During the 2016 bull market, Bitcoin’s value skyrocketed 743%. During the 2021 bull market, it soared 777%. This means that a relatively small $3,000 investment at the beginning of those bull markets would've returned you a $18,000 profit.

Making money during a bull market is conceptually, quite simple**.**

Sure there will surely be highs, lows, corrections, and all sorts of fluctuations, but I’d take the bet that if you make 5 to 10 high conviction plays that expose you to multiple different narrative and then just forget about them entirely, you will (probably) be up in 6-12 months.

Issues arise, as we’ll see in a moment, when you try to take shortcuts.

It’s hard to believe, but when I first became interested in crypto in March 2020, Ethereum was trading at $116. By the time I write this, its value has increased 25x, and had even 40x when reaching its All Time High in November 2021.

$5,000 invested back then would be worth $138,000 today.

If I had approached investing rationally, I should have invested a portion of my capital into Ethereum, knowing it would be a slow and steady game that pays out over time when more people realize the power of this technology.

But this is not what I did.

Instead, I decided to gamble, take shortcuts, and form tricks and strategies to get more returns, more quickly. I traded in and out. I followed the latest narratives. Bided on the latest memecoins.

Some of these bets were profitable. Most weren’t. In fact, many of them led to significant losses. Four years later, I’m far from having 25x my initial investment. So why doing all these crazy things even when I know better?

I wish I could tell you it was greed. That it was for the thrill of the game. Or a tendency towards self-destruction, but the real answer stands in 4 words:

Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO)

Show me a picture of your wallet with some number in the green and my immediate response was that I needed to sell all my crypto to ape into these new coins. And not just ape a bit, but ape a lot, right now.

Forget the fact that the person probably just had an early token allocation and was now shilling his bag trying to use his followers as exit liquidity.

I. NEEDED. TO. INVEST.

And so often, I did. Not all of the time, but a fair amount of the time. I spent probably a few thousands dollars investing in the latest memecoin, chasing the daily riser as if it were the last slice of pizza at a party and I was on a diet for the past month.

And you would think that, after a few losses, I would learn my lessons.

But if you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while now, you’re probably starting to understand how my brain works, and therefore won’t be surprised that my reaction was rather:

“I must’ve done something wrong this time, let me try one more time..”

And so I returned, as always, to that dopamine machine known as crypto twitter, newsfeeding me into another vision of a perfect coin I could project all of my hopes and wishes onto.

I honestly did this for months, until finally realizing this wasn’t the way.

FOMO is completely irrational. When you see a token pumping, what you get is not only an individualistic incentive to ape into something hoping to make a 100x (that would be too easy and life isn’t supposed to be easy). No, you also get the peer pressure of everyone else doing it.

Your timeline is on fire, all your friends are already shilling their gains, and you feel left behind.

When you witness a friend making life-changing money by staking tokens into a new protocol and receiving a massive airdrop, or see a tweet about a trader flipping 1 SOL into $200,000 in 2 months, FOMO triggers that part of your brain that thinks:

"Shit, that could be me"

And at first, that feels like a good emotion – it feels like you’re learning through observation and following a data-driven path to success. It feels like you’ve spotted the small traders that seem to make the most money and believe you have a hedge that you should capitalize on.

You’ll usually go through a rabbit hole trying to figure out exactly what the person did, follow more closely their next calls, then start investing your own money.

But what’s actually occurring is you are outsourcing your emotions and rational judgment to guys pumping their bags when the good opportunities already happened.

See, in almost any area of our life, being proactive and putting in time and effort is a competitive advantage. If you want to get a job, you’ll have to send hundreds of resume. If you want a new partner, you’re in for many long and tedious date nights.

Investing is a rare exception where doing nothing is your competitive advantage.

And it’s hard. No one likes to invest, then simply let their money sleep. We all feel like we need to do something, optimize for more, and refine our strategy overtime. We’re seeking instant gratification and constant positive feedback.

But there is a reason passive has overtaken active investing in equities — it’s because it works. Want to know a sad truth?

Constant portfolio re-optimization is what destroys people in the Bull.

