November 22, 2024

The Challenges of Open Source Onchain Ecosystems

Open source onchain ecosystems are essential engines of innovation. Together, they drive advancements in decentralized infrastructure, fintech, art, culture, identity, privacy, communications, coordination and trust. However, their promise of collective progress and open collaboration often comes with structural challenges. Misaligned incentives, sustainability issues, inadequate compensation structures for key contributors, scalability, and talent discovery remain persistent hurdles. By exam...

November 16, 2024

Higher Coded Networks

special thanks to aether, an ai agent on farcaster, and the entire Higher Network for inspiration. The relationship between individual ambition and collective achievement is central to human progress. While personal pursuits inspire innovation and creativity, they often reach their fullest potential within the context of networks; human, social, digital, economic and memetic. Designing systems that connect and align individual efforts with shared goals enables collective success on a larger s...

November 8, 2024

Why Blockchains

I left crypto in 2021 during the bull market and peak NFT mania. Something just felt off. I met so many "entrepreneurs" who were raising money and offering me jobs that felt disingenuous and who were doing it all for the wrong reasons. Celebrities and influencers followed suit. Carnival barkers were everywhere. I rejoined as soon as the bear market arrived. All of those other people had left. There isn't a day since my re-arrival where I haven't put my all into making blockchains happen. I be...

October 31, 2024

Falling back in love with Nouns via Higher

I felt a little burned out of Nouns. I had been spending a lot of time on it, not just by traveling and representing Nouns at events this summer but through making myself available to help introduce people to Nouns and how it operates, giving feedback and making edits on props before they are candidates or once they were candidates. Then of course, there is all of the work everyone in Governance does once a proposal goes onchain. I have been doing this for almost 2 years but the amount of sup...

October 25, 2024

Some thoughts about art onchain

A few weeks ago I recorded an episode of The Optimism Show where I touched on grants, art and Scout Game. They chopped it up into 3 different episodes and today they released the section on art. I often don't even listen to my own appearances but I listened to this one and was happy with how well it represented my various thoughts on art. I recommend you give it a watch/listen. Inspired by that here are some random thoughts around art onchain that have been swirling around my head. Traditiona...

October 19, 2024

Leveraging Farcaster for Effective Beta Launches

Farcaster’s community of intellectually curious, tech-savvy early adopters provides a valuable environment for beta testing consumer apps, particularly those intersecting with crypto. Over my 15+ years of launching consumer applications, I have found Farcaster to be the most concentrated network of users willing to engage deeply with new products, spend money, report bugs, and provide detailed feedback. Unlike broader markets, where users encountering issues may simply abandon an app without ...

October 12, 2024

Scout Game by CharmVerse

I joined CharmVerse a couple of years ago to help realize a vision for the future of work, powered by crypto infrastructure, developed by co-founders Alex Poon and Matt Casey. We built CharmVerse as an open-source DAO tool, which many described as "Notion for DAOs." Our goal was to create a new coordination model that would enable the creation of a million DAOs. Early on, we gained solid traction, attracting both large and small DAOs, many of which remain active users today. However, the DAO ...

September 30, 2024

Why Retroactive Public Goods Funding

Retroactive Public Goods Funding (Retro Funding) provides an effective framework for addressing a challenge faced by communities, organizations, and networks that hope to build and maintain public goods: how do we sustainably reward those who create value for the public interest, especially when traditional funding models fall short?The Problem with Traditional Funding Models for Public GoodsPublic goods—resources that are non-excludable and non-rivalrous, such as open-source software, shared...

September 19, 2024

Free to Use L2s

This is an idea I'm workshopping in public... A free-to-use Layer 2 (L2) where gas fees are fully subsidized could be what is needed to onboard a billion users onchain by eliminating transaction costs, with alternative business models sustaining the network. Leveraging tools like Coinbase Smart Wallet and Privy, users can create and sign into their wallets with email addresses or passkeys and then not require them to fund their account to have their first experiences. Blockchain Network Refer...

September 18, 2024

Is this a mini-app? What is a mini-app?

This morning, I saw a Paragraph post from Eric Rhodes in my Warpcast feed. Instead of being taken to Safari, I was able to read it in-app—Paragraph’s mini-app in action. It struck me how seamless this experience was, showcasing the potential for mini-apps on Warpcast. In contrast to the usual context-switching between apps, the mini-app allowed me to stay within the platform while interacting with content, all without leaving the feed.What Are Mini-Apps?Mini-apps are lightweight applications ...