But that's not what I'm talking about now. It is about the fact that if you remember yourself as a child, time for most of us stretched from event to event. In the world around us, it was as if everything was changing slower than we were used to.

Those who play toys, probably noticed that time in the world of the game is accelerated. And even with accelerated time, playing the game, to move we use running constantly or as much as possible.

With this text, I want to lead you to the idea that if we do not remember ourselves in the observation preceding your birth, then perhaps we lived in another game, where the realization of the results of actions was many times "faster" than now, in the current observation.

Curiously enough, as the number of things on the scale of our perception and experience of understanding how things work in this reality increases, we become more tolerant of the inertness of processes. And in addition to this tolerance, we ourselves become slower and inert. This, gentlemen, by the way, is "aging".

At this point I would like to "highlight" a key point in the conflict between fathers and children. And I am now more about consciousness than physical manifestation. Conditioned children occupy new niches faster because their accelerated perception allows them to embrace new activities hyperactively.

They try, make mistakes, try again, and finally occupy their niche in places where the "old guys", due to the inertness of their perception, cannot compete.

As an aside, I'd like to point out that the theme of acceleration and deceleration of "time" has been played out in various anime series and in novels by the author of "Altered Carbon". In them, time acceleration was used for learning, and time dilation, for "skipping" routines in the outside world, such as boring long-distance flights.

If you notice, it's as if the world at large is speeding up, raising the pace of the number of events. This happens because the active consciousnesses begin to crowd out those who are not keeping up with them. This includes defending themselves. Stability is gradually destroyed under the activity of new players looking for their "place under the sun" in order to transform into a new stability in a conditional "future". The world collapses in order to be reborn, removing from the game board all those who give up or do not change their perception. They will not become "younger".

My message to you in this post is the following - if everything around you is stable and you are intentionally making some events inert, then worry about whether you are going to die. If, on the other hand, you wish to persist, then "accelerate". This is something your children can teach you as you teach them how to "age".

Also. Play games. Since this insight, I was visited while I'm here with my head in one MMO. You're welcome to join me. Because another thing I've discovered is that when you immerse yourself, the outside world starts to change to suit what you want, because you reduce the potential for many things to be "important", and energy flows where there is little of it.

Here are the researchers' main points:

🛟 Social alienation and monetary loss are perceived painfully.

🛟 The pain produced by these two types of events has similar psychological and physiological systems to physical pain.

🛟 Social exclusion is painful because it is a threat to the primary psychological buffer against pain - social support - while monetary loss is painful because money is a secondary buffer of pain.

🛟 Anticipation of pain increases the desire for social support as well as the desire for money.

🛟 Both social support and the reminder of money alleviate pain, while social isolation and monetary loss lead to an exacerbation of pain awareness.

🛟 Social support is the primary defense against pain, and dependence on money may be a consequence of social support failing to do its job of alleviating pain.

🤔 Interesting, eh? Pretty similar to the image of the typical reclusive cryptan.

❓ A reason to ask yourself, "Am I trying to compensate for my fears of being without the support of loved ones with money?"

#psychology

Let's face it: retail traders are not competitive in this arena.

Where do you get your trading signals from? Twitter? When an Influencer writes about a token, there's a good chance he's already bought in and is about to reach out about his audience. News? Consider the recent case of Paradigm moving a significant portion of their MKR tokens to CEX. Many took this as a signal to short, but no further action was taken. The intentions behind the funds' actions are opaque. It is important to realize that they have control over the news feed and can use it to their advantage.

What options do we have left? Alpha groups? Technical analysis? Even professional hedge funds are often at a loss and think 30% annualized is a good option. Do you still think you can make 100 X's overnight?

Important disclaimer: this doesn't mean it's impossible to win. Even this year, individuals have made a lifechanging profit on PEPE or UNIBOT. However, no one talks about how much other traders lost to offset those unit gains. Also, often these units turn out to be insiders or autistic people with an original approach, not just gamblers. That said, any such big win causes FOMO for the entire community - and when you see hype and FOMO, chances are you're too late.

The bad news doesn't end there. It's common for traders to fall into the trap - after a few successful trades, it's natural to feel confident in your abilities. However, the more confident you become, the higher the risk of losing money. The same rule applies to degeneracy: a few great deals will not make you a professional. On the contrary, you are very likely to go deeper into degeneracy and riskier assets where you will lose everything.