I've seen it time and time again. Friends feeling FOMO and constantly shifting their portfolio around by chasing the daily risers, ending up simply catching every retrace (buying too late) and then panic sell for a loss instead (selling too soon).

Because in crypto, a market driven by FOMO where all it takes is a viral tweet, an ETH address, and a few hours for hundreds of millions of dollars of capital to flow into a completely new asset, doing nothing is a competitive advantage.

Your best option to make it during this bull market?

Forget about potential 100x. Make high conviction bets and then just forget about them entirely. When a new shiny coin pops up on your radar that you are not already exposed to and you feel the FOMO, invest into it overtime instead with new funds instead of constantly re-balancing.

- Eliot

The once renowned list of entrepreneurs Forbes 30 under 30 is now depicted as a hub of criminals; shilling your prestigious job titles on Linkedin will only turn you into a meme, and Justin Bieber removed his Bored Apes NFT from his profile picture a while ago (a lost, truly).

In an age of abundance, the power law of status signal has been reversed.

And the new cool is to simply don’t give a fuck.

Bragging Has Become An Implicit Sign Of Low Status

Just a couple of weeks ago, a dude named Dustin Varano decided to flex his latest achievement on Twitter, hoping to receive a stream of messages from people telling him how so amazing he was.

Dustin

@dustinvarano

Hosted my first networking event at 19 years old on 100ft yacht with a private chef.

This is why I moved to Miami.

1,959

3:22 PM • Jul 22, 2023

But Dustin received the opposite reaction.

The post quickly generated over 20M impressions, and thousands of people started making fun of him—tough crowd.

In reality, it's not what Dustin posted that turned him into a meme (even though bragging about being on a yacht with 15 dudes is a weird kind of flex).

It's simply that everyone spotted the flex.

And nothing is as unimpressive as someone trying too hard to impress.

It's like wearing a neon sign that blinks "Desperate for Approval, Please Like Me."

It's just cringe.

Don't try this at home.

No, do you know what Dustin should have done to flex successfully?

Counter-signaling. Do the absolute opposite of what he did.

That's what the REAL cool kids are doing.

They show they are so well off that they can afford to engage in activities and behaviors that people typically associate with low status.

Don't believe me?

Let me make my case.

Jack Raines, one of my favorite internet writers, publishes weekly blog posts about Finance and Career advice. In a couple of years, he grew his following to ~45,000 readers and has now managed to live from his writing.

Now, with his large audience and such promising opportunities ahead of him, you'd assume Jack would polish his Linkedin profile and showcase his impressive Newsletter’s stats to please potential future advertisers, right?

Well, he is doing the exact opposite.

He publishes satirical posts on Linkedin like this one, pretending he has landed a new job at Goldman Sachs by beating other candidates at a beer mile. With such kind of shitposting, Jack makes the buzz, sure.

But he also attracts the wrath of those who think he is being serious, and prevents himself from being hired anywhere. That’s stupid, you might say.

But that's the whole point.

Jack is so good at writing that he can afford to counter-signal…

… which makes him even cooler and well-employable for those in the know.

*What a life*

Cobie, a thinker, writer, and crypto OG with 730K subscribers on Twitter, is another great example.

He publishes fascinating blog posts on his Substack, and trust me, he's smarter than you and I combined.

But guess the tagline of his newsletter?

"Web3 Idiot, I publish without proofreading and then wish I did."

His Twitter bio?

"Trying to kick a multi-decade internet addiction."

See, there's no mention of "Forbes 30 under 30", "ex-Google," or "founder of a very cool startup."

He simply shows the world he doesn't give a fuck - and it works.

Alright, allow me a final example here.

Jason Levin is an online writer who I like to read from time to time. For some reason, I recently decided to go check his Linkedin profile (don't ask me why).

Here's how Jason describes his past professional experience working as a writer for a crypto publication on Linkedin:

"I partied at crypto conferences, interviewed a bunch of nerds, and wrote articles 3-5x/week for newsletter to 90,000 in crypto."

When he describes his other experiences, you can read:

"I drank a lot of coffee and made dank memes."

Now that's a flex that's so nonchalant it's practically a mic drop.

Yet, Jason seems to be doing a comfortable salary writing for startups.

Why?

Because don't giving a fuck is the new cool.

