Gramajo
If you're enjoying my writing, please share my newsletter with your friends in crypto and join the /Area51 channel on Farcaster and my Telegram group for a more behind the scenes look.
GM. Been a bit. For the past 1.5 months I/my whole family have been in and out of sickness. It is wild just how much lack of sleep and overall health can knock you out. Any ways for the past 1.5 months i've experimenting more and more onchain but also expanding my attention to new/old realms. The goal was free up some time from the weekly newsletter to explore and learn. I feel like I have achieved this and I have some sort of new plan for this year. This year I will focus on more evergreen content and do this bi-weekly, if you want to stay up to data with big news on a daily/weekly basis, just follow me on Warpcast/Twitter or join my TG that is where I do most of my yapping. As always, leverage the table of contents to move around to the parts you care about as I suspect these posts will get longer and longer as I will pack them with more information.
I've been really curious about Liquidity Pools and I have dabbled with DeFi before but I never really went into it heavily. Partly because I didn't give it a fairshake and other times it just seemed a bit over my head. Happy to report after some trials by fire and reading for a bit, I feel way more confident in LPs and what I am doing. This doesn't mean I am a pro by any means, but I do feel like this will be a part of my strategy moving forward. Really the only ways I knew how to deploy my capital was buying art/NFTs, memetokens, pokemon/collectibles and more. Memecoins are addicting and require a decent amount of time and I wanted something that could be a bit more passive and also a bit more liquid than NFTs so I ended up in the DeFi world and LPing. I've been sharing my finding in my posts and on my telegram channel for those that want to learn and share resources around DeFi and LP.
In the past month, I've been going a little harder on Youtube and I think I will continue focusing on this. In this short burst of effort, my subscriber count crossed over 100 users!!!!!!!! I think a ton of the content I make especially around my podcast covers many founders and artists in the space as well as some veteran collectors and it resonates and does well. I also experimented with some LP talk and that also did well so with that I will continue posting on their, make sure to subscribe.
I recently locked down a bit of funding from Nouns, via flows.wtf which I have spoken about on here before. It is a really cool app that you should check out and if you clean parks, do content, there are opportunities to get funding if approved. I am thankful for those who have supported me along the way and will continue as I dive deeper into the Nouns ecosystem. As always you can opt out of those emails, but I hope you stick around to read them as I will make them pretty agnostic with a nouns focus so still worth a read imo. For the first month of funding, I will be sending these funds to my hypersubs for supporting me along the way.
Lastly, I finally launched my own token $Area which was a way for me to experiment more and more onchain. One of these experiments is using my token to be able to post coinfessions anonymously. I was always bothered by the fact that it used web2 tech to submit confessions and figured a fully anonymous zkproofs powered version is more aligned with web3 than using Google. If you would like to try this feature I am including the required amount for free for two readers (claim1, claim2). I also launched LP incentives through rebase which you can find here. I have other plans like bridging to Solana and continuing to experiment onchain.
I saw this post by Amadon which I have met in person and respect the hell out of them. The whole thread is worth a read imo. As someone who previously has negotiated over 1000+ SaaS agreements per year, I have a couple opinions on this. I know that some folks find issue with the exclusive, world wide, transferable... language but this is pretty common for industry. Now I am not saying that what is common is right or I agree with but nothing sticks out to me yet. The right to mint NFTs doesn't bother me because you need to provide them approval to mint NFTs on your behalf for us as consumers to buy. The derivative sentence is most likely tied to them being able to modify your work to fit in marketing or promotion material, technically even changing the aspect ratio is considered something derivative or even packaging it along other artist work can be considered this as well. All in all the whole thing is par for the course in terms of web2 companies.