Long-term investments work differently. Bulran can easily bring BTC back to the $60k mark, triple L1 bluechecks like ETH, SOL or BNB, and give a couple more X's on working protocols with strong teams like FXS or the same MKR [none of this is financial advice]. This approach takes much longer and requires a lot of patience, but is ultimately safer and more efficient.

📝 Lastly, here's a short list of recommendations for those who decide to go the long-term route.

Step #1: Segment your capital Determine in advance how much of your portfolio you reserve for staples (e.g. 50%), long-term positions with different risk/reward profiles (e.g. 40%), derivatives and hedging (e.g. 5%) and leave some for degenerates so you don't get bored.

Step #2: Keep track of entry and exit points The easiest option is a simple google spreadsheet where you'll record all entries, commissions and average price. This is also where you can watch the asset allocation in your portfolio.

Step #3: Set goals Always determine your price and exit strategy in advance. It doesn't matter if the asset continues to grow - if you decide to exit at three x's, exit, at least in parts.

Step #4: Analyze all trades It is important to do this with both positive and negative trades - the more often you do it, the clearer the patterns will be.

Step #5: Don't let others influence your decisions Social noise is often a good signal to "skim the cream" and the first mentions can be a good entry point. Once you separate rational thinking from FOMO and emotion, you'll start reading Twitter and Telegram differently.

The authors of the experiment believe that people who are drawn to salty foods, not only lack certain minerals, but also are individuals who are adrift and believe that their fate is decided not by themselves, and circumstances.

Experts believe that cravings for chocolate stem from a lack of serotonin, the pleasure hormone. Bitter chocolate is usually favored by people who are constantly in the center of attention, and milk chocolate - by restrained introverts, who tend to be lonely.

(3) A craving for spicy foods is not only a sign of "jumpy" blood pressure, but also a sign of a person who likes order.

1. a craving for candy is characteristic of a love of life, who emphasize their uniqueness and who have no regrets about what they have done.

2. Attraction to both sweet and salty products is a sign of a talented and creative person; as a rule, these are single, reserved and isolated people.

3. A craving for spicy foods is not only a sign of "jumpy" blood pressure, but also a sign of a person who likes order.

   1. a craving for candy is characteristic of a love of life, who emphasize their uniqueness and who have no regrets about what they have done.

   2. Attraction to both sweet and salty products is a sign of a talented and creative person; as a rule, these are single, reserved and isolated people.

This idea is not mine, it was outlined and noticed by Andrew Kang, he noticed an anomaly, a rare combination, when the chance to grow is big, but there is no place to fall. For old-timers who remember, this is pure MATIC situation when it was already falling off after ICO on Binance, but the hype of the project didn't decrease and then it became clear that MATIC had no place to go down, but there is potential to grow. It is the best configuration for a long (the risks are limited and there is an upside, even a small one). In the case of the Matic it ended up with a jump higher than reasonable limits (3 or 4 X's) and then the "Matic figure" happened, when the asset collapsed sharply.

In Arbitrum, the situation is very similar. ARB obviously can't cost cheaper than Optimism, ARB is the best of the LAYER2 blockchains, which means it must be the most expensive. It turns out that Arbitrum had support from the bottom in the form of Optimism's 10 billion kapa, Polygon's (former Matic) kapa, but Arbitrum has no roof or reference point at the top, because no one knows how much the most successful LAYER2 blockchain on ETH can cost at all (10% of its kapa, 20% of its kapa, or maybe 30%?). Because no one can guess how much TVL and attention it will later pull on itself, the upside is unclear in that respect, but it's there.

Hence the simple logic that Andrew Kang, myself and other Narnians from the chat room discerned - there is a limit to risk and possible downside (ARB can't be cheaper than Optimism), there is no clear ceiling on growth. Convex risk, purely according to Taleb. A simple combination on the market LONG.

Optimism rolled away in its day because it didn't have its Arbitrum, but Arbitrum already has Optimism and in general the trend in consciousness for Layer2 took shape precisely after Optimism. Therefore, it is not the right approach to compare with a clever look all these graphs of behavior after unlocking.

#Arbitrum #ARB #ETH

An era, belonging to digital capitalism, characterized by people’s existential need to storify themselves at the very moment global narratives collapse in an unprecedented manner.