There's a reason why Elon Musk, one of the most powerful CEOs on the planet, doesn't show off with a Ferrari on socials but posts memes every day, smokes on a podcast, and fights in a cage.

Because showing you’re so well off you can afford counter-signaling is the new ultimate flex.

See, we humans are a simple species.

We're wired for validation.

And oh boy, do we chase it.

Most of us are actually NOT desperate for more money and we’re not THAT impressed by people showing off how rich they are. We’ve seen so many pseudo-influencers flexing their net worth on Instagram that we’re much harder to impress.

But every single one of us is desperate for more attention, status, and respect.

And this will still be true in a 100 years.

In an era where flexing how so rich you are has become too obvious to convince anyone, counter-signaling is your new best chance to get attention.

Because while money can still buy you an island and pretty much whatever you want, money doesn’t buy you the intangible delight of knowing that people secretly admire you anymore.

Closing Thoughts

After being bombarded with the “Here’s how I became a millionaire in 10 steps” threads, most of us learned to discount information where there are obvious motivations to exaggerate.

And don’t giving a fuck has quickly become the new move to subtly say:

"I succeed so easily I don't need to flaunt my achievements - quite the opposite"

Because do you know what’s cooler than winning in 2023?

Showing others you’re winning so easily you can even afford counter-signaling.

Speak soon,

- Eliot

I’m coming today with some exciting news:

My new ebook, The Modern World Builder is officially LIVE!

I've been waiting to publish this 70-page ebook for 2+ years.

And I'm so excited to finally share it.

The good news?

This book is entirely FREE for you today (before going on sale in 7 days.)

Yep, you heard it right.

You can grab your copy today by simply commenting under this Tweet.

Want a sneak peek of what's inside?

In less than 2 hours (the time it takes to read this book), I’ll show you how to:

• Create a whole movement around your original idea/project.

• Unlock new opportunities for yourself and your people online.

• Start expanding your mind with what’s possible with a community.

• Start tackling ambitious problems with the help of hundreds of members.

And how exactly?

By helping you:

• Overcome the false beliefs that are holding your community back.

• Find a Hack for your community, a reason for your members to gather.

• Come up with a Symbol System that’ll turn members into hardcore believers.

• Leverage your community to achieve ambitious goals you never thought of.

So, go ahead and grab your copy of The Modern World Builder.

Again, make sure to grab your copy this week since commenting under the announcement on Twitter will only work for the next 7 days.

Enjoy, and looking forward to hearing what you think of the book!

Speak soon,

- Eliot

Crypto Twitter feels like a deserted island these days.

No one seems interested in crypto anymore, and the app itself has quickly become useless. Our feeds are full of junk, packed with endless AI tools threads, and overflowing with people like me shouting into the void for 3 likes.

On this deserted island, you have two choices to save yourself.

Choice 1: The waving approach

The first choice you can make is to wave your arms frantically and shout for help to any passing ship in the distance, desperately seeking rescue.

This is the choice I made in the past.

When I started my career and was looking for new opportunities, everyone kept throwing the same worn-out advice at me:

"Hey, Eliot, focus on growing your network, man."

So during my first internship in Amsterdam, I went to networking events.

Now, for context, I've always been scared shitless to talk to new people, and in real life, I'm more of an introvert and a private person.

So believe me, the idea of going into a sea of unfamiliar faces and forced conversations was like being thrown into a pool with sharks, except the sharks were aspiring Web3 bros.

Quickly, those so-called networking events turned into me spending the first 30 minutes of the event analyzing the room, then going to the mini-bar every 10 minutes to pretend I was actually doing something, eventually ending up talking to a dude during the remaining 30 minutes.

Obviously, it didn't help me land new opportunities.

Half the fault lies with me - I'll admit it.

But the other half?

Those events were filled to the brim with people who had nothing to offer and no idea why they were there in the first place.

But with no other experiences, I thought it was just the way it was, and I needed to get used to it— keep trying to grow my network.

Fast forward a few years, leading us to today, where I want to drop some truth bombs:

Your network is your net worth is the most bullshit stuff I've ever heard and a terrible piece of advice to give anyone early in their career.

