What Did Vasil St. Dabov Have In Common With CardanoCafe?

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What Did Vasil St. Dabov Have In Common With CardanoCafe?

The Vasil Hard Fork is named after Vasil Stoyanov Dabov, the Bulgarian mathematician, environmentalist, entrepreneur, Cardano Ambassador, and friend of Charles Hoskinson who passed away on December 5th, 2021. Running parallel with his work in blockchain technology and his commitment to Cardano, was his lifelong pursuit of planting trees, more than 10,000 of them in all. His passion for tree planting is a direct connection to Cafe's reforestation project in Panama.

Vasil St. Dabov

     At the time of his passing he was Chief Blockchain Advisor at Quanterall having previously held the same position at Optela Tech as well as working for five years as a freelance blockchain consutant.  He was Co-Founder and Vice President of ACT Group for eleven years before all of that. He was fluent in Bulgarian, Russian, Engligh, Esperanto, and French.  He is among the veterans of the Bulgarian IT sector.  In his capacity as a major pioneer of the IT industry in Bulgaria he signed the first distribution agreement with Microsoft in 1993. 

 His True Passion

   But his true passion in life was the propagation and planting of Ginkgo Biloba and Sequoia trees, and other endangered tree species.  He was the founder and managing director of Ginkgo Planter Ltd which he launched in 2004.  The company is a Registered Agricultural Producer specializing in the research, sowing/planting, and growing of Ginkgo Biloba trees. He was directly influenced by his father who was deeply involved with agriculture having developed new strains of peaches, and had, along with Vasil’s mother, cultivated many trees, nuts, fruits, and vegetables on their small property in Bulgaria. Ginkgo Biloba trees are considered to be living fossils dating back to 170 Million years ago.  Their ability to survive is best exemplified by the fact that Ginkgo trees growing within 2 miles of nuclear explosions have survived.

   When I indicate that Vasil, "planted more than 10,000 of them in all", I mean he literally planted them with his own hands! At some point in his life he stopped counting the precise number of trees he had planted.  When he was asked why he stopped counting, he replied, " After I had planted a few thousand trees, I realized that instead of spending time counting how many trees I had planted, I could use the same time to plant more trees." In his recent video Charles Hoskinson pays homage to Vasil and explains why he had chosen to name the new hard fork in his honor. Hoskinson said that Vasil developed a "druid-like passion" for nature and for trees in particular.  He said Vasil often repeated an acient Greek proverb: "Great societies are built when old men plant trees whose shade they shall never know."  Charles then goes on to explain that the Cardano ecosystem was "planted' and developed with this same intention, that it was an entitiy whose full shade many of us shall never sit under, but that makes it even more significant.

Cafe's Mission

   Cardano Cafe embodies the critical concept of sustainability both in the self generating Ouroboros POS protocol, and in the beneficial environmental causes it supports.  In this case the obvious parallel to Vasil St. Dabov's passion are Cafe's efforts in Panama supporting the Generation Forest  which has nine active reforestation projects under way.  This concern and focus for sustainable environmental causes is Cafe's Founder, Chris's personal passion.  Cafe supports six different charitable environmental and humanitarian organizations, but In particular Cafe supports organizations that fight climate change, arguably the most significant threat to our lives as inhabitants of Earth.

Sustainable Reforestation

   Regular reforestation projects focus on planting individual tree species.  TGF applies the Generation Forest model by planting forests that will last for centuries with a focus on ecological and economic purpose. TGF plants diverse mixtures of native tree species in order to develop self-sustaining ecosystems throughout Panama with a goal of planting 1 Million trees by the end of 2022.

Ouroboros and Autopoesis

   The Cardano ecosystem is also in the process of "planting trees" in its ongoing development that will cast "shade" for future generations.  The Ouroboros protocol is purpose built to be self-sustaining, scalable, and interoperable.  Vasil St. Dabov was deeply interested in the concept of Autopoesis, which is the ability of an organism or organization to reproduce within itself as far into the future as is possible. Just as Vasil planted 10,000 Biloba trees to shade those who will be born in the future, Cafe supports sustainable reforestation projects and climate change organizations in order to ensure that our descendants will live in a better world, continuing the work we believe in.

written by: Eric Hill     published at: Jul 21, 2022