A few days ago, somewhere in the feed, someone posted, in janky meme-type, that, “Inside is the Real Outside.” I spent 2.7 seconds on this thesis. It’s the same length of time that artist Jeff Koons says people spend looking at one of his artworks, a fact I gleaned in another feed, whose provenance remains murky to me. And so this feed continued. Or I continued. It’s like when you’re sitting in a train and the train next to you starts to move. You’re not sure if you’re moving, or if the world is moving. It’s a queasy, parallax feeling. It’s as ambiguous as situationships are: they don’t seem to ever begin, but certainly come to an end. This is how the feed feels to me, and how, I venture, I feel to the feed. Using my inner voice, I wonder:

Using my outer voice, I reply, “This is one of the Laws of Lorecore.”

***

“Lorecore” is the theme for my season as Curator-in-Residence at Zora Zine. Lorecore is the name I’m giving to this prevalent stage of reality in which we’re all characters. Characters who are also audiences. Audiences who are also potentially Siberian spam bots. In 1921, Luigi Pirandello wrote a play called Six Characters in Search of an Author. It was an early example of metafiction, where the story is acutely aware it’s a story, and keeps reminding you of the mechanics of storytelling. In the 2020s, I’d rename Pirandello’s play thus:

Now, clearly Lore-core is another portmanteau. Two words spliced together like an ancient mythical creature. Let’s take the first: “lore.” Lore refers to our ubiquitous, obsessive reliance on narrative, meta-narrative, and myth. Do you Story? Do you BeReal? Do you manifest on TikTok? You suffer from—or enjoy—“Main Character Syndrome” (MCS). Everything is about you. Revolves around you. Your innermost thoughts, your outermost actions, all of which must be documented, time-stamped, and uploaded for archival reasons. In the olde days, we would call this solipsism: that strange sense that you are the only thing that truly exists. Everything else, a deceptive holographic irritation. MCS is as if a solipsist could conjure a real-feeling world simply by manifesting it through their media channels. During MCS, it’s your stage, your film set, and everyone else is the crew. The literary genre that best reflects MCS is “autofiction.” It mainstreamed in the 2010s. Autofiction is metafiction of the self. Living life as though you’re acting life and describing it to yourself while acting—but, narrating it out loud, to make sure everyone can hear. Autofiction casts the “I” in an unending performance. Why? For the lore of it. You see, it’s not just dragon-infused fantasy TV that peddles myths these days. Your social media feeds are a factory of myth-making. Lore is the new myth you make about yourself. You live inside these myths mythically. I’d like to suggest that lore is to the self what Sigmund Freud’s death drive was to life: it’s the horizon that makes the here a thing that feels like it’s actually happening to you.

***

For the second half of Lore-core’s etymology, let me invoke Olive Pometsey’s article in The Face, “Namecore is the trend that unifies all trends.” Once upon a time in the 20th century, art movements used to last decades.

Against this punishing “Proceleration” (the acceleration of acceleration) is the desire to label every micro-sub-cultural moment on the internet. Everything is a “—core.” If it isn’t a —core, did it even happen? Cores are like screenshots as trends. And once the —core is indexed and archived, you move on. A decade ago, the trend forecasters K-Hole infamously birthed “Normcore,” only to witness it go virally stratospheric and make hundreds of millions of dollars for brands without K-Hole making a single (known) dime from any of it. K-Hole’s story with Normcore is their own Lorecore—albeit not one they set out entirely to achieve. Sometimes the —core is way bigger than its author. Of such myths are unicorns made.

***

At the start of The Coronacene, Ribbonfarm blogger Venkatesh Rao posted a piece called “Plot Economics.” He introduced the notion of “global narrative collapse,” and wrote:

"Right now, the perception of agency at all levels is falling. Individuals, corporations, governments, heads of state, stock traders, the UN, everybody feels they’re losing the plot, but they don’t see anybody else finding it."

Global narrative collapse was a vertiginous feeling—especially in the middle-class West—brought on by normalcy caving in like a sinkhole. Planes were grounded. Hard national borders went up. Places of work closed down, indefinitely. And French kissing was considered an act of homicide. I’d watch a channel on my TV box that collated every known COVID-19 infection statistic worldwide, turning the plague into a numeric competition: an Olympics for death. My marriage collapsed, I missed the horizon of the future (would it ever come back?) and next week became as unknowable as next year.