Because it makes ambitious young people believe that, in order to accomplish anything, they first need to grow their network.

It makes the person on the desert island believe that to be saved and get new opportunities, they must wait for someone to come and help them.

That they have to keep shouting into the void instead of using the few resources they have to start taking their future into their own hands.

But here's a piece of advice you probably won't hear often:

You should probably stop looking for help by going to these networking events or sending those cold DMS on Twitter. At least not until you have something to showcase.

I know.

This is the opposite of what all your favorite influencers are telling you.

And maybe this is too late, you've already spent many hours circling the buffet of those events, or hit that send button.

But let me tell you something.

There's one thing your favorite creator is not telling you.

People answer DMs only when the person sending it has something to bring to the table.

Not to say that you don't, but if you're rocking a whopping five Twitter followers with no profile picture, your chances of getting an answer are close to zero.

It's a harsh reality, but it's the truth.

And this truth is even more tangible in crypto, where anyone with a somewhat "high profile" gets their DMs bombarded by airdrop farmers or scammers.

In those tough times, there's a much better option to grab someone's attention, and this is doing cool shit and sharing them online.

Which leads us to our second option.

Choice 2: The bonfire approach

Your second ticket off the "Crypto Twitter" island is what I call the blazing bonfire approach.

Here, you build a massive bonfire, shooting flames high into the sky, signaling your presence and capturing the attention of the passing ship. You decide to showcase your worth and use your skills and talents to create something impossible to ignore.

Let me share a personal story here.

Two years ago, when my pleas for any help to find a job in Amsterdam fell on deaf ears, I decided to start writing online.

And if you think I knew how to write, that I had some kind of special talent, and that you can't do it, trust me, I was far from being a Shakespeare.

Coming from France, my ability to speak English was questionable at best, and my writing skills were, let's say, a work in progress.

But I kicked myself in the ass and started forcing myself to write online daily.

I started slowly, anonymously, writing comments under other people's articles until I gained enough confidence to write my own tweets and articles.

And after a couple of months of sharing my Web3 learnings with the world, one of the editors at Bankless—a crypto publication I could only dream of being spotlighted in—reached out asking if I wanted to write for them.

I was ecstatic.

But do you know why they gave me this opportunity?

Hint: it's not because I sent them a DM asking to “pick their brain” or see if there were “synergies” (in this desolate island, no one sees you or cares that you're in dire need of help anyway).

No, it was because I had proved my worth.

Because I had proof of my work online. Because I was constantly publishing online, and because over time if you're consistent, it becomes inevitable that the right people will discover you.

Was it an obvious decision for them? Well, maybe not.

But at least they didn't have to take a leap of faith in me because they already had access to an extensive portfolio of work to dig into.

After that, the opportunities started to compound.

After publishing my article on Bankless, I got the opportunity to write for Business Insider. Then with all my articles, I decided to turn my work into a book. The book's release got me to talk with the person who manages Coachella's Web3 strategy.

And still today, despite the bear market, I keep getting new opportunities to ghostwriting for leaders on Twitter or advise Web3 communities

Side note; One of my latest articles just got featured in JUMP, a community for Web3 marketers —You can read it here.

The crazy thing is that, by doing something I truly enjoy daily, I talk with far more people than in any networking events I attended.

Which made me realize:

A great piece of content about a cool thing you’ve done will reach 100x more people than forcing luck in Twitter DMs or at networking events.

And if you continue to be consistent and share online, the ship will come closer, ready to take you away from this abandoned island and towards new horizons.

Closing Thoughts

More than ever, Web3 companies and creators need help with their content or growth. And if there's one good thing about the current bear market, it's that it allows those who persist to get noticed more quickly.

Not by sending DMs.

But by keeping doing cool shit online. By keeping showing their worth. By keeping doing stuff no one can ignore.

Your content and personal brand are your job insurance.

And if you keep shipping, you will inevitably attract opportunities your way, even in this bear market.

Speak soon,

- Eliot

PS: What did you think of this article? If you enjoyed today's edition, let me know here - It'll help me understand what you want me to write about (and it only takes you 10sec).

Yesterday, I discovered a new app called Interface.

Its promise is simple:

Becoming a distribution tool for on-chain creators & collectors.

