Q4 2022 Review

Yo.

So, the devout amongst you will have noticed that this blog hasn't been updated since July. The reason for this is super weaksauce - basically the Pinata free tier was updated so it included a maximum for 100 files, and Gatsby (the framework I use for this blog) was spitting out over 300. So, while I did write a Q3 report in September, I've only just figured out how to move things over to fleek and get things moving again. FWIW, I'm pretty blown away by how good fleek is as a tool, I'll likely do a blog post soon on how to use it, really is orders of magnitude better than the old setup. It's amazing the things I'll do to avoid paying $20/month lol.

But, that's for another day - today we're reflecting on Q4 2022 and wrapping up 2022 in general.

Q4 2022 Wrapup

After completing zigzagstats I took some time off to go on honeymoon. When I got back, I built out a new bot that listens for a super-niche on-chain opportunity and responds to it, which made it's first profit about a month ago. It seems like a really good spot, if everything continues to go well it should be good for a few ETH per month.

Which is very, very welcome. Not least because the other big project this quarter has been sorting out my absolute shit-show of a tax return. Many, many hours have been spent marking several thousand transactions in cryptotaxcalculator - turns out that by optimising for passive incoom during the bull run I've kinda f*cked myself as I'm now due nearly half of my staking rewards to the government. It's been kinda stressful honestly, and it's embarrasing to make exactly the rookie error everyone always warns you about - having to sell the bottom (?) to pay taxes on gains made during the top. But, there's nothing much I can do about it now - I've spoken to a tax advisor who's keen to help (though seems to know alarming little about defi..) so hopefully things will be in better order in future years.

Building

My goal for the year was to 10-100x my building skills.

Besides the new bot I've reached out/been reached out to by a couple of teams who're building cool stuff, and I've been contributing where I can.

I had a nice little motivation boost the other day actually when a PR I submitted on github got accepted by tztokchad (the big boss man behind Dopex).

One thing I've kinda let myself down on this year is how little forward progress I've made learning solidity. I think during the first half of this year, focussing more on web2 skills due to the high-stakes nature of web3 made a lot of sense, but in the last 3-6 months I could've made much more progress than I have learning what I guess is really THE language that can separate me from any other mildly competent engineer.

I can't blame a lack of direction/resources here, I've just not done a good enough job of executing.

I don't think I could genuinely claim even a 2x as far as the improvement in my building skills made this quarter tbh. I'll claim 1.5x for a checks notes... 27x improvement this year (3x, 3x, 2x and 1.5x)?? I mean this is obviously just some arbitrary goal I set myself, it is true that I'm many times more useful than I was. I think I can be reasonably happy with the progress I've made with my skills, though I certainly left some gains out there by not focussing more on solidity.

Trading

My goal this year was to +25% my ETH stack.

After all the drama - LUNA, FTX, my taxes etc, my ETH stack finished up -6%. My BTC stack on the other hand has been decimated (as I've basically been liquidating this to pay my tax bill). Honestly though, this feels like a fair or even a good result. While it probably represents something like -75% in $ terms, I've got to remember just how much of the cohort went -99%+ or exited the game completely. While it's obviously not gone great, I've survived, I've built out the beginnings of a useful network, I've learned a ton and started to uncover some good situations. If there's another cycle, I'll be pretty ideally placed to capture massive upside, and I'm very likely to be the guy paying attention when stuff starts happening.

Life

My other two goals were:

1. Reduce unstructured phone time by 50%+
2. Journal 360+ days of the year

The phone time thing is going good - I'm down to less than 30m per day of total screen time on the phone. I'm spending maybe 3-4h/day on my mac, but that's much more productive at least on average. I made a script that auto-closes Discord every time my mac sleeps. I've also essentially cut out Twitter browsing, though I still post occasionally. For a while I changed my password on Lichess too, but that was a bridge too far - I can't be a complete robot lol.

While I've taken a bit of a beating financially, personally things have never been better so I'm definitely counting my blessings reflecting on 2022.

I survived. Therefore it could have been much, much worse.

Like the rest of us, I'll be thinking about my 2023 goals over the next few days. Though honestly they're likely to be very similar to my 2022 goals - learn to be a better builder, stack gwei here and there without paying too much attention to token price swings, and live a happy, curious life.

That about sums it up honestly, not sure it requires it's own post.

If you're reading this blog - well done, you have also survived the bear market of 2022! If you think I can be of any service to you, reach out and tell me about your project, I'll be happy to help in any way I can. DMs are open on Twitter.

That's it for today, keep building and GL out there!