It’s been three years since the first cases of COVID-19 were discovered in Wuhan, China, and new cases of COVID-19 were found there on this anniversary. In fact, the people of Wuhan went on an uncharacteristic protest through their city, exhausted and angered by the relentless “Zero COVID” policy that continued to keep their country isolated from the rest of the world, and even, from themselves. Foxconn factory workers—who produce the majority of the world’s iPhones—clashed with authorities in Zhengzhou.

Elsewhere, while COVID-19 may have abated from peak hellish weirdness, the narratives that collapsed then have not been put back together again. “Permacrisis” is the Collins Dictionary word of the year in 2022: just as one crisis erupts (drought, stampede, plague) there’s another one vying for attention. The thing is, every crisis is a collapsed narrative: weakened supply chains, irreversible climate change, the return of nuclear war, canceled futures. One of the greatest narratives to have collapsed is the West’s immunity from the horrors that have plagued much of the rest of the world. Sweltering heat waves, energy shortages, monetary failures. It’s what I call “The Third Worlding of the First World.” Everyone feels it. Just read the news headlines. What’s niche culture’s response to all of this? Deploy another micro-trend “—core.” Take that, Permacrisis!

For many of us, there’s PTSD (Present Traumatic Stress Disorder) and then the numbness of one’s impotence in relation to that low-level constant anxiety.

***

Lorecore is thus entwined with these macro-historic conditions. When we dementedly center ourselves as the Main Character while—or because?—received, collective narratives are collapsing around us, that’s Lorecore. During Lorecore, we overshare our innermost psychological and emotional details to a world that’s already drowning in too much intimacy. Lorecore is what happens when feelings legitimize lies and when markets— especially crypto markets—are maniacally moved by Memelord Technologians. (More on this shortly.) Perhaps Lorecore is just the latest survival mechanism in an open sea of meaning unmoored from itself.

So, if Lorecore were a scripted reality TV show, who are some of the scriptwriters, and who are some of the notable star characters?

***

On Christmas Day 2021, anyone subscribed to self-described “Web3 idiot” Cobie’s new Substack received his latest drop. Up till this point, Cobie was mostly known on Crypto Twitter as an anon shitposter. But this piece, “Trading the Metagame,” was the first of several philosophically deft essays which transformed his own lore. In this piece, Cobie outlined the dizzying deluge of narratives that populated 2021’s bull market: NFT boom, shitcoins, memecoins, alt L1s, Art Blocks, very old NFTs, L2s, DeFi 2.0, OHM Forks, etc. The Metagame was knowing when a narrative was peaking, and when to jump to the next nascent narrative:

"Participating in crypto markets during the thrill stages of a bull-run is isomorphically more similar to playing a modern video game than it is to investing. Most competitive modern video games have an ever-evolving metagame. The metagame can be described as a subset of the game’s basic strategy and rules which is required to play the game at a high level."

Cobie has also said elsewhere that most crypto projects never actually deliver. They keep promising and promising some revolutionary technological salvation that makes them irresistible to VC investors who are professionally bound to risky hype. Actual deliverables often end up being massively disappointing. As Slavoj Žižek once opined:

Two years prior to Cobie’s thesis, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert J. Shiller published Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events. Here, Shiller wanted people to understand, as the back-cover blurb puts it, “how stories help propel economic events that have led to war, mass unemployment, and increased inequality.” He could have been commenting on the scam-rich 2010s, a decade profligate with pitch decks that led to Netflix-worthy sensations such as Fyre Festival, WeWork, and Anna Delvey. SoftBank—the Japanese holding company led by Masayoshi Son—produces its own gnomic investor forecast decks that read like a delirious sex dream between generic stock imagery and generic sloganeering. Son, along with the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, has been playing the VC metagame, lured by the lore of charismatic CEOs such as Adam Neumann and Elizabeth Holmes, the latter of whom was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment for her part in the Theranos start-up scam.

They leverage the blind hope that swirls around tech and crypto like horny whirling dervishes. As former K-Hole co-founder-turned-trend-analyst-Substacker Sean Monahan wrote in his recent “Post-Cryptomania” piece:

"Most people want to make crypto a story about technology or a story about culture. But reminiscing, I think crypto is a story about power. They say politics is downstream of culture. But you know what is upstream of culture? Power."