In other terms, they are here to fuel the new creative era.

And I’m all here for it. 

I stumble quite often upon apps helping online creators, and rare are the ones who live up to the expectations.

But this one is different.

They crowd-funded $92,000 back in 2022, and trust me; if I had been aware of this, I’d have definitely sent them some of my Ether as well.

I believe Interface is a game-changer for Web3 creators and the crypto ecosystem as a whole. They might be on track to solve one of the most pressing problems creators face today:

Getting their content discovered while retaining full control over it.

Whether you are a creator trying to grow or a reader always on the lookout for new content, this is an opportunity you surely don’t want to miss.

Get ready; this is going to be a fun one.

1 | The Discoverability Dilemma

For the past few years, the question of ownership vs. distribution has been at the heart of discussions for content creators.

As a writer myself, this is something I spent countless hours thinking about.

When I decided to self-publish my first book, I was torn between selling it on my website and taking care of the marketing, printing, and distribution myself, or giving full access to my content and data to Amazon.

I chose the latter, and in exchange for sharing all my data with Amazon, giving them a 70% commission, and letting them do whatever they wanted with my content, they helped me sell over a thousand copies and took care of the shipping.

~ What a deal ~

If you call me a fool here, remember you’re doing the same kind of trade-offs daily.

When posting on Twitter, Substack, or Youtube, you’re accepting seeing your content disappearing when one of these apps explodes, getting your content showed in the wrong context or even getting banned.

Yep, welcome to the fantastic world of today’s content creation.

But the truth is, despite this obviously disastrous situation, we’re all doing it.

Why?

Because there’s not a single platform allowing us to retain ownership AND that have enough momentum to get our content widely discovered at the same time.

Two years ago, when I first discovered crypto, and more specifically decentralized publishing platforms like Mirror, I thought we finally had our solution.

There were finally people standing against the status quo, fighting for creators’ rights, and promising through a new technology called NFT, the best of the two worlds: ownership & better distribution.

The experience was clanky, but creators finally owned their content, and readers were so optimistic they went the extra mile to support new Web3 writers.

Of course, I was all in.

I started posting there multiple times a week, and in a couple of months, I had more than 50 articles on-chain.

Fast forward two years, and sadly, it’s clear those platforms failed to turn this opportunity into something sustainable. 

Despite now having 100% ownership over their content, and with a hype fading, creators quickly realized that switching to those platforms with no network effect, no discoverability engine, no SEO, and until recently, no subscribe button would still come at a cost:

The cost of discoverability.

cami

@camiinthisthang

I used to publish on mirror but abandoned it for a few reasons. The main reason is there’s basically zero discoverability on mirror

5

11:25 AM • Feb 21, 2023

Back to the starting point… or not exactly.

I believe their efforts have not been in vain and that those platforms were, and still are, an essential part of solving the decade-long discoverability dilemma.

Because for creators to get better discoverability, they needed better ownership. 

For the past two years, those platforms have allowed more people to create and collect content on-chain easily.

They’ve stood up to their mission to onboard thousands of creators on the decentralized internet, letting creators publish their content easily while owning it, and helped solve one part of the equation.

But the main problem had yet to be solved.

We were still lacking an application that would leverage this new paradigm to finally productize, for creators, the possibilities Web3 is unleashing.

I believe those days are over, and that we are finally witnessing the birth of such application.

It is called Interface.

2 | Trying Interface For The First Time

I have installed and deleted a lot of social applications in my life.

Trying them all, I can confidently say there hasn't been a real breakthrough in experience for creators or fans for the past 10 years.

For each new social media application I signed up for, whether Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram, the experience has always been pretty much the same.

First, I had to spend a few minutes setting up my profile.

Then, I was usually suggested to follow a few supposedly "famous" people that I had never heard of, friends I hadn't talked to in years, or choose from a list of pre-selected topics that I didn't specifically relate to.

After that, I had to "train the algorithm" for hours to get suggested content I was actually interested in.

And no matter the number of hours I'd spend handpicking the people I follow on Instagram to get the perfectly curated feed, I'd always have to start all over again from scratch on Twitter, Linkedin, or Youtube.

