My Quest in Blockchain Technology

Hello Everyone! My name is Danish Mahboob, I'm an aspiring blockchain developer passionate about OSS, DeFi, and community building. I’m currently working on CypherSyntax, a developer-focused open source project aimed at providing all the technical resources and guides necessary to become a Gno developer. In this article, I want to share my story about how I discovered the Blockchain, what factors shaped my interest in pursuing a career in Web3, and how I ultimately discovered Gnoland. So, let's dive in!

The Beginning

It all started back in 2021, when both Covid and Bitcoin were at their peak. It was the first time I heard words like crypto, blockchain, pandemic (Covid), and lockdown. I was stuck at home like everyone else and was getting frustrated over all the chaos caused by Covid. Tens of millions of people were suffering while hundreds died each day, and instead of making effective policies to handle the situation efficiently, Governments all across the globe started censoring the information related to it, including suppressing independent voices in order to promote specific narratives which were beneficial for those in power.

At the same time, another topic was trending on the Internet: Crypto. People were making crazy amounts of money just by selling weird looking Monkey JPEG'S. So I also started exploring it but instead of getting attracted towards the booming NFT market I fell in love with the awesome features of the blockchain technology such as immutable security, transparent transaction records, and peer-to-peer operations. As I delved deeper into this technology it became evident to me that blockchain could serve as a potential tool for ensuring freedom of speech and resisting the sort of censorship happening at that time. Then I started following and interacting with crypto communities across different platforms.

But then the thriller part began, in late 2022 both Covid cases and Crypto prices started collapsing. Life started to get normal, World economy started healing, and people started moving on from the crypto industry because of the FTX scam, including me. But I haven't completely moved on as I stayed connected with some telegram communities through which I got know about Solana.

Then in 2023, I started exploring the Solana Blockchain, as it was considered as the fastest and cheapest blockchain at that time. But when I tried to learn about this platform I wasn't able to keep up with its complex tech stack and the extremely competitive community, as I didn't get the support I needed to completely understand and embrace it. Then I started looking for other platforms but couldn't find one.

Discovering Gnoland

Fast forward to early 2024, this was the first time when I heard about the Gnoland blockchain via a Stanford lecture by Jae Kwon on YouTube and after watching this video, the first thought which came into my mind was: This is what I was looking for this entire time. A blockchain platform that welcomes beginners passionate about the Web3 space and removes the barrier of steep learning curve by streamlining the development process by using a beginner-friendly, general-purpose programming language like Go.

I started learning about Gnoland and was also sharing my learning and understandings about it via brief articles about the basics of Gnoland and as I was exploring the Gnoland community I found out that there are lots of people who are interested in learning about the platform but does not know how to get started in the first place because of the lack of beginner friendly guides and resources. So I got the idea that if I am going to learn everything about this platform as a beginner myself then why not help other folks like me, who are also interested in learning about Gnoland and so I created an open source developer resource project called CypherSyntax.

Building CypherSyntax

Now it's 2025, and for the next 12-16 months I’ll be working on CypherSyntax, building the most robust and compelling third-party developer resources for the Gnoland Blockchain as this entire project will be crafted in the most beginner-friendly manner. So, if you’re interested in learning about Gnoland or blockchain in general then I invite you to explore this project.

Lastly, Thank you for taking the time to read about my journey into the blockchain world and I hope together we will build something amazing in this space.

Peace Out ✌🏻