congrats, your thirst traps just became a taxable event

bonum mane,

it was easter, 4/20, and the passing of his holiness—all in one weekend. a sacred trifecta of ascension, reflection, and release. divine scheduling. you can't plan vibes like that. you can only bear witness and post through it.

i spent the weekend floating between worlds, lighting a candle for the dearly departed and a joint for the living, watching the smoke curl upward in twin acts of reverence. on my timeline: equal parts solemn papal tributes and snoop dogg memes. balance.

before the incense even cleared, CT spun up its own degens-only conclave. polymarket lit up with markets on whether the next Pope would be gay, Black, trans, or a manlet. may the most statistically viable cardinal win.

meanwhile, content coin drama and the $zora airdrop swept across ct like a righteous blaze—tribes formed, scriptures (tweets) were misinterpreted, and a new doctrine was debated with holy fervor. i found myself wondering if this is what the apostles felt like trying to explain a new paradigm to people who just wanted their old gods back. unbothered and onchain. “no no, it’s not just a memecoin, it’s a whole new economic model for online belief systems…”

history may not repeat, but it sure riffs, especially when you're high enough to hear it.

anyway, enjoy some mostly accurate reporting below.

xx, c

Seed Club x Monad are hosting a mini app demo day for FarCon in NYC on May 3rd. Supported by LayerZero. Join us. (first come first served with limited capacity so come early !!!)

Content Coins, Base Drama, $ZORA

What started as a “base for everyone” campaign on Zora quickly spiraled into a full-on memecoin psychodrama. Base posted a slogan, the market minted meaning (and a token), and $20M of speculative joy evaporated into $900K of confusion within hours—before crawling back to a $10M-ish floor.

Why? Context collapse. On one side, Base sees content coins as the future of media monetization—programmable attention, onchain culture. On the other, a memecoin crowd expecting vibes, liquidity, and clarity. instead, they got ambiguity and a surprise sequel.

Add a dash of bad token mechanics—one wallet grabbing 25% of supply early on—and the result was a public meltdown powered by ecosystem tribalism and tokenized misunderstanding.

Meanwhile: $ZORA launched their token today and quietly airdropped 1B tokens to 2.4M+ wallets based on actual engagement. posting, minting, trading, referring. a structural bet on creators and builders.

This contrast says everything. In a meta vacuum, people will fill the silence with cynicism. But experimentation is the only way forward. If we want new primitives to work, we need space to try weird shit—and some patience for when it doesn’t land perfectly the first time.

jesse.base.eth

@jessepollak

this mindset is part of the problem and i'm surprised to see you champion it.

how much is our content worth? most of it is worth close to zero, a small percentage of it is worth something, and an even smaller amount is worth a large amount.

ask yourself this: how often do you

Tome: Building Outside the Crypto Echo Chamber

Nick Confrey joined to share his journey with Tome, a social app for fantasy readers. After five years at Facebook, Nick grew disillusioned with the ad-based business model that optimizes for doom-scrolling and data consolidation rather than genuine user expression.

His first attempt was Seam, a Pinterest-like platform with mini apps that let users create customizable profiles. When one particular mini app for books showed the most traction, the team made the classic startup move: niche down to build big. This led to Tome, which offers fantasy readers customizable profiles, book discussions, and fan theories – a modern alternative to Amazon's outdated Goodreads.

Tome went viral on TikTok during the ban scare, gaining hundreds of thousands of downloads and hitting #1 in the App Store's books category. The team created a tool that let users easily migrate their following graph from "BookTok" to Tome, addressing creators' fears of being deplatformed. The app's monetization comes through a "TomeKeeper" subscription program, maintaining the original crypto ethos of user ownership without requiring crypto knowledge.

What's most compelling about Tome's approach is how they're building features that align with crypto values (creator ownership, personalization, user rewards) while making them accessible to mainstream users who might be averse to crypto terminology. The app features beautiful, customizable profiles with transparent layers and creative expression – a blend of web2 UX with web3 principles.

Building for Markets Beyond Crypto Twitter

All this brings us back to fundamental tension in the crypto ecosystem: are we building for a small, insular community that's already found its "meta," or are we pushing to create products that reach beyond the echo chamber?

Projects like Tome are quietly proving that crypto principles can work outside our bubble. Their success comes from focusing on a passionate niche (fantasy readers), addressing a real problem (outdated platforms like Goodreads), and designing an experience that feels natural while subtly implementing ownership and creator economy mechanics.

The path forward isn't abandoning crypto values – it's translating them into experiences that don't require users to understand the underlying tech. As Josh pointed out, "Twitter and FB aren't nonfinancialized – they're just financialized in ways where users don't capture any of the value." The core promise of crypto has always been about redistributing that value to participants.

For builders, this means recognizing when crypto native users are the right initial market (they often are) but not letting that constrain your ultimate vision. It means understanding the social norms of your target audience rather than forcing them to adapt to crypto's. And most importantly, it means being willing to experiment with new mechanisms and models even when they don't conform to the prevailing wisdom of ct.

The local maximum of ct attention will never be the global maximum of real-world adoption. The breakout crypto products will likely sneak up on us – built by teams like Nick's who understand crypto principles deeply but aren't slaves to crypto conventions.

Memory is live. your identity is a protocol now. rejoice

you know how your soul is scattered across a thousand apps? twitter, farcaster, github, wallets, that weird ENS you minted at 3am? memory slurps it all up with one api call. your little digital ghost—reassembled. usable. portable. finalllyyyy.

live now: identity map, twitter graph, dev keys
🔜 coming: zkTLS, batch anchoring on base, programmable fee router in usdc

devs get instant context. apps feel personal from hello. soon, every piece of that identty lives in a zk-proofed, user-owned vault that pays you when someone uses it. opt into capitsm. become the middleware. same sickos behind factory dot fm

Live & online Fridays at 10am PT / 1pm ET.

Kyle McCollom

@kyle

SEED 🌱 CLUB

@seedclubhq

/seed_club/investments/q3/kizzy.pdf

↳ Social media markets. Cultural conviction. Internet-native speculation.

The @kizzymobile team, led by @T_H_Crypto, is stacked with experienced builders pushing the boundaries at the intersection of culture x crypto.

Read more in our

Saumya R. Kedia✏️

@saumyakedia1

x.com/i/article/1914…

0xDesigner

@0xDesigner

i’ve been trying to be really honest with myself about my objection to coins.

there’s nothing wrong with using coins for speculation or even internet gambling. that’s not it.

but when “tokenize everything” optimizes for speculation, liquidity and market formation, the result is