There are two cultures in the DeFi space. Not a perfectly clean divide, but as much of two cultures as you can have. Let's call one side Left and one side Right. On the Left side, we have heavyweight American protocols like Compound and Uniswap. The leaders of these protocols have Twitter profile photos of real people with real names. They're polite and articulate. They're from Wharton and Columbia and they live in NYC or SF. They're backed by a16z and USV. They're au...

There are two cultures in the DeFi space. Not a perfectly clean divide, but as much of two cultures as you can have. Let's call one side Left and one side Right. On the Left side, we have heavyweight American protocols like Compound and Uniswap. The leaders of these protocols have Twitter profile photos of real people with real names. They're polite and articulate. They're from Wharton and Columbia and they live in NYC or SF. They're backed by a16z and USV. They're au...

Today we deployed a program on Ethereum that crowdfunded $10,000 for an essay in 30 minutes. Dozens of contributors each sent small amounts into the contract as soon as it became live. In exchange, the program minted 10 $ESSAY tokens for ever 0.01 ETH contributed. 10 ETH was our limit, and so we closed funding at that point. The technical aspects all worked flawlessly, and it was a great display of collaboration from our small team. But let's talk about the meaning of this... Because we&...

Today we deployed a program on Ethereum that crowdfunded $10,000 for an essay in 30 minutes. Dozens of contributors each sent small amounts into the contract as soon as it became live. In exchange, the program minted 10 $ESSAY tokens for ever 0.01 ETH contributed. 10 ETH was our limit, and so we closed funding at that point. The technical aspects all worked flawlessly, and it was a great display of collaboration from our small team. But let's talk about the meaning of this... Because we&...

Zora is about to launch their new protocol, which aims to improve on the ERC721 token standard. One of its new features is the coupling of a market contract to an NFT. This means that every zNFT (Zora NFT) has a canonical marketplace for trading. This solves the problem of fragmented liquidity for the trading of NFTs. By "fragmented liquidity", I'm referring to the problem where there isn't a single, logical place to go to buy an NFT (e.g. digital art), and so trading happens in a n...

Zora is about to launch their new protocol, which aims to improve on the ERC721 token standard. One of its new features is the coupling of a market contract to an NFT. This means that every zNFT (Zora NFT) has a canonical marketplace for trading. This solves the problem of fragmented liquidity for the trading of NFTs. By "fragmented liquidity", I'm referring to the problem where there isn't a single, logical place to go to buy an NFT (e.g. digital art), and so trading happens in a n...

My head's clearly been stuck in the Publication contract for the last few days, since I've been implementing that. There's a lot that I like about the Publication contract paradigm, but it's not derisked yet as a feature. Currently, the cost to register on Mirror with the Publication contract would be around $100 on Mainnet, which is a lot of money relative to some other options.Registration cost calculation using Numi (excuse the typo)I can decrease the cost of this deplo...

My head's clearly been stuck in the Publication contract for the last few days, since I've been implementing that. There's a lot that I like about the Publication contract paradigm, but it's not derisked yet as a feature. Currently, the cost to register on Mirror with the Publication contract would be around $100 on Mainnet, which is a lot of money relative to some other options.Registration cost calculation using Numi (excuse the typo)I can decrease the cost of this deplo...

There are some specific cases where contracts should be upgradable. However, I think that for the most part, it's much better, and aligned with the ideals of the space, for contracts not to be upgradable. The founding myth of Ethereum is that Vitalik was frustrated that a video game he way playing could change its rules. He had been leveling up some character, when the game manufacturer decided to change the way it allocates skills. And so he built Ethereum, where you can't change t...

There are some specific cases where contracts should be upgradable. However, I think that for the most part, it's much better, and aligned with the ideals of the space, for contracts not to be upgradable. The founding myth of Ethereum is that Vitalik was frustrated that a video game he way playing could change its rules. He had been leveling up some character, when the game manufacturer decided to change the way it allocates skills. And so he built Ethereum, where you can't change t...

*Single Mona Lisa by George Pusenkoff*When an image is presented as art, the way we see it is affected by our learned assumptions about beauty, form, status, and taste. In the United States, many of these learnings stem from a cultural "authority on art" that began in the 1850s in Boston (by those known as the "Boston Brahmins"). These institutions have aimed to legitimize art versus entertainment and "sacralize" special works as "high art". Many of these learnings, however, are incongruous w...

*Single Mona Lisa by George Pusenkoff*When an image is presented as art, the way we see it is affected by our learned assumptions about beauty, form, status, and taste. In the United States, many of these learnings stem from a cultural "authority on art" that began in the 1850s in Boston (by those known as the "Boston Brahmins"). These institutions have aimed to legitimize art versus entertainment and "sacralize" special works as "high art". Many of these learnings, however, are incongruous w...

