SEC-02 Calling!

4 April 2024

It feels like yesterday when we decided to embark on the journey that was SEC-01. We didn’t know what we would get ourselves into. We still barely know. But just like the guy in the meme, we’re gonna do it again. We’re going to walk the walk, we’re going to ship things, and we’re going to have a good time while doing it.

We expect a lot of experimentation, discussion, and exploration. We expect that SEC-02 will rhyme with SEC-01, even though it won’t be a carbon copy of the first cohort. We’d encourage you to listen to this Plebchain Radio episode and (the end of) this Citadel Dispatch episode to get an idea of what we’re aiming for.

Scratching the Surface

Our thesis remains the same: The space that is opened up by Bitcoin, nostr, and other freedom tech is vast. We believe that we have barely scratched the surface. We believe that lots of awesome stuff is yet to be built, and we believe that the new paradigms will allow us to step outside of the extractive models that are so prevalent in the current landscape.

If you believe the same, you might be a perfect candidate for the second cohort—and you should apply today.

Markets, Synergies, and Peers

As foreshadowed in a previous post, we want to focus on peer-to-peer markets and exchange. With nostr acting as an effective and open layer for discoverability, and sats (and esats) acting as a bearer instrument for final settlement, what used to be siloed marketplaces can finally be opened up to merchants and customers alike.

It allows us to move from the win-lose of zero-sum games to the win-win-win of positive-sum games: good for you, good for me, good for everyone. In one word: Synergies.

We hope that the various peers that are working on these markets—as well as the building blocks that make them possible—will collaborate and learn from each other, just like they did in the first cohort. And even if your expertise is tangential, we hope that novel insights, products, and services will come out of it all. Just like they did in the first cohort.

That’s the basic idea of the Sovereign Engineering cohorts: Explore the unknown. Re-think how we do things online. Ship things that last.

Starting May 6 — Apply Now!

The second cohort will start on May 6 and will conclude on June 28, and just like the first one, it will be on the beautiful island of Madeira. Applications are closing soon, but we still have a couple of spots left. Apply now!