***

Self-diagnosing oneself, based on mental health TikToks, is also a power that (young) people have discovered today. “I think I’m autistic,” confided someone I know in their early 20s. When I asked if this was based on a medical diagnosis, they said no, it was more of a feeling they had, deduced by observing their own behavioral pattern. I get ads in my feed about ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and friends tell me they are ADHD. It’s as if their brains have as many browser tabs open as I do on my laptop. They’re told they live in the Attention Economy, but they struggle to hold attention for very long. Blip. Gone. “It’s OK,” I assure them, “we actually live in the ‘Distraction Economy.’”

Neurodivergence feels like a word that had little mainstream traction until recently. Now, there seems to be the equivalent of a —core for every possible neurodivergence. In their piece “The Buzzfeedification of Mental Health,” writer P.E. Moskowitz wrote, “By insisting that everyone falls into a category—neurotypical vs. atypical, ADHD vs. whatever other diagnosis, ’real’ depression as opposed to intense sadness or grief—we are creating and enforcing structures to understand the world that has been made so incomprehensible to us.” Binaries of normal and pathological are mostly banished, in mental health as much as in sexual identification. For as long as I can remember, any deviation from the norm was considered an aberration, a weakness, a deficiency. But in Lorecore, pathologies are identity-forming powers; they’re divination tools to discover your atypical kin. We find community and definition through the process of (self) diagnosis. As such:

The subtext is: any neurotypical Nepo Baby can make it to the top. That’s vanilla af. But—look at me make it despite my self-diagnosis. That’s legendary. Have we reached Peak Self-diagnosis yet? Maddie Rose, a “disability liberationist,” suggests that perhaps we have. Elsewhere in Moskowitz’s Mental Hellth newsletter, they wrote, “Once a seventh diagnosis was suggested—ADHD—I hit diagnosis burnout [...] So I un-diagnosed myself.” Lore, too, has its limits.

As to Ye’s alleged bipolarity: it seems to play two simultaneous roles in his lore: on the one hand, I know people who stress that what we see when we see Ye spinning out of control is worsening mental health not being medically treated. But I also know people who refuse to define Ye by his pathology, as though to do so would be to denude him of his messianic iconoclasm. Ye’s 2022 finale as a Hitler-loving, anti-semitic, anti-Black, guest on Alex Jones’ InfoWars doubled down on his martyr status. Ye insists he knows exactly what he’s saying: contrition is not in his Lore. Lorecore’s leaders virulently refute victimhood. And yet, so many of them are open about their neurological and emotional struggles. Lorecore loves winners that in previous times may well have been tragically cast as losers. 

***

Every era has its “Magic Individuals.” They’re endowed with special powers of sight or insight, channeling the culture, and often telling the culture truths about itself it doesn’t know or is too afraid to ask. In the past, Magic Individuals have arrived as poets, composers, scientists, novelists, or artists. There was always the next big thing out there waiting to hit us and change the way we understood the world. Magic Individuals pointed them to us. “Look! It’s over there!” Lately, it’s as if tech is already the next big thing. And then the next big thing. Plus the big thing that comes after. Tech is the ultimate modern magic. This makes Technologians the Magic Individuals of Lorecore. They’re figures of extraordinary persuasion, and therefore, of extraordinary power.

***

Some of them are also shitposters. Neuro-atypical shitposters, to be precise. In his intro as host of Saturday Night Live, back in May 2021, Elon Musk said, “I’m actually making history night as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL. Or at least the first to admit it.” In the BBC documentary *The Elon Musk Show, *Maye Musk—Elon’s mother—repeats how difficult it is for Elon to fulfill the tasks demanded of a normal human (being present in a romantic relationship, keeping eye contact during a conversation) because of his special powers of atypical genius.

Mat Dryhurst is one of Twitter’s most active and astute commentators about Web3 and AI culture. When I pressed him recently about Musk’s Twitter takeover, Dryhurst told me that the current world is increasingly being run by shitposters: agents of chaos cosplaying as billionaire CEOs. If Cobie were to do an autopsy of 2022’s metagame narratives, they’d mostly be a litany of brazen crypto collapses. Shitposter Do Kwan and Terra Luna. Socratic Su Zhu and Three Arrows Capital. But none of these breathtaking dumps compare to the death spiral decline of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and centralized exchange FTX. Lurid details are still spewing forth at the time of writing this (many of which also involve Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison: see Autism Capital’s real-time Twitter-shitposting-journalism for every new morsel). The Russo brothers are slated to dramatize the entire FTX saga for Amazon: ready-made Lorecore. SBF’s amphetamine-fuelled malfeasance hits at the heart of Good Crypto Lore, as he had styled himself as the senator whisperer, urging the American government to take crypto as seriously as he, apparently, did. FTX’s contagion is not only financial; it’s philosophical.

