Sovereign Engineering

SEC-08 report is here, dig in. We went full YOLO++ in Madeira, with FIPS over sound and Totems finally talking to each other after two years. Six weeks of building on the open seas of cryptography and the new adventures beyond.

Some participants come to Soveng carrying more than their laptops. They arrive with large backpacks and cases full of equipment to build. We saw this again at SEC-08, which just ended, with hardware projects such as Totem and Tollgate. Without a shared workshop or access to the right tools on the island, some builders could not do everything they had hoped to do.

A couple of participants decided to change that and began planning a small, shared fab lab for the community and were prepared to fund it themselves. Then

generously offered to fund part of it, and other donors came forward too. What began with a couple of participants choosing to solve a problem has become a shared effort, with 3 million sats raised so far. 🫶

We are starting small. Those sats will buy a 3D printer, workbench, storage, tools, chips, devices and other materials the community can use. The lab will be set up at https://nostroffice.nobios.ai/ . A big shoutout to them for giving it a home. They have built something special and have been great friends to Soveng. We are grateful to be building this next piece together.

This is exactly the kind of initiative we love to see and want to encourage more of. Someone sees a need and takes the first step, then a community gathers around them and helps make it real. We want the workshop to grow in that same spirit.

If you'd like to help us put it together, you can contribute here:

bc1qwatxa4ftrxnnfmx8epr8zqj05gkxsxtrmzq9x4

If you have something you want to build, come build with us.

Its week 5 Demo Day of SEC-08 and the mood

No wonder it makes even the clankers happy

Swag game on point 🤙 https://relay2.sovereignengineering.io/589ae5a7a3fde53d1dde6fed6bbfac09d033f9dd1961823a72113e7f6a5fc0db.jpg https://relay2.sovereignengineering.io/580f21d5ff7578e1ee73664d07b357d703a1eb6daa0bd42c99e8d8f6c9fec6dc.jpg

Prep for the first Demo day of SEC-08 going strong! Heavy fuel for heavy demos!

Kicking off SEC-08 in style! #SovEng https://relay2.sovereignengineering.io/9da4088629441d6a372781b1d337efacce4dedd384634ad49d9025a323f6b68f.jpg

please reach out to us as our printer needs help with the design file 😅

SEC-08 applications close tomorrow midnight. If you have been on the fence, act - now!

https://sovereignengineering.io/#apply

Build with us:

Archives today are very fragile and are a problem that we deeply think about. We have been thinking about doing a cohort dedicated on that.

Raise your hand if you'd like to solve it and tag someone who you'd like to solve it with.

We are also hyped you won and would like to share our hype with you if you'd only got in touch with us 😅

GM good people of Nostrverse! As promised, the SEC-08 t-shirt contest results are in.

Firstly, we thank you, to the people that participated and shared with us such great designs to make our lives harder Then, to the people that shared them, engaged with them and sometimes provided us something to chuckle about. And finally, to all the Nostr (Bitcoin, LN & Cashu) developers and users that have made this tiny little garden of ours where we flourish. We are eternally grateful to not have to deal with logins and passwords, captchas and verifications to prove our humanity, KYC just to fucking get an account or zap someone 1 or 10 or a MILLION sats, auto spam filtering - because, WoT & PoW, bots and the cacophony of the clown world - because only autists and masochists(sometimes) can actually bear the "friction" and novelty of this beautiful nascent protocol - and now we know that art people can too.

Most importantly, we are grateful that we didn't have to gatekeep this contest, use emails or create some special system for it because as far as we are concerned Nostr does work and it works pretty well. This started as a small experiment, and it turned into a proper gallery of very good, very weird, very Sovereign Engineering designs. This was a very human experience.

Phew.. now that that's out of the way, let's get to the meat.. so, the winners of SEC-08 T-shirt Design Contest are..

• 1st goes to
  npub1ncff8m2…awj87x

  for the "Tin Can" design! 🤌🏻
• 2nd goes to
  npub12w53uwn…92rrm3

  for reading the times so well! Well done!
• 3rd goes to
  npub10dnz5lq…z425xf

  for exciting the nerd in us! Great work!