And I know Batsoupyum made this joke and I agree with this take. We have systems in place for web3 that make it so you can take back as much control as you want. The issue with this system (think manifold contract with a "gallery" page show casing your manifold work) is that you need to have enough of an audience to get people to go to your destination to buy your art. If you are XCOPY or a more recognized artist in the space, you could put your 1/1 on Fartcoin and mfers will show up and buy it, we have seen this tried and tested at this stage during this bear market. I don't think Rodeo is out to solve this problem specifically, I think they are trying to create a web2/Instagram like app with some bits and pieces of web3. No one knows if this model will even work but they are trying something new. With that said, if you are a smaller artist then a platform like Rodeo might be perfect for you, Rodeo brings the audience, you just show up, mint and see what happens. That is the fee you are paying to Rodeo when you mint there. Just be aware that with that price also comes some T&Cs. If Rodeo, hosted a gallery showing of photography and they included my image, as a smaller artist I'd probably be stoked to be honest, but if I was a big time photographer, I'd probably be pissed (or who knows). Either feeling is okay. As a legal nut, it is nice to see more mfers read more T&Cs haha. What are your thoughts on this? Overblown reactions? Justified? Let me know.
Officially 13 years in the space now and honestly could not be more excited about the future of crypto. The whole reason I went down this space is two fold, one acquire drugs but the second one which is even more important is, I had a system that failed me intentionally which is okay, it was designed to be hard for people like me but man oh man, if we had tools like we have now available back then, life could have been so different. It is why I stay and live in the trenches of this place.
Before we dive in with the fires happening here in California (this is not a I told you so comment) I want to make sure all of you are aware of Shamir backups for your seed. Saving your seed on a piece is way better than saving it on a google doc online or in your online password manager but if you have any substantial funds, I would really make it a goal to move to a shamic back up, more information below. And please reach out if you have questions, here to help.
Market wise, my brain is in a couple of places right now. From app.meteora.ag airdrop for using their DLMM tool which is a new Liquidity Pool with some extra features which I have been enjoying using with Pengu. Jupiter Exchange airdrop happening later this month which I probably won't get much but that is okay as I have not gone as heavy on Solana which I am changing this year expect more Solana devs and content this year. Keeping an eye on Abstract chain and their launch and some pfps on there. Got some funds in the Ethene Berachain Vault which is a bit more long term. Right now the market is a bit down from the highs and it makes sense, but I see it as a way to consolidate a bit more before the pop (NFA).
Ripcache keeps teasing us on Instagram with some beautiful physical works. Which I have made it my goal this year to get more ripcache because you can never have enough ripcache pieces and having it irl is a goal.
Zkproofs tech is super HOT right now and I could not be more happy about this. Slokh recently announced Anon Communities which is what is powering my HODL Confidential account. Cracked dev apex777 launched veil.cash which is tornado cash for Base, you can see the announcement here. And I really think we are scratching the surface with zkproofs to be honest. I am excited to see how this tech is pushed to its limits and how we can use it to bring more web2 data onchain and how privacy is becoming more common place (take a look at Kern below).
NFTs heating up? Cake Again by Toadswiback sells for 18.5ETH.
Kern Protocol airdrop, check your Solana wallets you may have funds.
Bankr bot goes live on Twitter and Solana support coming soon!
Clankermon goes live and looks to be a hit
Clankpad appears to be close to launch
Rebase opens up permissionless crowdfunding pool tool
Supercast is removing subscription model, incoming $super token?
I guess welcome to 2025, h/t
Have a great rest of your week!
CIAHOAD-Rick James
I also encourage you to check out my podcast and YouTube for more content.
Want to give me feedback on this newsletter/content? Please select one of the below:
💸💸💸💸💸 - Super helpful thanks!
💸💸💸 - It was OK!
Over 200 subscribers
833
Issue 90 | Drama At The Rodeo - I see this on occasion viral takes on the T&Cs of a company. As an FYI when you review agreements in their entirety not just 1 paragraph things can be take out of context so easily. But in this case I’d say things looks right, a web 2.5 company doing web 2.5 T&Cs. - Year 3 of making content has begun and this year we got our first bit of funding so we’re off to a great start. - @hodlconfidential has been deployed for the $area community - zkproofs remain really hot thanks to @anoncast and @veilanon https://paragraph.xyz/@0xgramajo/90