Lorecore builds Technologians up to Forbes front cover status at lightning speed. But Lorecore can also undo that glory at an even faster pace. That’s because one of the Laws of Lorecore is that it’s held together by precarity, not certainty.

***

The fallout of Musk’s Twitter is also unfolding at extreme chaos speed. By the time you’re reading this, there’s either no Twitter subscribers left, or, there’s a billion, and they’re all paying a nominal monthly fee to say they are who they’re not. Musk’s personal brand of Asperger’s-shitposter has quickly expanded to become the entire Twitter brand. Soon, there may be more parody accounts than bot accounts, and after that, bot parody accounts, until we’re flailing around in a seething swamp of deepfake inauthenticity. Or—this is all a carefully engineered illusion of chaos that will jolt Twitter out of its forever niche plateau and 16 years of unprofitability. Either way, there’s something about this livestream omnishambles that suggests the lore of Web2 media giants is finally fragile and fallible. We don’t know what exactly comes next. The fediverse (Hito Steyerl)? Community as media (New Models)? Another Law of Lorecore is that the dumbest plot line with maximum incredulity is what’s going to happen next. The only intelligent people left on earth will be highly paid prompt engineers, who know exactly how to phrase a string of words so that the AI spits out the perfect picture of a dolphin riding Timothee Chalamet against a wistful moonset on Mars. To borrow one of Musk’s threat terms used towards his soon-to-be-fired-Twitter employees:

***

Just as 2022 was nearing its end, The Oxford Dictionary let the public vote for its word of the year. They overwhelmingly chose “Goblin Mode.” Although the term goes back to 2009, it wasn’t until February 2022—when Twitter user @meowmeowmeuw tweeted a photoshopped headline about Julia Fox and Kanye West (now, Ye), suggesting that Fox said West didn’t like it when she went “goblin mode”—that the term virally exploded. Permacrisis gives way to Goblin Mode: forsaking how you look for sullied sweatpants, raw dogging salami straight from the packet, because Inside is the Real Outside anyway. Goblin Mode may as well be a —core, as it denotes a very online micro-trend. And what is the cumulative result of all these incessant —cores piling up, like junk debris, on the inside of our collective consciousness? It’s going to be Corecore: a Chris Nolan-directed recursion of —cores death spiraling into itself. Corecore is the terminus horizon when all the —cores have been exhausted. Blip. Gone.

Which is why, elsewhere, I’ve written about “The Dawn of Endcore,” a name I’m giving to this era after the end of eras. After the end of the end of History. Endcore is the feeling we’re in the endgame now: the endgame of climate grief, of technocapitalism, of consensus-based empirical truth, of decency, even. Endcore is the sense of an ending that many people on Earth currently feel, but also the sense that the end never actually arrives. We are Permaending. Cue more Lorecore.

***

When I’m in the feed—doomscrolling for one more tiny dopamine hit from one more increasingly niche meme—the feed itself doesn’t end, but it delivers content that envelops me in Endcore. Did you know there are microplastics in Antarctica’s snow now? This new fact won’t leave my head. It piles on top of every other fact, rumor, opinion, or disinformation I hoard. Vladimir Nabokov wrote, “The future is but the obsolete in reverse.” Of course, extinction is a natural cycle of continuity, when seen across the earth’s billions of years of past. But this time, we—augmented human protagonists—are less blameless than an asteroid or a sun flare. Lorecore is our desperate, deep yelp—like the one extracted from an Ancient Egyptian mummy 1000s of years old—against Endcore.

If Joan Didion once famously said, “We tell each other stories in order to live,” during Lorecore:

This essay is the first installment of a three-part curatorial residency from Shumon Basar.

В последнее десятилетие мы наблюдаем постоянно растущий взрыв проектов Web3, создающих децентрализованные версии платформ и сервисов Web2. Compound создает Web3-версию Bank of America, Uniswap — NYSE, Yearn Finance — децентрализованную Blackrock и так далее.

