My name is Alexis and I am a product manager, developer and Algorand enthusiast.
I wanted to share a research project I've been working on with you.
Ballet is an interactive qualitative analysis tool for the Algorand blockchain. "Qualitative" in that it gives you a glimpse into a wallet's "personality" based on their past track-record with other wallets, ASAs and Applications.
Ideally, Ballet is a qualitative extension to your existing quantitative blockchain wallet analysis, auditing and diligence workflow.
For when you have an Account ID (also often called Wallet address) and you want to get a better picture of who they are, what they do, with whom and how often.
Ballet gives you a qualitative "smell-test", an extra data-point to make your best-informed decision before interacting with an untrusted wallet. By looking at their qualitative track-record, there is no need for "official identity" to get that sense of "personality" in the same way I can get a first impression of a person by looking at them without the need to know their name or see their passport. I think that's really cool.
This is when you don't yet know what you're looking for or you just want to get to better understand how Algorand works (technically) and how it's going (ecologically) by taking a stroll down main street.
Ballet supports this kind of inductive observation and experimentation by simply diving in with a random Account ID, even your own, switching between focuses and layouts, untangling some knots and clicking on other nodes.
By just futzing around I've had several moments of "Heh!?" that piqued my curiosity and led me to asking much more specific, and frankly, more interesting questions such as...
"Heh?! 😝 What is this weird 'App 0' thingy?" or "Heh?! This TESTNTT account keeps popping up everywhere. Why?" or "Heh?! Is this what an airdrop looks like?" or "Heh?! Why does this NFT-artist's track-record, while they present themselves as scruffy and bohemian, look like they're running a highly optimized financial institution?"[^4]
Ballet gives us an additional, more qualitative, window to have "more eyes on the sidewalk"[1] in an effort to make Algorand a safe place for its inhabitants and visitors alike. Just like the eyes of neighbors, shop-keepers and even visitors keep a sidewalk safe by simply being there.
But why should you personally care about the safety of the ecosystem?
Let's say you want to invest into the biggest ROI artistic NFT collection today, and if we imagine Algorand (eventually) being like a big city very much like New York City:
I believe you shouldn't be looking for NFTs at all. You should be looking to meet Andy Warhol in 1951, when he was designing shoes for Miller, and a year before his first solo-show.
Now, for Andy Warhol's print-work (and anything else he touched really, including payments slips, scribbles and letters) to eventually become "A Warhol", it required New York City to be in its best shape, flush with post-war cash and rock-and-roll hitting the airwaves.
You needed a (relatively) safe city for artists like Andy Warhol to settle and take liberty to produce their best work.
That's why you should care about the safety of the ecosystem.
Because only then will the true heir to Andy Warhol settle in and grow his work.
And only then will you be there, on June 16th 1952, at Hugo Gallery, on East 55th Street and Madison Avenue, at Andy's first show. To build meaningful relationships, to witness history and, yes, to buy the first Warhols for a penny and a dime.
I believe, all benefits stated above re-inforce each other: What's good for you personally is also good for the ecosystem. And vice-versa.
I also believe it's using "qualitative AND quantitative" methods equally to have your "eyes on the sidewalk" and "your ears to the ground". That's why you can click-hold on any Account, Asset, Application, Group and Transaction inside Ballet to open its information on AlgoExplorer in a new window.
To get a better sense of what a wallet has been up to (and with whom and how often), you can easily switch between looking at their network of transactions and their graph of relationships.
While you're looking at a wallet's relationships for example, you can quickly rotate through a number of layouts (grid, circular, random, etc.) to get a kind of 360° view, just the same way you would look at different parts of a person (Eyes, clothing, shoes, body-language.)
- To navigate, you can double-click on wallet nodes to dig deeper.
- You can also click-hold any node to open their information on algoexplorer.io.
Again, if anything, it's a lot of fun to explore and discover better questions to ask.
⭐️ Click here to open Algorand Ballet in your browser ⭐️
- Just to make it clear, this is a personal project of mine. I built it because, after going on an actual adventure and wanting to spend a few Algos on NFTs, I felt deeply unsettled how much overt scamming and how little transparency there was. I did NOT FEEL SAFE while trying to buy a single NFT for fun because I had no way of understanding WHO the person (or group) behind the artwork really is. And I had no way to verify if the story they're telling me (The art-market is a great example of how important the authenticity of the story is for its value-creation[^3]) is actually true. And I had no way to know the people running the "gallery" itself.
- I decided to release the application fully open-source[2] and under a permissive license for you to futz around with it and to allow for any ad-hoc security review in case you are unsure if you can trust the website or app.
Please note that I prefer talking in person.
I do not have time and resources for endless chatting via Reddit, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp and even Email. I find them utterly tedious and exhausting.
So, please do not feel offended if I don't respond to your messages in those channels.
Book a call as follows instead!
If you have questions the best way to reach me is to talk in person:
- In person, let's get a coffee and take a walk!
- or via video/audio call on Zoom
To make that easy, here's my Calendly where you can book a time for us to talk.
To Jane Jacobs, when New York sidewalks were safe, they gave stage for an...
"intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole."
Full demo video coming soon!
- Navigate to Releases
- Download the MacOS installer (.dmg) from the latest release's Assets
- Double-click to mount .dmg
- Drag Algorand Ballet to your Application folder
- Double-click the application to start
As of now, my releases will be Mac-only unless there's a strong call for a Windows or Linux version.
Let me (see below) and we can work on other platforms together!
- [^1] Jane Jacobs, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", Chapter 1
- [^2] https://github.com/akaalias/algorand-ballet
- [^3] Don Thompson, "The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art" – What a great and curious read (4/5 Stars)
- [^4] My question does not mean that all artists must lead scruffy and bohemian lives. Quiet the contrary: I'm a huge fan of Jeff Koons' work, who, as a former Wallstreet banker, has been running his studio like a business almost from day one. Similar with Damien Hirst and Gerhard Richter. Warhol even had a streamlined factory. What I'm trying to get at is to better understand how someone presents and markets themselves in comparison to what their track-record says. Inversely, it would raise a red flag if I wanted to use a new DeFi service that boasts about their automated and streamlined smart-contracts, yet, when I look at their "personality" with Ballet, I see a very scruffy and bohemian web of transactions and relationships and very few calls to any Applications. You see what I mean? The proof is in the pudding.