// story.md — campaign log / 2019 → 2026
fun is the fuel. profit is a rumor.
2019 — curious
Like a lot of people, I found crypto through Bitcoin Cash. I was curious, so I bought some, started exploring, and accidentally opened the door to a much bigger world.
I gave trading a shot. It didn't take long to realize I wasn't built for staring at candlestick charts all day.
Please don't send me charts. They work better than sleeping pills.
What kept me around wasn't the price action. It was everything happening behind the scenes. I'd rather spend my time on X, hang out in Discord, fix a Linux machine, or read documentation until it finally starts making sense.
Somewhere along the way, I realized something: the official story and what's actually happening aren't always the same thing. Since then, I've been more interested in understanding how things really work than simply taking them at face value.
2020 — how blocks get made
Curiosity eventually led me to mining.
Monero. Cardano. A few others.
I wanted to understand how blocks were actually produced, so I started experimenting with everything I could get my hands on from old PCs that had already lived a full life to dedicated mining hardware.
My hardware requirements were simple: if it booted, it had a job. I called it production-ready. The hardware probably called it abuse.
Along the way, I learned two things: how block production works... and how loud a computer can get before you start wondering whether it's mining crypto or preparing for takeoff.
2021 — college in one window, linux in the other
I completed my Intermediate with Computer Science.
School taught me the fundamentals. The internet kept assigning extra homework.
My browser had one tab for college and about twenty for things I'd convinced myself were "more important."
Somehow, I survived both.
2022 — one last game
By 2022, I had started drifting away from the internet.
Most nights turned into PUBG Mobile.
Friends online. Headphones on. Mic full of random yelling.
"Last game" became the biggest lie of the year.
One match ended, someone said "one more," and somehow we were still playing at 4 AM.
Sometimes we'd lose horribly and immediately queue again because obviously the next one would be different.
It usually wasn't.
I wasn't really doing much online that year. I was mostly just playing, staying up late, and enjoying the nights.
Looking back, those were some good nights.
2023–2024 — back online
Eventually, I started finding my way back to the internet. There wasn't really a plan; I just kept following whatever looked interesting, which usually meant one rabbit hole turning into another.
Web3 communities, testnets, nodes, infrastructure, and random projects I probably should have researched before clicking. Naturally, I clicked first.
I started experimenting again, keeping old hardware alive, setting up nodes, and running things on machines that probably deserved retirement years ago. If it ran Linux, it had a job. If it didn't, I took that personally.
PUBG was still around too, just nowhere near as much as in 2022. Every now and then I'd end up in a squad, hear someone say "last game," and immediately know we were playing at least three more.
But Web3 was slowly becoming the main distraction again. Discord became a second home, X became another tab I refused to close, and my browser history started looking like evidence.
That eventually pulled me into the NFT side of things. I became one of those people
spamming gib wl, gib wl in Discord, hoping to land a whitelist or guaranteed spot.
Not because I'm a hardcore collector. I'm really not.
I just liked getting the spot. The NFT was optional; winning the internet lottery was the fun part.
Priorities.
There still wasn't a roadmap. I was just following whatever caught my attention, learning as I went, breaking things, fixing them, and pretending it was all intentional.
It wasn't.
Curiosity won again. It usually does.
2025 — too many tabs
One rabbit hole wasn't enough, so I started collecting ecosystems instead.
Monad. Hooked Protocol. Gaia. Node Ops. Movement. Story Protocol. XION. 0G Labs. ZetaChain. Omni Network. Plume. Arkham. Magic Square. Blah blah blah... honestly there were so many projects that my brain just stopped saving new ones somewhere around #6 or 9, idk.
The ones I forgot usually show up again around 3 AM, right when I'm trying to sleep.
I tested networks, ran nodes, messed with hardware, poked around infrastructure, and helped people out in Discord. If something looked interesting, that was reason enough to lose sleep over it.
Most of it never made it to Crypto Twitter. I'm more of a Discord guy. Less posting, more breaking things to see how they work.
My workflow isn't exactly complicated:
Find something interesting. Get curious. Fall down the rabbit hole. Test it. Run it. Break it. Fix it. Then drop whatever I was doing to go help someone else fix theirs. No roadmap, no plan, just curiosity and other people's bugs. Finally understand it... just in time to find another rabbit hole and repeat the entire process.
2026 — back to studying
This year I did something I honestly didn't expect: I went back to studying and enrolled at the Virtual University of Pakistan.
At some point between running nodes, reading documentation, and convincing old hardware it still had a purpose in life, I decided getting a degree sounded like a reasonable idea.
The degree is a BBA.
Which feels like a strange choice until you look at the path that got me here.
I spent years learning how systems work. Linux systems. Distributed systems. Blockchain systems. The kind of systems that break at 2 AM and somehow become your problem five minutes later.
After a while, I started wondering about the systems behind those systems.
The companies building them. The people running them. The decisions that somehow survive three meetings, four spreadsheets, and a budget review before becoming reality.
Business administration started sounding less like a detour and more like another rabbit hole.
Curiosity has a habit of doing that.
One question becomes ten. Ten become fifty. Before you know it, you're watching a lecture about management principles after spending half the day reading infrastructure documentation.
Honestly, it feels a little weird.
I'm in my mid-20s, studying through an online portal, watching recorded lectures, taking quizzes, and submitting assignments from a laptop.
Somehow it feels futuristic and twenty years outdated at the same time.
Make it make sense.
Web3 is still there, of course. It would be suspicious if I suddenly stopped opening Discord, reading docs, and falling into random technical rabbit holes.
I'm just adding another skill tree to the character build.
Who knows where it leads.
Most of the interesting things in my life started with a random click and a little curiosity anyway.
If history is any indicator, this probably ends with more tabs, more questions, and significantly less free time.
Sounds fun.
fun is the fuel.
profit is a rumor.
curiosity is the engine.
everything else is a side quest.