New Ardor series on YouTube

Today, Jelurida’s Youtube channel got itself a new URL. Why should you care?

The Ardor Updates and Lightweight Contract videos were the first to be uploaded to this channel, and if you have been hyperlinking to any videos on this channel lately – note the links in your posts might stop working and need to be updated. So writes CyptoDemetrius, host of both shows and so, indisputably the biggest and unparallelled contributor to the new ArdorPlatform channel.

CryptoDemetrius started off as an independent crypto YouTuber, researching blockchain technologies and sharing what he learned. After his premiere on the youtube.com/c/ardorplatform channel (yes, that’s the new URL!), I reached out to him and asked him about his vision for the Ardor and NXT shows.

Read his story in our conversation below the first episode of ‘Ardor Updates’…

Nxter:

Congrats with the premiere!

CryptoDemetrius:

Thanks!

Nxter:

Awesome start! So, what is to expect from the series in the future?

Same format? Same sofa? Weekly or more sporadic updates?

CryptoDemetrius:

It’s exciting to see the enthusiastic response to the first episode of Ardor Updates. It has taken a lot of work behind the scenes to figure out a format for the program to feel fresh – particularly since there are already so many incredible community members providing regular updates at NXTER, Ardor.World, ANG, and several others.

The idea with “Ardor Updates” is to release a 5-minute video at the end of each month with two segments: one providing rapid fire updates on noteworthy achievements, and a second segment focusing on an alternating “main topic.” I will also do my best to get comments from the team at Jelurida on progress each month.

This format should allow newcomers and more casual blockchain enthusiasts to get a sense of what’s happening and what features make the Ardor platform so special. The description of each of these videos will always be a valuable place for viewers to find resources to continue their learning.

“You can’t get to the use case and business discussions if no one knows the key benefits of your platform, or where to go to understand how to use or build using your product.”

Over time, I’m interested in finding ways to get the community and other team members at Jelurida more involved with the format of the show. Moving forward, “Ardor Updates” could also expand to include special editions of the series whenever there are particularly newsworthy announcements or events.

Nxter:

Interesting. But you also host another series, ‘Blockchain Ardor’, that you actually started off on your own channel. Is there a future for this series as well, or will the more “educational” content be for others to create?

CryptoDemetrius:

Since July, the Ardor youtube channel release schedule has been focused primarily on the technically-focused “Blockchain Ardor” series. As a complementary resource, the first 9 parts of a written version of the Blockchain Ardor video series will be launching on the Ardor Medium publication soon. Around the same time, the new Ardor wiki with extensive API and developer documentation should launch. Furthermore, I hope to see the Ardor Blockchain Bootcamp remain free on Udemy.

This collection of developer resources lays the foundation for myself and everyone else in this community to shift gears and begin having more articulate discussions around use cases and business implications. It also means more time to begin implementing a marketing strategy that goes beyond simply explaining how this thing works. “Ardor Updates” will serve an important purpose as the key tool for communicating progress and interesting discussions around each of those initiatives.

Nxter:

You have been hanging around in the Nxt and Ardor community since the beginning of this year – you created some great introductory videos, you interacted and learned, and you also put your finger on a variety of issues we have, like the lack of easy-to-understand information, marketing, and documentation for developers.

For the readers who don’t know you at all, could you please share some insight into your background, skillset, and motivation for doing all this? How long have you been into crypto, what is your main interest in blockchain and why Nxt and the Ardor platform?

“We need to lay the foundation for businesses to feel confident building their house on top of this blockchain infrastructure because that’s essentially what Ardor is.”

CryptoDemetrius:

I come from a different background from many people in crypto – while I had an initial run-in with Bitcoin back in 2010, I didn’t truly begin educating myself more deeply on the potential (and pitfalls) until January 2017. At the time, I was working at an environmental nonprofit as a grant manager focused on financial capacity building.

I started looking back into Bitcoin during a work trip to Cambodia – it started with an article about using “excess energy” at dams to power massive mining facilities. I read more about the energy demands of Bitcoin and the mining cartels dominating the Bitcoin network. Then, I read more about the underlying technology.

I quickly got excited as I began to recognize the potential value adds this technology could have for things like sustainable rice supply chain tracking, fair timber trade certifications, carbon credit exchanges, local cooperative financial structures, and more. That said, I couldn’t reconcile the resource drain of a network operating on Proof of Work.

“It was a big deal to me that there was this community that was open to critiques in the face of having actually delivered a groundbreaking product.”

After a few more months of research, I started passively hanging around this community in October or November of 2017 when I did my first review of Ardor and NXT on the CryptoDemetrius youtube channel. Around that time, I had been releasing 3-4 reviews of different cryptocurrencies each week. While many YouTubers were bounty hunting and shilling coins, I was using my channel as a space to look at the pros and the cons of each project. For obvious reasons, many projects disliked the fact I poked holes in their claims.

To my surprise, when I released a follow-up review of the Ardor mainnet launch in January 2018 – this community was receptive to the criticisms. I was already tired of reviewing whitepaper after whitepaper and pointing out the shortcomings, so it was a big deal to me that there was this community that was open to critiques in the face of having actually delivered a groundbreaking product.

After a few more days of research and engagement with the community through the Slack, I decided to commit myself to doing a series of videos and written pieces to try to help shed some attention on the Ardor platform. As I mentioned earlier, the potential use cases for blockchain technology are plentiful. That said, a major part of the problem in cryptoland is around educating people on what each platform can (and can’t) do. You can’t get to the use case and business discussions if no one knows the key benefits of your platform, or where to go to understand how to use or build using your product. And let’s be clear – most businesses still think blockchain is a technology with no use case. If you give them a reason to doubt you, they will.

We need to lay the foundation for businesses to feel confident building their house on top of this blockchain infrastructure because that’s essentially what Ardor is. If someone hears about Ardor and its features at a conference or in an online forum, we need to be certain there is a prescribed path with guideposts and checkpoints along the way to ensure a secure journey into this new land of blockchain technology. If we want businesses or developers to use our technology, we can’t allow them to get lost on their first day.

In the past two months, there has been a massive amount of progress in developing technical resources and guides – the fruits of that labor will be on display for the community in the next several days. As each of these keystones is set in place, the time is finally arriving to shift gears and begin more public engagement around the benefits of building on this platform.

To subscribe to the channel, you know what to do, and we, at NXTER, look forward to more episodes of both the ‘Ardor Updates’ and the ‘Blockchain Ardor’ series. There is plenty to look into, plenty to analyze and pass on. Our ecosystem is seeing rapid growth alongside the upgrades that Jelurida is pushing to the Nxt users and the Ardor platform. And Demetrius can think that our community is unique because we’re listening, but also, personally speaking, I’d say that it’s rare these days to see an outsider come in, who actually cares about understanding the benefits of the tech, the vision, and the future of blockchain.