The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. Memecoins have been castigated in the broader crypto ecosystem, but I find that my fascination with them is only increasing as tools such as NounSpace are developed to provide a baseline of robust functionality to even the most flippant of randomly designed memetic assets. And this general trend of baseline capabilities for Web3 assets only seems to be growing!

At PageDAO, the trends are showing up as well. In my own development sprints, I’ve learned to code the simplest possible version of a mini application and then tie these together using Netlify’s serverless functions so that I can create and ensure the quality of the codebase in a remarkably limited timeframe using Claude to both generate code and help me to evaluate it. The bottlenecks are in complexity for my own mind as well as Claude’s context window and this style of identifying a need, then spinning off the simplest, most abstract piece of software that can generally satisfy that need at a useful level of scale.

https://github.com/PageDAO/registry-db

Most recently, this hypermodular development approach has involved the creation of the lightweight new PageDAO GitHub repository Registry-DB. In Registry-DB, we see a very simple public-facing index that anyone with a given API key can currently interact with. This is a lightweight modular file that exists because I needed it to build the PageDAO Hub’s Web3 Dashboard application that I’ve been working on for the past few months. The purpose of this Registry-DB is to enable the community to come together to build a database of Web3-based content that matters to us. As we go, I’ll add contract styles, support new blockchain networks to source content from, and work with a team of freelance decentralization enthusiasts to build out a quality list of authored content from around the world. There is a bigger PageDAO project here, too. While Registry-DB represents a clonable and followable project starting point for aspiring curation communities to source and share excellent, relevant content from around the internet with one another, there’s also a backbone that underlies the project called (d)ISBN. Short for decentralized ISBN, (d)ISBN consists of an ENS name (disbn.eth) that has already been in my wallet for some time. The purpose of this ENS name is to ensure that the (d)ISBN project has a cost-effective route to the best data layer in the world, Ethereum Mainnet. I want to share a few docs about the concepts we’re discussing. The ENS team has done a wonderful job of building technology in the EVM domain, and perhaps the coolest part is that you can even see the grant onchain. PageDAO also uses Charmverse for governance! Scope it out at https://app.charmverse.io/page-dao!

Here’s the charmverse grant page that led to the feature I mentioned earlier.

https://app.charmverse.io/op-grants/unruggable-scale-ens-to-op-5406472169146335

Here’s some high level documentation about the features that have been built and why.

https://docs.ens.domains/learn/ccip-read/

In a nutshell, there is an opportunity here to build an extraordinary value for authors. Using our ENS domain, we’ll be able to build out a full service for application developers who are interested in sharing Web3-based content. This will make it easier to track provenance, custody, and finances. For authors who are interested in putting all of the information about their book in one place that they control, this will be a game-changer because the properties of the Ethereum blockchain provide them with an entirely new value that they previously had no access to.

In addition to the certainty that data stored on Ethereum will stay stored on Ethereum, the ENS/OP Mainnet technology will make it possible for unique, upgradable identifiers and creation logs to be catalogued in a public, accessible, available way for an extraordinarily low cost even relative to ISBN number prices on the current market.

The present registry buildout is an early alpha (d)ISBN implementation that will take some time to cycle through but that will make it possible for the team and community to think deeply together about the best value for the space moving forward and to me, that is an extremely exciting development.

Hop over to https://reggie-db.netlify.app/ and have a look at the Registry-DB project’s first implementation in the wild. Get at me on social media if you’d like to see a contract added, or if you’re interested in building something with this unbelievably light and useful software layer.

PageDAO has been planning and doing R&D work for years, much to the frustration of some of our prospective backers and other financially-oriented individuals in the ecosystem who wanted us to move faster and take more risks. In my view, the present development cycle will vindicate the team’s approach and show that the slow-build Web3 DAO, when it combines a durable meme with a dedicated team willing to make the sacrifice to achieve top level results, is ultimately an unstoppable force of nature.

To move quickly in this space a few years ago, a pair of moonlighting developers would have needed to build an astronomical amount of technology - and this was before the rise of Claude, so we’d of been doing it by hand. It would have been difficult, to say the least. In all honesty, it’s fair to say that those sorts of lifts just are not possible to accomplish without the focus of time and attention that VC funding can provide.

PageDAO was founded to explore the idea that motivated minds could unite to create a more fair market for literature, a publishing industry that saw authors as a market to serve as well as readers. As well, perhaps, as AI. All of this, we argued, needed to begin with a community of people who were interested in building this system because the system needed to exist–we were interested in recruiting purists. And we did that successfully, and we spent years building things that didn’t have a big market impact so that we could explore the technology space and deeply understand what needed to be done here.

The remarkable thing about all of this is that the rest of the Web3 builder space has remained quite active even through the bearish past few years, building generally useful technologies where possible and pushing forward to the present time, a time when the line between reality and imagination is being increasingly blurred by AI tools that accelerate ideation and exploration while expanding the web of information that devs have access to.

