If you spend your time on Twitter, the Bitcoin vs Ethereum maxi debate can become overwhelming. “Bitcoin is the only money and Etherium is just a slow, premined, ponzi database built to distract us from solving everything.” “Ethereum is built on ultrasound network effect and doesn’t fall prey to Bitcoin’s unsustainable economics.” While these are an obvious compression of more nuanced points, it sometimes helps me to step back and form the soundest arguments for each extreme, so as to provide...

If you spend your time on Twitter, the Bitcoin vs Ethereum maxi debate can become overwhelming. “Bitcoin is the only money and Etherium is just a slow, premined, ponzi database built to distract us from solving everything.” “Ethereum is built on ultrasound network effect and doesn’t fall prey to Bitcoin’s unsustainable economics.” While these are an obvious compression of more nuanced points, it sometimes helps me to step back and form the soundest arguments for each extreme, so as to provide...

It doesn’t take a wizard to realize Gitcoin is in a state of operational flux. Grants is a towering beast of collaboration that seems to be cooling off, like much of DeFi in these grizzly and low-key building months. ‍As highlighted recently by M0nkeyFl0wer, Cause Rounds Lead, one of the core issues with Gitcoin right now is ground-up collaboration. This isn’t something that you can wave a wand at. It’s actually a root problem in DeFi - and if the Kings of Coordination can’t solve it, it migh...

It doesn’t take a wizard to realize Gitcoin is in a state of operational flux. Grants is a towering beast of collaboration that seems to be cooling off, like much of DeFi in these grizzly and low-key building months. ‍As highlighted recently by M0nkeyFl0wer, Cause Rounds Lead, one of the core issues with Gitcoin right now is ground-up collaboration. This isn’t something that you can wave a wand at. It’s actually a root problem in DeFi - and if the Kings of Coordination can’t solve it, it migh...

As a space, and as an incubator, discussions around tokenization, ownership, and standardization always bubble away. One thing that we don’t touch on enough is transferring unique IRL values into Web3. Can something like Van Gogh’s Sunflowers or Picasso’s Guernica ever truly be tokenized? Should they be? The very nature of their value comes from their tangible qualities. That is to see, touch, and experience the layers of history first-hand. While no one is expecting to see collectors trading...

As a space, and as an incubator, discussions around tokenization, ownership, and standardization always bubble away. One thing that we don’t touch on enough is transferring unique IRL values into Web3. Can something like Van Gogh’s Sunflowers or Picasso’s Guernica ever truly be tokenized? Should they be? The very nature of their value comes from their tangible qualities. That is to see, touch, and experience the layers of history first-hand. While no one is expecting to see collectors trading...

ChatGPT is a trove of potential, and the recent OpenAI paper squarely put Blockchain Dev as a career at risk from its growth. We decided to set our own task to it after seeing experiments filter through our feeds from coders across Twitter. We asked ourselves: can AI create effective NFT contract code?BriefIt was time for ChatGPT to make it onto OpenSea by building an NFT collection. While we wanted GPT to do the heavy lifting, there was always going to be an element of human interaction. We ...

ChatGPT is a trove of potential, and the recent OpenAI paper squarely put Blockchain Dev as a career at risk from its growth. We decided to set our own task to it after seeing experiments filter through our feeds from coders across Twitter. We asked ourselves: can AI create effective NFT contract code?BriefIt was time for ChatGPT to make it onto OpenSea by building an NFT collection. While we wanted GPT to do the heavy lifting, there was always going to be an element of human interaction. We ...

Blockchain product design needs to embrace its user-centric roots - where simplicity rules - and the projects below are making strides where it matters most. Crypto is arguably in a state of perpetual mutation maximalism, piling iteration upon iteration of code, ideas, and mechanics on top of each other. There will come a time when killer web3 apps gain global adoption, and they will achieve it through simplicity.The UX Uni-cornLuckily, Web3 UX has already offered a glimmer of what the future...

Blockchain product design needs to embrace its user-centric roots - where simplicity rules - and the projects below are making strides where it matters most. Crypto is arguably in a state of perpetual mutation maximalism, piling iteration upon iteration of code, ideas, and mechanics on top of each other. There will come a time when killer web3 apps gain global adoption, and they will achieve it through simplicity.The UX Uni-cornLuckily, Web3 UX has already offered a glimmer of what the future...

As the news came out that Circle had USD deposits on Silicon Valley bank, the gm Portfolio attempted to divest itself of USDC. By the time the multi-sig owners came together for a trade on the afternoon of March 10, 2023, the potential loss for conversion into USDT via the Curve Finance 3pool was about 1%. We made the rushed decision to instead switch to DAI. Our reasoning, probably flawed in retrospect, is that it was at the time roughly 40% backed by USDC but 150% over-collateralized so eve...

As the news came out that Circle had USD deposits on Silicon Valley bank, the gm Portfolio attempted to divest itself of USDC. By the time the multi-sig owners came together for a trade on the afternoon of March 10, 2023, the potential loss for conversion into USDT via the Curve Finance 3pool was about 1%. We made the rushed decision to instead switch to DAI. Our reasoning, probably flawed in retrospect, is that it was at the time roughly 40% backed by USDC but 150% over-collateralized so eve...