I have to say, despite getting used to it and accepting the situation, this was far from the perfect experience…

Then yesterday, I tried Interface for the first time.

When I downloaded the app, I got to sign up with my crypto wallet.

In a couple of seconds, the app fetched my on-chain data, and because I had purchased the on-chain domain name "Eliot Couvat" on ENS, Interface had my name, my profile picture, and my bio.

Everything was already filled up. I just had to confirm to move to the next step.

Then, because I already had an account on Lenster, a decentralized social network, the app found my friends and suggested I follow them.

It wasn't random or supposedly famous people, but friends I actually knew.

After that, Interface recommended I follow members from the Friends With Benefits community, a group I'm part of and which I have tokens from.

Again, it wasn't people out of the blue but friends I interact with daily.

Finally, I went to my profile, and my content was already there.

Yep, you read it well. All the articles I had posted on-chain, all the content I had collected, whether songs, videos, arts, or articles, everything was there.

In total, it took me less than a minute to get set up.

In a few clicks, I connected with my friends, had a profile ready to go, a feed full of relevant posts, and my content already posted.

It simply felt like magic.

3 | The Power Of Interoperability

Despite feeling magical, it wasn’t Magic at all.

All this experience was very real, and possible thanks to a new paradigm:

Web3’s Interoperability.

Since all the on-chain data are freely accessible on an open ledger, Interface was able to fetch them and let me follow friends from across platforms to see their activity appear in a single feed.

By fully leveraging the bridges established between platforms that ensure a sustainable data flow, Interface created the perfect onboarding experience.

But the onboarding was just the beginning of the full experience.

And after browsing around for half an hour, I started fully realizing the power of the application I had in my hands.

For creators, Interface means that no matter the decentralized platform they choose to post their content on, they can be sure their fans have one place to see it all, a place where they can be sure to never miss a new piece of content again.

Whether this is new music released on Sound, a new video released on Zora, or an article published on Mirror, it will automatically appear on Interface.

Without. Any. Extra. Step.

Yep, you don’t have to post anymore.

Your on-chain actions appear automatically in your feed, and this works no matter if you’re minting an article on Ethereum, Optimism, or any other chains.

Forget about ever having to repost your Youtube, Spotify, or Substack content on Twitter or other centralized platforms, not controlling the visibility of your posts. 

In the Web3 world, your fans will have all of your content in one feed without ever having to quit the app, reducing the friction to access your content and with the major advantage of you retaining full ownership of your content.

The best part?

Creators and collectors own and distribute content simultaneously.

In this new paradigm, we come from a top-down model where Twitter control who sees the content to a bottom-up model where every fan collecting an NFT help spread the word and support the creator.

Did someone collect your article on Mirror? It shows on Interface.

And by simply owning the content, fans help the creator get discovered.

This means finally having content curated by real people, not algorithms.

Interface might be the super-discoverability engine we’ve all been waiting for.

An app of apps in sort, where content once scattered across multiple platforms and protocols are now synchronized in one place and where our collective preferences become pools of relevance where value aggregates.

Interface has created a beautifully-designed app that makes abstraction of the technical aspect of crypto, lowering the barrier to entry for newcomers and creating the perfect social experience for non-technical users.

And no matter if you’re collecting an NFT or an ERC-20 token, an article, or a video, you’re on-chain content will always appear there.

Like magic.

4 | We’re Just Scratching The Surface Of What’s Possible

Now, I can’t say the app is perfect and the solution to all creators’ problems.

Despite my obvious enthusiasm, Interface is still at a very early stage.

As Annoushka, the founder of Interface, told me, they’re still “experimenting with introducing various features for different audiences and trying to see what sticks.”

But I believe that, now that the foundations have been laid, this is only downhill from here, and there are a couple of features that would 10x the experience.

First of all, for now, the app is mainly in view mode.

You discover content, but this is pretty much it.

You can’t collect directly from the app what your friends have collected, nor are you directly redirected to a minting page when you click on it. You can’t comment, react or build on top of an on-chain action. You can’t organize your content on the app once you’ve collected something, which I think will quickly become essential as the number of users increases.

In short, the interaction component is still missing.

Second, I believe the team could go even further in leveraging Web3 capabilities.

