Today I'm excited to announce the launch of ETHLabs, a Web3 dev agency. Initially ETHLabs will consist solely of myself, focused on building and testing EVM smart contracts for clients.

I'll be writing these memos in the spirit of transparency to:

• Hold myself accountable
• Instill trust & confidence in potential clients
• Organize my own thoughts
• Enable feedback from others to improve myself and the business
• Share what I learn to help others pursuing similar journeys

I plan to share everything I can, including details on the clients and projects I'm working on, challenges I'm dealing with, billable hours / rates & revenue, and learnings both business related and technical.

Next, a little background on me. I got into crypto in 2015 when I discovered Bitcoin, and immediately became obsessed with the narrative of decentralized money. For the next several years I followed developments in the space, invested in newer projects such as Ethereum, and even built an algorithmic trading bot that placed over 20,000 trades on Binance in 2017 (barely broke even lol).

Then in 2019 I started learning about a few DeFi protocols on Ethereum, and was particularly inspired by Maker and Uniswap. This is when the value prop of Ethereum really clicked with me, and I started to see how programmable money could change the world.

I decided I wanted to start building in the space rather than just investing. I read books about Ethereum, took classes on Solidity, and studied more protocol codebases. In 2020 I built and launched a small DeFi protocol as a solo dev and learned a lot about building smart contracts and web apps, the degen culture, and many of the challenges that Web3 founders face.

While this project didn't make me rich, the experience I gained from it enabled me to transition from my previous career as a mechanical engineer into Web3 full time. I landed a job as a Solidity developer at Decent Labs, a Web3 venture studio. I worked at Decent for a little over two years, building both internal and client projects. This experience was invaluable as I further developed my technical skills, and also gained a lot of insight into launching startups and protocols in Web3.

Last year I decided it was time for me to part ways with Decent and restart my entrepreneurial journey in Web3. I wanted to level up my smart contract skills, and spent the next several month studying smart contract auditing and participating in code4rena audit contests. This experience fundamentally changed the way I look at and write smart contracts, and taught me how to prioritize security over everything else.

Now its time for me to start building again. Right now I'm more bullish on Web3 than I've ever been, and I'm incredibly excited to see where this space will go over the coming years. If you have a project you need help with, please reach out, I'd love to build something awesome with you.

- Taylor