Every few decades, technology challenges the question, “what is art?“. Most people would agree that it’s not the medium, and yet here we are again with “tokenized JPEGs can’t be art,” the same argument that was applied to every new medium and style of art in modern history. We find ourselves in the middle of a changing of the guard, an artistic revolution driven by a distribution of the memes of production to the masses.[1] Accept that Memes are the Real Modern ArtArt was already democratized...

Every few decades, technology challenges the question, “what is art?“. Most people would agree that it’s not the medium, and yet here we are again with “tokenized JPEGs can’t be art,” the same argument that was applied to every new medium and style of art in modern history. We find ourselves in the middle of a changing of the guard, an artistic revolution driven by a distribution of the memes of production to the masses.[1] Accept that Memes are the Real Modern ArtArt was already democratized...

Young industries are often cyclical as the potential future outlook can swing wildly between “will take over the world” and “Beanie Babies”. Crypto is no different as any long term price chart of Bitcoin will tell you. This is my 4th cycle - I came of age in the 2011 cycle when after reaching dollar parity, Bitcoin quickly rose to $32, and almost as quickly fell to $2. One of the gm Portfolio’s theses is: this cycle is different. How? We believe this is the first time in crypto’s history when...

Young industries are often cyclical as the potential future outlook can swing wildly between “will take over the world” and “Beanie Babies”. Crypto is no different as any long term price chart of Bitcoin will tell you. This is my 4th cycle - I came of age in the 2011 cycle when after reaching dollar parity, Bitcoin quickly rose to $32, and almost as quickly fell to $2. One of the gm Portfolio’s theses is: this cycle is different. How? We believe this is the first time in crypto’s history when...

Rich Uncle Pennybags (aka, Mr. Monopoly) would love crypto. It blends casual gambling, canines, and even jail time. It is interesting to think about how the magnate would view Free Public Infrastructure as a business proposition. Whether he would scoff at the altruistic vision or see an opportunity. In this article we take a puff-free look at Canto, and what it can and can’t do, and share some predictions on its state when the bull market rolls in again.StructureFree Public Infrastructure is ...

Rich Uncle Pennybags (aka, Mr. Monopoly) would love crypto. It blends casual gambling, canines, and even jail time. It is interesting to think about how the magnate would view Free Public Infrastructure as a business proposition. Whether he would scoff at the altruistic vision or see an opportunity. In this article we take a puff-free look at Canto, and what it can and can’t do, and share some predictions on its state when the bull market rolls in again.StructureFree Public Infrastructure is ...

Disclaimer: this entire post is about a question to which I don’t know the answer.The Big QuestionAs an incubator in the crypto space, we have been mulling over the following question: How can we effectively measure customer satisfaction while retaining privacy and pseudonymity? As iteration maximalists focused on quickly identifying whether there may be product market fit, this is a paramount question to at least attempt to answer. And it’s a question we still don’t know the answer to. Below...

Disclaimer: this entire post is about a question to which I don’t know the answer.The Big QuestionAs an incubator in the crypto space, we have been mulling over the following question: How can we effectively measure customer satisfaction while retaining privacy and pseudonymity? As iteration maximalists focused on quickly identifying whether there may be product market fit, this is a paramount question to at least attempt to answer. And it’s a question we still don’t know the answer to. Below...

Very early in their history, it appears that the Uniswap team decided not to try to be the consumer-facing gateway to traders. Perhaps they were seeing the early versions of DEX aggregators and decided to keep their focus narrow—a very reasonable decision. From the v2 docs:The third bullet-point above acknowledges the inevitability of trades being routed through Uniswap via aggregators. The strategy for an aggregator like 1inch is: Figure out the algorithm that results in the user receiving t...

Very early in their history, it appears that the Uniswap team decided not to try to be the consumer-facing gateway to traders. Perhaps they were seeing the early versions of DEX aggregators and decided to keep their focus narrow—a very reasonable decision. From the v2 docs:The third bullet-point above acknowledges the inevitability of trades being routed through Uniswap via aggregators. The strategy for an aggregator like 1inch is: Figure out the algorithm that results in the user receiving t...

Blockchain is in its dial-up phase, where accessing the tech is a frustrating, stuttering process. Modular architecture, while pitched as scalability’s panacea, potentially compounds the issue by further siloing users within chains. Overcoming these gaps through a blanket, unified communications layer could achieve DeFi’s mission and set it on a path to being deeply cemented into everyday society.Early GainsInitial progress has been made in consolidating how degens interact cross-chain that h...

Blockchain is in its dial-up phase, where accessing the tech is a frustrating, stuttering process. Modular architecture, while pitched as scalability’s panacea, potentially compounds the issue by further siloing users within chains. Overcoming these gaps through a blanket, unified communications layer could achieve DeFi’s mission and set it on a path to being deeply cemented into everyday society.Early GainsInitial progress has been made in consolidating how degens interact cross-chain that h...