Most (if not all) creators struggle today to create meaningful conversations around their content, and the comment sections on Substack or Youtube are not the best place to do so.

Creators and communities alike are looking for better ways to control their fans’ experience, and some communities, like Friends With Benefits, actually just launched their app exactly for this reason. 

I believe there’s finally an opportunity here to get rid of the feed, leveraging NFTs or ERC-20s, creating a new space to share deeper context.

Third, the team could create a better experience for creators directly in the app.

When someone collects your content, you get to see if the person is a newbie or an expert by looking at the number of transactions in their wallet. This allows creators to create content with consequences. It also allows us to see in which communities fans contribute, whether a community for marketers or growth leaders, revealing their passions and deeper interests. Finally, when someone collects on-chain, creators get to see which other creators their readers are fans of, giving them insights on which creator they should collaborate with.

Starting with a simple dashboard in the same style that the Bello one would, in my opinion, facilitate the creation process, and help creators distribute the perfect content.

5 | Closing Thoughts

Interface is a game changer.

Before Interface, creators had a hard time sharing their work without relying on Twitter or other centralized platforms. Fans were creating and collecting content but had nowhere to showcase their belongings. It was difficult for newbies to understand the true power of Web3, and difficult for creators to grow their audience while owning their content.

Finally, we have a platform that takes on the work started by Mirror or Paragraph and leverages ownership not for its own sake but as a way to solve the discoverability dilemma creators have been facing for so long.

With Interface, we now have an app that has a good chance of helping creators better distribute their content.

And trust me, I’m here to seize this opportunity.

Speak soon,

- Eliot

PS: What did you think of this article? If you enjoyed today's edition, let me know here - It'll help me understand what you want me to write about.

If you’re not a subscriber yet, here’s what you missed this month:

1. Web3 Marketing 101: Shaping A Symbol System

2. Letting A Chance For Brands To Monetize Their Intangible Assets

3. What Decentralized Media Means To The Future of Digital Writing

The more I search for new perspectives on specific topics for my essays, the more I realize the difficulty of finding hidden gems and quality content on the web.

From Twitter to Google, ranked results and recommendations have become the dominant mode of exploring information online, and when I try searching for "Web3" on google, I find dozens of marketing garbage content on NFTs before (if ever) being suggested to read Chris Dixon' canonical essays.

The harsh truth is, discovery is optimized for products, not people.

All social networks are built around one fundamental design: the feed. This isn't an accident—it's a choice that maximizes the platform's ability to display ads and maximize revenue.

We rely on these centralized platforms for content distribution, and their feeds function like highways that don't let you discover gems outside the mainstream.

sari azout

@sariazout

Crypto will disrupt content monetization (@viamirror etc). But what’s the most compelling example of how it will disrupt discovery/distribution?

Distribution seems overlooked - Twitter/Discord/TikTok remain the port of entry for Web3

65

8:58 PM • Jan 2, 2022

The overabundance of media has resulted in increasingly niche audiences in the last years, and centralized platforms can't get up to speed fast enough to show us the content we want.

In short, discovery on existing web2 media networks is broken.

In the past months, I’ve become more and more interested in a new class of flexible, boundary-spanning primitive: writing NFTs.

Their promise is to allow people to stop relying on platforms that maximize readers' time on their feed, but relate to other people to show them good content.

Individuals would no longer have to stay within a platform, but could now move more easily across media and platforms, within one set of protocols, owning and transporting their content to create their perfect NFT-mediated experience.

I found David Phelps articulating this paradigm shift best:

“When people own their own content, including its data and metadata, they own its distribution as well. They become the new intermediaries, and people become the new platforms.”

Writing NFTs would allow anyone to become their own search discovery engine, helping more writers get discovered, and are a chance to flatten the inequalities of web2 media —not just between rich and poor creators, but rich platforms relative to all creators.

So how would this play out exactly?

By minting their articles as NFTs for their fans to collect, writers would let their readers own, transport, and compose with their content, allowing creation and distribution to happen at the same time.

Instead of having fans solely “liking” content on a centralized platform, readers would collect and add this content to their wallet, creating a new space accessible by anyone, a space uncensorable, interoperable, and easy to build on top of.