To me, beyond the recognition of the change I’ve personally experienced as I’ve gone from an insecure rookie who never found his first real coding job to an experienced programmer writing software to be used in scientific experiments in a grantfunded lab setting, the most profound thing about the present moment is the realization that I am very very far from being alone in this. I argue that AI is not conscious and that AGI/ASI are not coming as an increasingly skilled engineer who has been thoroughly empowered by the rise of modern chatbot technologies. One of the advantages I’ve brought to the current AI revolution for myself is that I have years and years of experience on the theoretical side of these technologies, having studied cognition for a decade and spent time in psycholinguistics, metaphysics, formal logic, and other information theory-heavy fields that provide one with the sort of perspective that makes it easy to do high level thought work and difficult to do the sorts of dirty hands grinding that every previous generation of software engineers was forced to do because there was not yet a shortcut.

In this context, it’s perhaps less remarkable than ever to observe that the world is changing before our very eyes. The fundamental nature of software is changing and it is becoming possible to do increasingly advanced things without having to pay server or hosting costs. PageDAO used to be very far away from doing anything that could impact the actual experience a user had of the core information tasks that they were involved with. We invested, time after time, as if we were compulsive gamblers on tilt and our R&D efforts were lotto tickets, everything into understanding the technological landscape of Web3. Today, I’m happy to report that this year has been different. Core Team has only had a few meetings, the discord is dead, nothing is happening on any of our socials, and if you look at our GitHub you’ll see that there has been continuous software development ongoing for months now.

What happened?

Well, we finally agreed upon what to build. We’ve been heads down, building it.

The PageDAO Hub is a two-face application with a Web3 Dashboard that gives users the ability to control and interact with onchain assets and data feeds, and the PageVERSE, which is a user-facing application designed to be no different from typical Web2 user experience except that the users will own the books for real and the authors will earn more of the revenue their ideas and efforts generate.

We’re not there yet, of course, but this week we took many steps closer. I never thought I’d be saying this, but if you want to follow along for this part the best way to do it right now is probably our GitHub: https://github.com/PageDAO. We’re always happy to meet devs and founders in the Web3 space, and we’re interested in partnerships, friendships, mentorships - we want to be social and active in the space because we feel increasingly confident in our ability to unlock massive value for it. In the next week or two we may be able to get a bit more of a social media conversation going around some of this stuff, so feel free to follow /page on Farcaster to get all the latest updates!

https://warpcast.com/~/channel/page

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. Memecoins have been castigated in the broader crypto ecosystem, but I find that my fascination with them is only increasing as tools such as NounSpace are developed to provide a baseline of robust functionality to even the most flippant of randomly designed memetic assets. And this general trend of baseline capabilities for Web3 assets only seems to be growing!

At PageDAO, the trends are showing up as well. In my own development sprints, I’ve learned to code the simplest possible version of a mini application and then tie these together using Netlify’s serverless functions so that I can create and ensure the quality of the codebase in a remarkably limited timeframe using Claude to both generate code and help me to evaluate it. The bottlenecks are in complexity for my own mind as well as Claude’s context window and this style of identifying a need, then spinning off the simplest, most abstract piece of software that can generally satisfy that need at a useful level of scale.

https://github.com/PageDAO/registry-db

Most recently, this hypermodular development approach has involved the creation of the lightweight new PageDAO GitHub repository Registry-DB. In Registry-DB, we see a very simple public-facing index that anyone with a given API key can currently interact with. This is a lightweight modular file that exists because I needed it to build the PageDAO Hub’s Web3 Dashboard application that I’ve been working on for the past few months. The purpose of this Registry-DB is to enable the community to come together to build a database of Web3-based content that matters to us. As we go, I’ll add contract styles, support new blockchain networks to source content from, and work with a team of freelance decentralization enthusiasts to build out a quality list of authored content from around the world. There is a bigger PageDAO project here, too. While Registry-DB represents a clonable and followable project starting point for aspiring curation communities to source and share excellent, relevant content from around the internet with one another, there’s also a backbone that underlies the project called (d)ISBN. Short for decentralized ISBN, (d)ISBN consists of an ENS name (disbn.eth) that has already been in my wallet for some time. The purpose of this ENS name is to ensure that the (d)ISBN project has a cost-effective route to the best data layer in the world, Ethereum Mainnet. I want to share a few docs about the concepts we’re discussing. The ENS team has done a wonderful job of building technology in the EVM domain, and perhaps the coolest part is that you can even see the grant onchain. PageDAO also uses Charmverse for governance! Scope it out at https://app.charmverse.io/page-dao!

