Variant FundOur founder fellows graduate
For the last three months, everyone at Variant had the pleasure of working closely with a special group of early-stage crypto founders as part of our first ever Variant Founder Fellowship (VFF). We wrapped the program in September with two incredible Demo Days, and we’re putting the spotlight on our ‘graduates’ in this issue. Read on to learn more about the fellowship, meet the fellows and their exciting projects, hear some of the wisdom they received from our stacked speaker lineup, and see ...
Variant FundPoints have a point
gm! It’s hard to succinctly summarize 2023. A year that began with such negative media attention on crypto is ending with renewed enthusiasm for web3. The year is also ending with buzz and debate over the use of points in crypto apps, and Li has some instructive thoughts on the topic below. Crypto startups spent the year building, independent of external noise. And we spent it working to support them. After Li’s piece, you’ll find our most-read posts of the year and some of our favorite reads...
Variant FundProgressive Ownership
gm to all the crypto builders and creators. In January 2020, Jesse published the influential Progressive Decentralization Playbook for building crypto apps. In the years since, through the ICO and airdrop eras, we’ve seen a proliferation of crypto apps—but have yet to see a winning model for how those crypto apps can distribute tokens to their users in a way that achieves sustained growth and retention. Now Jesse and Li think they’ve landed on one: progressive ownership. Read on for the full ...
Variant is a thesis-driven fund investing in crypto. Sharing ideas and thought leadership here from our newsletter.
Variant FundOur founder fellows graduate
For the last three months, everyone at Variant had the pleasure of working closely with a special group of early-stage crypto founders as part of our first ever Variant Founder Fellowship (VFF). We wrapped the program in September with two incredible Demo Days, and we’re putting the spotlight on our ‘graduates’ in this issue. Read on to learn more about the fellowship, meet the fellows and their exciting projects, hear some of the wisdom they received from our stacked speaker lineup, and see ...
Variant FundPoints have a point
gm! It’s hard to succinctly summarize 2023. A year that began with such negative media attention on crypto is ending with renewed enthusiasm for web3. The year is also ending with buzz and debate over the use of points in crypto apps, and Li has some instructive thoughts on the topic below. Crypto startups spent the year building, independent of external noise. And we spent it working to support them. After Li’s piece, you’ll find our most-read posts of the year and some of our favorite reads...
Variant FundProgressive Ownership
gm to all the crypto builders and creators. In January 2020, Jesse published the influential Progressive Decentralization Playbook for building crypto apps. In the years since, through the ICO and airdrop eras, we’ve seen a proliferation of crypto apps—but have yet to see a winning model for how those crypto apps can distribute tokens to their users in a way that achieves sustained growth and retention. Now Jesse and Li think they’ve landed on one: progressive ownership. Read on for the full ...
Variant is a thesis-driven fund investing in crypto. Sharing ideas and thought leadership here from our newsletter.
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gm! This month, Variant will roll out our newsletter.
We are extremely excited to deliver our team’s latest writing and ideas directly to your inbox, and to mark the occasion, we’ve commissioned a special art piece from Giorgio Balbi that you can mint for free if you subscribe right here on Mirror. (More on the artwork in a moment.)
We know a lot of people are suffering from newsletter fatigue, and we recognize adding another to your plate is a big ask. That’s why our goal with all of our writing is to only produce content that helps push the space forward. We also aim to create a conversation, so we’ll want to hear your response to the ideas we posit.
About the subscriber NFT
Before Giorgio Balbi became a generative artist, he was an industrial engineer who explored not just how things work, but also their geometric beauty. His idol is the fellow Argentine artist Eduardo MacEntyre, who also reconciled the mechanical with the natural. But Giorgio’s process is all his own, combining technical drawing with coding—and plenty of colors, like in his collection “Speranza,” which launched on Canto earlier this year.
In 2021, he began turning his art into NFTs. He starts with a hand-drawn sketch, which he uses as the basis for an algorithm. Once he’s programmed the design using software, he creates multiple pieces and modifies those he likes until he’s happy with every pixel.
You can see that mathematical influence in his new piece made exclusively for Variant, “Técnicismo,” with its ever-expanding circles and spirals against our Variant-blue backdrop. The immediate effect is to “[expose] mechanical concepts of distribution of forces such as gears and pulleys,” according to Giorgio. But those who look closer will find a “hidden universe in the details.”
Once you’ve subscribed to our Mirror page, you’ll be able to mint the NFT below:
We felt the piece was just right for our newsletter, which will seek to peek inside the machinery of crypto systems, and link the disparate ideas that power this ecosystem.
We hope subscribers will also enjoy a closer study of the details as you await the arrival of our first issue.
gm! This month, Variant will roll out our newsletter.
We are extremely excited to deliver our team’s latest writing and ideas directly to your inbox, and to mark the occasion, we’ve commissioned a special art piece from Giorgio Balbi that you can mint for free if you subscribe right here on Mirror. (More on the artwork in a moment.)
We know a lot of people are suffering from newsletter fatigue, and we recognize adding another to your plate is a big ask. That’s why our goal with all of our writing is to only produce content that helps push the space forward. We also aim to create a conversation, so we’ll want to hear your response to the ideas we posit.
About the subscriber NFT
Before Giorgio Balbi became a generative artist, he was an industrial engineer who explored not just how things work, but also their geometric beauty. His idol is the fellow Argentine artist Eduardo MacEntyre, who also reconciled the mechanical with the natural. But Giorgio’s process is all his own, combining technical drawing with coding—and plenty of colors, like in his collection “Speranza,” which launched on Canto earlier this year.
In 2021, he began turning his art into NFTs. He starts with a hand-drawn sketch, which he uses as the basis for an algorithm. Once he’s programmed the design using software, he creates multiple pieces and modifies those he likes until he’s happy with every pixel.
You can see that mathematical influence in his new piece made exclusively for Variant, “Técnicismo,” with its ever-expanding circles and spirals against our Variant-blue backdrop. The immediate effect is to “[expose] mechanical concepts of distribution of forces such as gears and pulleys,” according to Giorgio. But those who look closer will find a “hidden universe in the details.”
Once you’ve subscribed to our Mirror page, you’ll be able to mint the NFT below:
We felt the piece was just right for our newsletter, which will seek to peek inside the machinery of crypto systems, and link the disparate ideas that power this ecosystem.
We hope subscribers will also enjoy a closer study of the details as you await the arrival of our first issue.
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