Теоретически более 9000 существующих сегодня проектов Web3 обещают быть открытыми, не требующими разрешений и поддерживаемыми экономикой токенов. Тем не менее, хотя многие новые проекты Web3 называют себя децентрализованными сетями, протоколами, децентрализованными автономными организациями (DAO) и децентрализованными приложениями, большинство из них на самом деле представляют собой предприятия с продуктами, которые не смогут расти, если они не начнут думать о себе как о таковых.

Идеология не продается в долгосрочной перспективе, и присвоение таких терминов, как «протокол» и «DAO», не устраняет необходимость разработки и масштабирования продукта, который люди действительно хотят использовать. И действительно, в случае проектов Web3 их продукты должны быть на порядок лучше, чем их централизованные аналоги, чтобы компенсировать значительные трения UX (пользовательского опыта) при использовании продукта с криптографическим бэкендом. И хотя такие вещи, как владение собственными данными, могут иметь решающее значение для 10% ваших пользователей, большинство пользователей руководствуются удобством, а не конфиденциальностью.

Но это все еще оставляет вопрос о том, как измерить успех. До недавнего времени проекты Web3 в основном оценивались по двум показателям: цене и рыночной капитализации — если хотите, называйте это «ценностью на основе спекуляций». И, как мы знаем из истории, это не лучший показатель для долгосрочного успеха.

Хотя список ни в коем случае не является исчерпывающим, вот некоторые полезные показатели роста, основанные на Web3, поскольку они применимы к трем основным категориям: DeFi, Layer 1/Layer 2 и Play-to-Earn Gaming.

DeFi: рост стоимости за счет притока финансовых средств, интеграции

Приложения децентрализованных финансов (DeFi) включают децентрализованные биржи, такие как Uniswap, и кредитные платформы, такие как Compound. Большинство проектов DeFi разрабатываются централизованной командой разработчиков, которая затем стремится передать управление своими операциями децентрализованному сообществу держателей токенов. Ключевые показатели роста:

1. Общая заблокированная стоимость — TVL с самого начала был показателем успеха для приложений DeFi. Он представляет собой общую стоимость криптоактивов, депонированных в протоколе DeFi, для таких вещей, как торговля, размещение ставок и кредитование. В то время как TVL является отличным показателем для протоколов заимствования/кредитования, таких как Aave и Compound, он менее полезен для децентрализованных бирж, таких как Uniswap, которые измеряют рост в основном по объему торгов. Одним из недостатков использования TVL для измерения долгосрочного роста является то, что пользователи и трейдеры часто перескакивают с одного приложения DeFi на другое в поисках более высокой доходности, а несколько китов могут создавать иллюзию активности, что делает TVL не очень надежной метрикой использования. Однако это отличный показатель оценки. Заблокированные активы имеют материальную ценность и несут альтернативные издержки и комисси по другим продуктам.

2. Активные кошельки. В то время как традиционные торговые площадки измеряют ежедневных активных пользователей (DAU) и ежемесячных активных пользователей (MAU), в DeFi пользователи просто подключают свой кошелек и начинают покупать, продавать и делать ставки. Аналоговым измерением DAU и MAU в DeFi будут ежедневные активные кошельки и ежемесячные активные кошельки.

3. Количество интеграций . Поскольку приложения DeFi можно компоновать или взаимодействовать с другими приложениями DeFi и использовать их, еще одним показателем роста является количество и качество интеграций, когда приложение используется в других кошельках, биржах и продуктах DeFi. Активность разработчиков является ключом к росту проекта и лидерству на рынке DeFi.

Layer 1 и 2: рост за счет активности разработчиков

Layer (уроень) 1 относится к блокчейнам базового уровня, которые определяют такие проекты, как Ethereum, Solana, Near, Avalanche и Flow. Проекты уровня 2, такие как Polygon, располагаются поверх существующих проектов уровня 1, чтобы обеспечить масштабирование. Рост этих проектов происходит в основном за счет приложений, созданных на основе этих протоколов. Ключевые метрики:

1. Количество разработчиков и приложений — Учитывая, что проекты уровня 1 и уровня 2 имеют открытый исходный код, любой может строить на их основе и интегрироваться с ними. Количество разработчиков и количество приложений, созданных на основе данного протокола, являются, пожалуй, наиболее важными показателями роста для проектов L1/L2. Хорошим способом количественной оценки количества разработчиков, участвующих в проекте, было бы посмотреть на количество активных пользователей в средах разработки и библиотеках, таких как Github. Чем больше внимания получат дополнительные приложения как от пользователей, так и от инвесторов, тем выше будет рост базового проекта. Блокчейн Flow, например, увеличился с 50 приложений в сети в декабре 2020 года до 650 приложений к концу 2021 года. В прошлом году проекты, основанные на Flow, привлекли более 700 миллионов долларов финансирования и способствовали росту транзакций и принятию пользователей блокчейна Flow.

