you feel like you belong. And so I, I hope that by giving you a little information and by making myself a resource, um You too can see the space as somewhere welcoming and exciting to explore all of this where to start. Um My slide got deleted where to start. I think you have to find yourself a community. I will add some links of some very useful places to start. Um The three sort of social media things I think you should get is Discord, uh Twitter and Telegram. Discord is for communities. Twitter is for visibility in building your brand. And telegram is for actually making those connections and meeting up kind of in real life. I personally joined um something called Boys Club VIP um which is focused on um uh on boarding women into web three, but there's a lot of NFT communities out there as well.

Um And even just buying an NFT gets you access to a discord full of people willing to help you. There's scholarships to attend conferences. There's um you know, there's all these seminars and probably meet ups locally where you are. So I went a bit longer than I wanted, but I, I hope you feel a little inspired um to join the Web three. There's no place too small to start. And I really recommend following an interest and then typing into Google this interest plus crypto or this interest plus Web three. And just going from there, there's really no end to the imagination that you can have in this space. Um I'll quickly look at the Q and A or I'll quickly go through the chat. Um I see. Uh Marie said, I know as a person I'm involved in tech, but I don't know how to get into it. There is no right way. Join a community and admit that you don't know anything. I'll, I'll put the um the one that I started with that I really like, it's Boys club VIP. It's an application process, but there's plenty more. Um If you want to um look at various um projects to get into, um You can look through NFTS actually, uh one of my favorite ones is Crypto Coven. This is getting personal, but Crypto Covin um is absolutely, I love the art and that one.

You buy the NFT or you don't, but you can still be part of the community. Some other ones focused on women are my eff um shy. Um All of these are really supportive. There's, there's Blue three Dow um which is focused on that. Oh surge passports, crypto chicks. I could just, I could just name so many. Um So take a look at some of those if you're interested. F MP is a platform to elevate and empower women in various ways, including investing entrepreneurship, health and well being. Yeah, there's, there's a whole list I could, I could keep going. Um And I see we have a fellow will simpler. So amazing, Shasha, thank you for dropping that. Um Yeah, first start by downloading Discord, then get in touch with me. I'll give you some invites. Um A lot of the places that I just mentioned, you can follow their Twitter to get their actual link. I will say be cautious of clicking on unverified links. So always try to go to their Twitter first. Um And, and make sure you're actually applying to the right discord so that you don't get um down into some, some strange ones. Uh Is there other questions? I'm just scrolling back. Most of the chat was about trying to figure out my uh difficulties. So, so thank you all. Um If you want to get in touch, I'm to Bree on Twitter. Um I'm also on linkedin, Branda Sims, linkedin.com/brandis, Sims. Feel free to leave me a message um with any follow up questions.

I know we're right at time and you probably have a lot that you wanna do. I'll stick around for any questions, but thank you all for coming and participating. It was very lovely to meet you all. I see, Jess. You have a question. Do you recommend starting a project from scratch or forking an existing product or project? So this is a fun, I can tell Jess knows a little bit about crypto because um, forking is if you imagine a giant ledger, um if something goes wrong, you can kind of go back and cut off the fraudulent part of the ledger and start a new and like kind of delete these entries and start over and that's what forking is.

Um So if you're wondering, should you build your own Blockchain or build on top of another Blockchain, um I think probably start on a more, uh you know, you could either build your own Blockchain that's called layer one or you could build on top of a Blockchain that already exists like Ethereum, um and build an app on top of it.

And I think the latter is the way to go. I mean, there's personal preferences but um it's likely that, um, you know, in the future, is it going to be a bunch of different blockchains or is it gonna be one trusted layer that we build on top of? I'm leaning towards the latter, in my opinion. So, um uh I don't know if you wanna necessarily fork but certainly building layer two apps or decentralized apps um is very popular, especially on Ethereum. Um Dory asks super beginner here. I'm wondering if there are Blockchain projects towards sustainability, not just sustainable, but focus on climate change and making a difference there. Absolutely. Um I don't want to recommend any that I personally haven't vetted. And uh another acronym is uh Dyor do your own research.

So please take everything I am sharing as a basic suggestion and then, you know, you have to really figure out if it's right for you. But there are certainly many projects focused on sustainability. I think Klima Dow kl I ma Dow is one. I think I've heard some like Scuttle but that it's maybe not fully like it might be like seen as a bit of a Ponzi scheme or, or something. Um But there's lots of Daws and other Blockchain projects focused on carbon capture and funding innovation and um uh energizing communities. So, absolutely, they exist. It's not what I've been following. So I can't share too much more than that. But I think if you Google sustainability like crypto project, um they'll probably even be some summary articles for you to get started that someone's put together. Um And I'd love, I'd love to hear more, get in touch and see if you find any so that I can share it few times. I, I chat um oh Kerri works in data at wealth investment firm. Yeah. Good job, Dori do your own research. Um, and Kri don't panic. Um, I've been in it for seven months. I feel like I know a lot and I still don't know, even the tip of the iceberg, the space moves fast. You should get used to feeling like you don't know what's going on.

But that's part of the enjoyment is that it's always going to be new and exciting. There's always going to be new things to learn and new ways to contribute as well. Um So there's a great need for um data, data knowledge, data management, um especially around wealth. And so if you're wondering if your skills would be useful in Web three, I can say, certainly they would be um I know that's not what you asked, but uh don't feel panic, I'd say I'd say pick a topic, whatever you're interested in Metaverse, um which is like electronic land that you build on uh NFTS, like the picture projects or um making a token out of music um or owning your identity like a decentralized identity.

There's, there's so much uh I could, I could talk about it for quite a while and I just went to a week long conference about it. Um So yes. Uh If there's no other questions, I will wrap it up and say thank you so much for, for listening to me ramble excitedly about Web three. I I hope you get in touch or, or find your way. I'm sending all of you good vibes towards, um, getting into it and wishing you luck.