Goodbye 2021, hello 2022 👋

Happy New Year’s!

We hope you had a wonderful 2021, all things considered, and have an even better 2022. In this issue, we’re going to do a roundup of the last year, plus a look into predictions and plans for the next.

In the first half of 2021, most of our time was taken up with our work with the Tuvalu Government and Phase 1 of the Tuvalu National Digital Ledger (TNDL) project. Our team and partners put in long hours (a big, hearty thank you to all involved) to ensure Phase 1 was executed on well, and everyone was set up for success for future phases.

The TNDL project is now undergoing rigorous due diligence to ensure that things aren’t replicated hastily like the Bitcoin legal tender initiative in El Salvador, which everyday citizens have been complaining about recently due to missing funds.

In the second half of the year, while we wait for approvals for Phase 2 of the TNDL project, we brought on additional team members (like Assistant Director, Alyssa Gutierrez), announced a new direction, and updated our website.

We also launched a bunch of new content, products, and services related to the metaverse - the perfect buzzword magnified by Facebook’s rebrand to meta - to bring together our niche of blockchain technology and online communities.

We also coined the term “meta-communities”, in the context of this emerging metaverse space, and published this on-chain for future proofing.

Some of our new content series include:

Our Managing Director, George, got a chance to fly to Miami and New York to talk about the work we’re doing at Faiā, as well as our sister company Honā. It was great being able to interact with people again in a conference-setting, after two years of relative isolation due to the global pandemic.

In the new year, we look forward to beginning a new program called the Meta-Community Micro-Accelerator (MCMA), which is aimed at marketers, strategists, and community builders looking to build their own communities within this emerging metaverse space.

We’ll also be launching others products and services to further inspire, engage, and educate people about organizing people effectively (e.g. communities - whether personal or professional) within the metaverse. We foresee enterprises embracing hybrids of remote work and experimenting further with metaverse tools. As such, new ways of building culture and measuring productivity virtually will arise.

We’ll continue onboarding new clients and customers, as well as separate out our agency services from our consulting & advisory work. The former focused on high-growth startups or SMEs, and the latter on governments and enterprise.

We believe the pace of change is going to start picking up in the new year. In Chinese astrology, 2021 was the Year of the Ox (so think slow, steady, plowing of the fields). In 2022, it’s the Year of the Water Tiger, so you can expect all the symbolism of an energetic tiger energy, coupled with the fluidity, emotions, and transparency of water. As such, we predict some of the following:

Using the symbolism of a “water tiger” as an analogy, we foresee a swift leap in technological advances, but also a swift leap in crack-downs (justice), out of a sea of emotions (so expect them to be running high). This may mean great losses for those who sought quick gains over the last few years, without laying or building upon firm foundations, or great gains for those who stayed focused in a sea of noise and distractions.

Like any predictions, take note that things are always unfolding, and unpredictable changes always occur, no matter how good our past data or pattern recognition abilities. As the financial adage goes, “past performance does not guarantee of future results.”

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