2. Количество активных кошельков. У большинства проектов L1/L2 есть собственные криптокошельки, которые позволяют пользователям покупать, продавать, торговать, стейкать и взаимодействовать с децентрализованными приложениями (dapps), построенными поверх их инфраструктуры. Как и в случае с DeFi, ключевым показателем роста является количество ежедневных активных кошельков (DAW) и ежемесячных активных кошельков (MAW). Сторонние кошельки, такие как Metamask (Ethereum), Blocto (Flow) и Phantom (Solana), часто становятся основными центрами для активов пользователей внутри экосистемы этого протокола.

3. Общее количество и размер транзакций. Количество транзакций, количество крупных транзакций (более 100 000 долларов США) и объем транзакций по данному протоколу являются хорошей метрикой использования сети в качестве средства обмена (хотя это не всегда конечная цель проектов). Долларовая доля от общего объема транзакций также может быть использована для измерения доли рынка по сравнению с конкурентами.

Играйте, чтобы зарабатывать на играх (play-to-earn): рост за счет партнерства, поощрения игроков

Игры «играй, чтобы заработать» (P2E) — это видеоигры, в которых игрок может получать вознаграждение, имеющее реальную ценность. В отличие от обычных видеоигр, где игровые предметы хранятся в частных сетях передачи данных и принадлежат создателям игр, NFT позволяют игрокам владеть уникальными активами, которые они покупают. Кроме того, когда игрок владеет внутриигровым активом NFT, он может свободно продавать его за пределами платформы, на которой он был создан, что невозможно в обычных играх. Игроки также имеют право голоса в управлении самой игрой. Хотя нам еще предстоит увидеть устойчивую модель криптоигр, которую мы можем использовать в качестве плана успеха, вот три полезных показателя для оценки проектов P2E:

1. Количество активных игроков. Количество активных пользователей в день (или в месяц) является ключевым показателем роста и популярности игры. В то время как богатство контента игры имеет решающее значение для успеха, богатая контентом игра с небольшим количеством пользователей станет бесполезной. Не менее важна способность проекта сохранять количество активных игроков. Например, в Axie Infinity, построенном на основе сети Ronin, среднее количество ежедневных пользователей упало со 120 000 до примерно 20 000 за последние шесть месяцев, а доходы от SLP в игровой валюте упали.

2. Объем транзакций на пользователя. Этот показатель относится к средней сумме средств, переведенных на одного игрока, что отражает как уровень вовлеченности пользователей, так и надежность токена. Рост среднего объема транзакций на пользователя также является ключом к росту доходов. При оценке проектов обратите внимание на стабильность и рост среднего объема транзакций на пользователя.

3. Количество (и качество) партнерских отношений с гильдиями. В играх Web3 рост и распространение обычно достигаются за счет рефералов игроков и партнерских отношений с гильдиями. Криптовалютная игровая гильдия — это группа игроков, которые играют вместе, обмениваются данными и игровыми активами, а также поддерживают других игроков. Такие гильдии, как Yield Guild Games, Ancient8, Good Games Guild и Merit Circle, позволяют новым игрокам начать играть в игру, одалживая им игровые активы, которые в противном случае они не смогли бы себе позволить. Они также помогают P2E-играм ежедневно увеличивать количество активных пользователей за счет стипендий, онлайн-маркетинга и прямых инвестиций. Гильдии выбирают какие игры поддерживать, учитывая три фактора: качество игры, силу сообщества и надежность игровой экономики.

Вывод

По мере взросления Web3 также будет возникать потребность в понимании клиентов, драйверов доходов и реальных показателей роста. Хотя метрики, упомянутые в этой статье, сами по себе не рассказывают историю и часто сопровождаются различными предостережениями и ограничениями, они дают хорошее представление о направлении, в котором движется проект Web3. Понимание их поможет принимать решения о бизнесе и продукте, а также стимулировать сообщество.

Мы ожидаем появления множества новых моделей роста в Web3 и с нетерпением ждем развития проектов и показателей, которые их сопровождают.