A decade before Facebook turned into a dominating global political institution and banned the President of the United States, The Social Network was filmed to depict its foundation story. Like all creation myths, it's not meant to be literal. These myths serve as dramatic representations to guide our intuitions about what an entity stands for. This is true for national epics like The Aeneid about the founding of Rome, which provided solid ground for a nation's moral values over cent...

A decade before Facebook turned into a dominating global political institution and banned the President of the United States, The Social Network was filmed to depict its foundation story. Like all creation myths, it's not meant to be literal. These myths serve as dramatic representations to guide our intuitions about what an entity stands for. This is true for national epics like The Aeneid about the founding of Rome, which provided solid ground for a nation's moral values over cent...

I'm busy reading a series of essays from a website called LessWrong.com, which they have collected into a book. They're all well-written blog posts, created over years by a community with strong ties and deep commitment to rationality and curiosity and a love of wisdom. Thinking back about our ideas about crowd-funding essays, it seems quite natural that we would be able to crowdfunding a series of essays in just the same way. A community could propose creating a book together, and ...

I'm busy reading a series of essays from a website called LessWrong.com, which they have collected into a book. They're all well-written blog posts, created over years by a community with strong ties and deep commitment to rationality and curiosity and a love of wisdom. Thinking back about our ideas about crowd-funding essays, it seems quite natural that we would be able to crowdfunding a series of essays in just the same way. A community could propose creating a book together, and ...

You must concentrate on the fundamentals, at least what you think at the time are fundamentals... Richard W. Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and EngineeringIn any area of expertise, it's really the primitives that unlock creativity and higher performance. This is true whether it's mastering the deadlift for functional movement disciplines, Salt, Fat, Acid and Heat for cooking, or something like zero-knowledge-proof verification in crypto.As you discover the secrets of Salt, Fat, A...

You must concentrate on the fundamentals, at least what you think at the time are fundamentals... Richard W. Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and EngineeringIn any area of expertise, it's really the primitives that unlock creativity and higher performance. This is true whether it's mastering the deadlift for functional movement disciplines, Salt, Fat, Acid and Heat for cooking, or something like zero-knowledge-proof verification in crypto.As you discover the secrets of Salt, Fat, A...

And the world again suddenly worth risking worth seeing, worth innocence worth everything.My writing dried up recently - except, see: Engineering Splits - and I'm here to explain why. I had health complications. A hernia that I probably attained from CrossFit workouts. I got fevers. I lost 15lbs. I took antibiotics twice, and had invasive procedures to diagnose the issue. It took a few months to figure it all out. My much idealized girlfriend broke up with me during one of those fevers -...

And the world again suddenly worth risking worth seeing, worth innocence worth everything.My writing dried up recently - except, see: Engineering Splits - and I'm here to explain why. I had health complications. A hernia that I probably attained from CrossFit workouts. I got fevers. I lost 15lbs. I took antibiotics twice, and had invasive procedures to diagnose the issue. It took a few months to figure it all out. My much idealized girlfriend broke up with me during one of those fevers -...

Blockchain development entails a unique challenge: How do you deploy immutable contracts to create a product, when you can't see that far into the future? Operate too leanly in product and engineering, and you can find yourself in chaos. In this environment, it's better to develop with conviction and a concrete understanding of what the product does. This is how Compound and Uniswap were successful; they did roll out out multiple versions, but each was a well-considered, best-in-cla...

Blockchain development entails a unique challenge: How do you deploy immutable contracts to create a product, when you can't see that far into the future? Operate too leanly in product and engineering, and you can find yourself in chaos. In this environment, it's better to develop with conviction and a concrete understanding of what the product does. This is how Compound and Uniswap were successful; they did roll out out multiple versions, but each was a well-considered, best-in-cla...

Well...almost. Today I implemented the code and wrote tests for the basic functionality that we've agreed on for the v1 of Mirror's on-chain components. Tomorrow I'll deploy that to testnet and wire up the frontend. So you've got your Mirror Invite Token, this allows you to create a Mirror Publication, which has a Mirror ENS subdomain. The Mirror Publication allows you to have a token (it's has mint()), which is cool, because every Mirror Publication is a legit publis...

Well...almost. Today I implemented the code and wrote tests for the basic functionality that we've agreed on for the v1 of Mirror's on-chain components. Tomorrow I'll deploy that to testnet and wire up the frontend. So you've got your Mirror Invite Token, this allows you to create a Mirror Publication, which has a Mirror ENS subdomain. The Mirror Publication allows you to have a token (it's has mint()), which is cool, because every Mirror Publication is a legit publis...