For the rest of the voting and scores see: https://tshirt.sovereignengineering.io/results

Honorable mention: nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgqgdwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkcqpq8p66zmyh3q2rgejqencuz6dduuggdn7arg4eqn6x44jerxyy2mysjacg4q for such a great concept, but just missed it! We would definitely like to do something with it.

P.S. These t-shirts are usually exclusive for SEC participants.. Now, if people are really interested in specific designs, do let us know and maybe we can do something about that 😉

Keep on piratin'

Thank you every who participated in the t-shirt contest. This was one of those experiments to test the open waters as we do at SECs and we are surprised and happy about it! We've got some really good designs and we're really going to have to make some hard choices!

Stay tuned, we'll be announcing the winners pretty soon. Until then, you can view all the submissions at:

https://tshirt.sovereignengineering.io/

#SovEng

We concur.. last couple of hours until submissions close.. the mystery shall be revealed soon!

One day to go!

One week left to win 1,000,000 sats! https://tshirt.sovereignengineering.io/

Shipping since 1492

Howdy folks! When we thought of doing this we did not expect that we'd get these many submissions and such high quality ones! Its been great seeing all them come in! We appreciate them!

For all the people still working on their master pieces, 10 more days to go!

And to repeat, you can submit as many designs as you want, we know you have more than one crazy idea!

Keep on piratin' .. ARRRRR!!!!

🤙 https://relay2.sovereignengineering.io/6fea79f8d5aee22a406a65fbaafdccd5c61e08baac28bf6182f44443f9cee042.jpg https://relay2.sovereignengineering.io/87c93913a0461a8fc8a298946851ce300eea6206726525ee1e0e8bcc09c4dddd.jpg

This was one of the really cool demos!

You can submit more than one design, we know you have more than one idea - we know, we have a million! So, as long as the contest is live, keep 'em coming!

Ahoy!

For the engineers, SEC-08 applications are still on. Apply below:

https://sovereignengineering.typeform.com/SEC-08

P.S. you, yes you reading this, if you're not an engineer, share this with the engineers tirelessly fighting against the enshitification of the internet.

Friction is good. Slow is better. Small is beautiful.

You don't need permission to do whatever you want with open protocols. We get so many participants at every SEC who are new to Nostr and they have had material contributions to making Nostr better in more than one ways.

As the saying goes "you can just do things" and that sometimes also means you have to protect open protocols from enshittification.

Howdy fellow Pirates and Nostriches! SEC-08 is coming up and for people who aren't able to participate, here's your chance! We doing a contest for the SEC-08 t-shirt design!

Whether you are a designer or not, let that not dampen your spirits. Make it as fun or as serious as you want it to be. Nothing is off-limits. Be radical!

Final submission: June 15th

To participate, post a mockup of your design on Nostr and use the #SovEng hashtag or tag @SovereignEngineering. We'll announce & zap the winners shortly after.

Head over to https://sovereignengineering.io/contest for more details!

#SovEng #SEC-08

Checkout the heartbeat on all the projects that were created or explored during one of the SECs:

https://heartbeat.sovereignengineering.io/

Its a good way to keep track on the most active projects.

Good and accessible discussion on FIPS. Give it a listen

There's more to solutions than, "you can just do things". Many a well meaning solutions in the moment turned out to be nightmares eventually, not because they were mala fied, but because they fundamentally misunderstood the problem they were trying to solve.

Philosophy is as much, if not more important than knowledge especially in the hands of the highly capable, for a "Don't be evil" can with a stroke of a pen change to "Do the right thing" without batting an eyelid as if nothing changed.

This here is an example of why you may not want to "you can just do things", and take a moment. Reflect.

There is knowledge and then there is wisdom.

Turth bomb #42

Happy Pizza Day 🏴‍☠️ https://blossom.primal.net/159cc1f7ae7468abbd71753e51dca87158264a42414f01a43d3941192e7cf5fe.jpg