Monday Update #8 - How Pylons is Different

Hello Pylons Community.

I am Joshua Kershner, Pylons General Counsel. I want to give you a brief overview on our strategy around regulation and risk, given the news this week.

The collapse of Terra UST and Luna has had a profound and disruptive effect on the blockchain community. First and foremost, Pylons HAS NOT been affected by last week's news. The company had no meaningful exposure to Terra UST or Luna. We remain in a strong position as we launch our incentivized testnet, and we will launch mainnet later this year. We recognize many cosmonauts are in a less fortunate position, and we are here for anyone who wants to talk, as are many others.

This cataclysmic event demonstrates the risk inherent in innovating with value on the line and how important it is to mitigate that risk. Over the next few years billions of people will interact with art and games through mobile phones, and will need a way to demonstrate ownership over the digital items they buy and sell. Pylons is building the mainstream, mobile-friendly infrastructure that is the future of digital property, and we are doing it with risk minimization at the forefront of the design.

Our approach, both legally and technologically, is fundamentally different than most other blockchain projects, and in particular, markedly different than Terra UST and Luna. Legal considerations play an important role in the development of the product itself.  Web3, blockchains, and cryptocurrencies exist in a space of regulatory uncertainty. Governments don't understand the technology and the mainstream public is afraid of the risk and newness. Developing a product first and then trying to figure out the legal strategy later is a recipe for disaster.

I advise Pylons on how to mitigate risk at every step. I'm an attorney with ten years of experience working for the United States federal government who mined Bitcoin on my personal computer in 2010 and returned to the space to navigate Pylons through legal uncertainty. The goal is for the company to hold nothing that a hacker could steal; push risk onto reliable partners, like Google Play, Apple Pay, and uStripe; and to create corporate infrastructure that meets regulators expectations, including registering tokens as securities, and having the capacity to respond to legal process and court orders.  Under this framework, we can scale up to a mainstream audience skeptical of the technology and afraid of the risk, and we can say, honestly and with a straight face: Pylons is different!

The Pylons are rising!

Have a great week, everyone, back to Mike again next Monday for a big announcement.