Hey, I’m Kirsten. I build decentralized stuff.
I’m writing this on October 25th, 2023. Today I realized that maintaining a personal website these days has become a bit of a hassle — so I copied over the main content to this Medium post! For now, I’ll use this post as an occasionally updated personal website. Welcome to my small piece of the internet.
A brief intro
I spend most of my time building tools for work sovereignty at TalentLayer and the rest of my time traveling to hackathons.
Ask me about Cryptoanarchy.
I write shitty code, but I build great teams.
I’ve built a few companies. I help a few projects with governance, partnerships, and process design. If you want to collab, DM me on Twitter to chat.
I’ve been featured as a lecturer on blockchain governance and ecosystem design by INATBA (European Commission blockchain association), The IEEE, Fedex Institute of Technology, Hyperledger Foundation, various Ethereum community conferences, and others.
Magyar vagyok. Ha magyar vagy, legyünk barátok!!! Soy puertorriqueña, pero mi español es muy malo. Probablemente pediré hablar inglés. Mein Deutsch ist jetzt schlecht (habe ich in den letzten Jahren nicht gesprochen), aber ich liebe die Sprache und werde sie bald verbessern.
Favorite quotes and other thoughts
“Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” — Kofi Annan
“The thought of being a creature of the present and the past, troubled me, and I longed to have a future — a future with hope in it. To be shut up entirely to the past and present is abhorrent to the human mind; it is to the soul — whose life and happiness is unceasing progress — what the prison is to the body.” — Frederick Douglass
“The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.” ― Friedrich Hayek
My most fundamental belief is that humans are autonomous; that is, they are able to take action to impact their environment and circumstances. Anything can be done by anyone with enough willpower and grit. We make our own reality.
The future is decentralized and will be characterized by mass crypto adoption, flat organizations, and voluntary governance.
Those who can self-teach will inherit the earth.
Building tools for sovreighty
Over the coming decades, blockchain technology is poised to enable an entirely new sort of freedom for people globally.
Freedom /ˈfriːdəm/
a. The quality or state of being free: such as the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
b. Sovereignty; Work Sovereignty, Financial Sovereignty, Geographic Sovereignty
To obtain freedom, we need to have sovereignty; ultimate and un-confiscatable authority over ourselves. The ability to make decisions for ourselves, free of coercion.
Sovereignty can be broken down into three pillars: financial sovereignty, work sovereignty, and geographic sovereignty.
Financial sovereignty is having control over your own savings and investments, free of centralized intermediaries. Cryptocurrency and decentralized finance are the tools that have allowed for the realization of financial sovereignty.
Without sovereignty of finances, centralized intermediaries such as banks, nation-states, and corporations can confiscate wealth for any reason.
Work sovereignty is having control over how you make income to the extent that your earning ability is resilient amidst outside forces. This is made possible when one’s reputation, built over time, is trusted by enough people to make finding new work easy. Unfortunately, reputation is hard to scale; it’s only been possible to scale reputation beyond Dunbar’s Number through “trusted” (centralized) intermediaries.
Without sovereignty of work, the ability to acquire new work whenever you please, nation-states, employers, and job platforms can coerce you by rescinding work permits, firing or threatening to fire you, or banning you from job platforms. I am currently working on this problem area, applying blockchain technology to create less siloed and more accessible labor markets: TalentLayer.
Geographic sovereignty is having the ability to easily change your physical location. Moving jurisdictions allows you to evade war, censorship, and coercion and go where you are treated best.
Geographic sovereignty is enabled by work sovereignty and financial sovereignty. Having sufficient savings and ease of making more income lowers the switching costs associated with moving jurisdictions. In the direst situations, people will free their geographic area with nothing in order to stay alive — but the lower the switching cost between jurisdictions the less coercion and negative situations people will put up with.
With the ability to assuredly generate income (work sovereignty), store wealth (financial sovereignty), and physically move to optimal places (geographic sovereignty), true freedom can be recognized. Coercion and manipulation of people with all three becomes extremely difficult.
This is what we’re shooting for. This is the future we are building.
My prior lives
Co-Founded NFT Marketplace SDK (“21 — “22) Age 24–25
Co-founded and now advising FACINGS, a venture-backed NFT marketplace toolkit. Built our international team, forged our go-to-market partnerships, and worked closley with white-glove partners.
Enterprise Blockchain Stuff + Governance Research (“19 — “21) Age 22–24
Stumbled into a blockchain governance workshop which led to co-founding a consultancy with a former exec of a major L1. Consulted enterprise DLT projects on governance and coalition design (weaning suits onto blockchain via private permissioned consortium networks). Co-led the IEEE’s Blockchain Governance Research Working Group, growing it to 200 members across 6 continents over two years. Was a part of Gitcoin KERNEL Block 3.
More Startups (“18 — “19) Age 21–22
Co-founded a few software startups including a data aggregation tech platform and an influencer marketing marketplace.
PHP Winter (Winter “18) Age 21
Taught myself PHP and built basic webapps on freelance contracts. Eventually realized I like building companies more than building code myself.
Public Policy Coalition Building (“15 — “19) Age 18–22
Interned on a senate campaign before being promoted to a team coordination role. Managed grassroots coalition building and community education for a few public policy organizations working on reducing government cronyism. Realized that it’s hard to change the momentum of government, corruption is rampant, and I can make a bigger impact building around the system via innovating technology. Was a participant in Atlas Network’s Leader Lab.
Dropped Out (Winter “16) Age 19
Studied towards a computational linguistics degree for about 8 months. Dropped out when I landed a full-time job in public policy.
Early Startups + Public Forums (“14 — “15) Age 17–18
Co-founded an online public speaking courseware startup. Helped coordinate and moderate public forums on international current events, business, and tech issues at the City Club of Cleveland.
Archeology Intern (“13) Age 16
Classified bone fragments from dig sites and illustrated biological specimens (1, 2, 3) for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Archeology and Paleontology Department. Realized I didn’t want to be an archeologist.
Need some help?
I’m happy to help folks trying to get into Web 3 get connected with the right orgs. If that’s you, DM me on Twitter.
Other links
My writings (most of them, at least)