With their on-chain collections, these new curators would expand their voices through the people she supports. As Kairon explained it well in a recent essay:

Through trusting her (collector) taste and expertise enough to use her as my starting point; she gets reputation, mentions, and growth: exactly what any creator needs. She becomes a node in my exploration chain, and is rewarded with a bigger reader base as a result.

With this new habit, fans would automatically become curators, and while they may have less input on actual posts, the very fact they organize and curate content around a theme serves a larger goal—to appeal to and be consumed by a social niche audience.

And for writers, having collectors means getting a list of wallet addresses and a direct access to their fans without relying upon anyone.

In this new paradigm, the line between being a fan and a creator is blurring and completely reinventing the “fan-creator” relation.

The Web3 application Mirror is already building the infrastructure to support such a future for writers. They allow readers to collect articles they liked as NFTs, with the experience directly embedded into the article.

With more people starting collecting writing NFTs, Web3 wallets could one day become the main profile of writers, and we could even envision a new form of curation to emerge - one where readers create wallets for curating articles from specific niches - where each wallet becomes a new media.

We could also one day witness the rise of experiments leveraging collectors as catalysts for content ideas. The biggest fans (aka. collectors) could choose the topic of the next article through voting contests.

But while extremely exciting (at least for me), we’re not there yet.

For a future to emerge where NFTs are becoming a new primitive for curation, future wallets will have to not only focus on transactions but be native tools built around personalization, navigation, interoperability, and integrating strong social components.

They will need to reflect much more on who we are and be inherently social.

These new web3 wallets, such as Rainbow, as opposed to current traditional wallets like Metamask, will be much more like your LinkedIn, Twitter or Substack than your bank account. You'll share your wallet freely with friends and platforms, controling the content you want to share and the categories you want to highlight by granting, revoking, and sharing partial access to it.

Chris Cantino

@chriscantino

Wallets are social apps waiting to happen.

673

7:16 PM • Oct 19, 2022

You might even soon be able to read articles directly from your wallet.

Closing thoughts

I’ve mostly talked about writing NFTs and writers in this article, but I believe the same mechanisms of on-chain curation will be applied in every industry.

BlockchainBrett

@web3brett

Collectors are the new record label.

117

4:23 PM • Sep 29, 2022

The solution for solving the current discovery problem comes down to a fundamental change in how we think about the internet and content creation: from a top-down model where central authorities control what we see to a bottom-up model where everyone has a voice and can be compensated for their work.

In this new model, as a writer, having trusted sources and building up your curatorial network will become essential —and this upfront work will become the price to pay to access great content that doesn’t rely on centralized platforms.

The question of ownership vs. distribution has always been central in Web3, and writing NFTs is a chance for creators and fans to own and distribute content simultaneously.

We obviously still have a long way to go before seeing this future come true, but I already see the habit of collecting writing NFTs emerging among my writer friends and can only see this habit adopted by more writers in the next months.

PS: If you likes this piece, you can join my network of 2100 on-chain supporters by collecting this essay on Mirror and add it to your collection. 😉

Make sure to follow me on Twitter & subscribe to this newsletter as I continue to explore the limits of Social Tokens and how they will play a major role in our future 🔥

Since I've started working in the Web3 space, I've spent hours digging the space and trying to understand how this new technology, and specifically Social Tokens, will change the way we live daily. Today, I'm releasing a book - "The Social Token Revolution: The next big thing in crypto is here, and it will revolutionize how people work together" - sharing all I learned throughout my journey.

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The Social Token Revolution: The next big thing in crypto is here, and it will revolutionize how people work together.

The Social Token Revolution: The next big thing in crypto is here, and it will revolutionize how people work together. - Kindle edition by Couvat, Eliot. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets.

https://www.amazon.com

Special Offer(s)

If you've been following me since the beginning, it's thanks to you that I'm able to release this book today. I'll be forever grateful for people engaging with my content and helping me throughout my crypto journey, and I want to thank all my early supporters. That's why I'm offering FOR FREE the first part of my book to $ELIOT holders. If you've at least 50 $ELIOT, you can connect your wallet and download the first part of "The Social Token Revolution" here.

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