Here’s the charmverse grant page that led to the feature I mentioned earlier.

https://app.charmverse.io/op-grants/unruggable-scale-ens-to-op-5406472169146335

Here’s some high level documentation about the features that have been built and why.

https://docs.ens.domains/learn/ccip-read/

In a nutshell, there is an opportunity here to build an extraordinary value for authors. Using our ENS domain, we’ll be able to build out a full service for application developers who are interested in sharing Web3-based content. This will make it easier to track provenance, custody, and finances. For authors who are interested in putting all of the information about their book in one place that they control, this will be a game-changer because the properties of the Ethereum blockchain provide them with an entirely new value that they previously had no access to.

In addition to the certainty that data stored on Ethereum will stay stored on Ethereum, the ENS/OP Mainnet technology will make it possible for unique, upgradable identifiers and creation logs to be catalogued in a public, accessible, available way for an extraordinarily low cost even relative to ISBN number prices on the current market.

The present registry buildout is an early alpha (d)ISBN implementation that will take some time to cycle through but that will make it possible for the team and community to think deeply together about the best value for the space moving forward and to me, that is an extremely exciting development.

Hop over to https://reggie-db.netlify.app/ and have a look at the Registry-DB project’s first implementation in the wild. Get at me on social media if you’d like to see a contract added, or if you’re interested in building something with this unbelievably light and useful software layer.

PageDAO has been planning and doing R&D work for years, much to the frustration of some of our prospective backers and other financially-oriented individuals in the ecosystem who wanted us to move faster and take more risks. In my view, the present development cycle will vindicate the team’s approach and show that the slow-build Web3 DAO, when it combines a durable meme with a dedicated team willing to make the sacrifice to achieve top level results, is ultimately an unstoppable force of nature.

To move quickly in this space a few years ago, a pair of moonlighting developers would have needed to build an astronomical amount of technology - and this was before the rise of Claude, so we’d of been doing it by hand. It would have been difficult, to say the least. In all honesty, it’s fair to say that those sorts of lifts just are not possible to accomplish without the focus of time and attention that VC funding can provide.

PageDAO was founded to explore the idea that motivated minds could unite to create a more fair market for literature, a publishing industry that saw authors as a market to serve as well as readers. As well, perhaps, as AI. All of this, we argued, needed to begin with a community of people who were interested in building this system because the system needed to exist–we were interested in recruiting purists. And we did that successfully, and we spent years building things that didn’t have a big market impact so that we could explore the technology space and deeply understand what needed to be done here.

The remarkable thing about all of this is that the rest of the Web3 builder space has remained quite active even through the bearish past few years, building generally useful technologies where possible and pushing forward to the present time, a time when the line between reality and imagination is being increasingly blurred by AI tools that accelerate ideation and exploration while expanding the web of information that devs have access to.

To me, beyond the recognition of the change I’ve personally experienced as I’ve gone from an insecure rookie who never found his first real coding job to an experienced programmer writing software to be used in scientific experiments in a grantfunded lab setting, the most profound thing about the present moment is the realization that I am very very far from being alone in this. I argue that AI is not conscious and that AGI/ASI are not coming as an increasingly skilled engineer who has been thoroughly empowered by the rise of modern chatbot technologies. One of the advantages I’ve brought to the current AI revolution for myself is that I have years and years of experience on the theoretical side of these technologies, having studied cognition for a decade and spent time in psycholinguistics, metaphysics, formal logic, and other information theory-heavy fields that provide one with the sort of perspective that makes it easy to do high level thought work and difficult to do the sorts of dirty hands grinding that every previous generation of software engineers was forced to do because there was not yet a shortcut.

In this context, it’s perhaps less remarkable than ever to observe that the world is changing before our very eyes. The fundamental nature of software is changing and it is becoming possible to do increasingly advanced things without having to pay server or hosting costs. PageDAO used to be very far away from doing anything that could impact the actual experience a user had of the core information tasks that they were involved with. We invested, time after time, as if we were compulsive gamblers on tilt and our R&D efforts were lotto tickets, everything into understanding the technological landscape of Web3. Today, I’m happy to report that this year has been different. Core Team has only had a few meetings, the discord is dead, nothing is happening on any of our socials, and if you look at our GitHub you’ll see that there has been continuous software development ongoing for months now.

What happened?

Well, we finally agreed upon what to build. We’ve been heads down, building it.

The PageDAO Hub is a two-face application with a Web3 Dashboard that gives users the ability to control and interact with onchain assets and data feeds, and the PageVERSE, which is a user-facing application designed to be no different from typical Web2 user experience except that the users will own the books for real and the authors will earn more of the revenue their ideas and efforts generate.

We’re not there yet, of course, but this week we took many steps closer. I never thought I’d be saying this, but if you want to follow along for this part the best way to do it right now is probably our GitHub: https://github.com/PageDAO. We’re always happy to meet devs and founders in the Web3 space, and we’re interested in partnerships, friendships, mentorships - we want to be social and active in the space because we feel increasingly confident in our ability to unlock massive value for it. In the next week or two we may be able to get a bit more of a social media conversation going around some of this stuff, so feel free to follow /page on Farcaster to get all the latest updates!

https://warpcast.com/~/channel/page