#2 - Channels are getting a full revamp. The FC world is ready-ish.

Fundamental changes are coming to our favorite hashtags-turned-communities. Here are some primary updates:

- You'll need to be an invited member to post
- Anyone can reply/engage
- Channel managers can still choose to let everyone post, it will just take some automod-ing.

#3 - Trending is no longer trending

The trending tab lets you see content that's...trending. Hot. Widely distributed. You get it. It's a good way to be made aware of active corners of the protocol where you maybe don't spend much time - like /chiikawa .

But the Home algo was recently enhanced by machine learning and now pulls trending casts in so...do we kill the vestigial appendage? Dan posed the question today and by the looks of it, most people don't care if it goes away.

But most may not be enough to kill it, as 25% seem to like it.

And just like that, you're caught up on the week.

1. All votes

2. Power badge holders

Our best guess: it sticks around, for now.

You can filter the results yourself here.

Want to create your own poll? Just tap below.

• Simplify. Remove unnecessary or underperforming elements from the ecosystem

• Amplify. Extend the reach of user surveys on Farcaster

Moving forward, we're going to double down on core features that are working well in the web app and remove those that haven't taken off. We've started by reducing redundancies so you can focus on just two actions:

1. Creating a poll

2. Answering live polls

We eliminated everything else - direct questions, @survey handle submissions, and a few other smaller features. Now there are just two actions to take - Ask and Answer.

Here's a quick 3 minute video overview of the new web app:

To further simplify the ecosystem, we've decided to halt PNDR token drops and their associated utility within the app. Here's why:

• We saw limited use of the one utility that the token allowed - sending surveys via the @survey handle to gain distribution

• The token has had to live in a very constrained way out of an abundance of regulatory caution

• We're ramping up our reputation system to set a structure for our future rewards system

A snapshot of your holdings has already been taken, as well as a recording of every wallet that spent PNDR to ask survey questions. This will be saved and used as a reference point - alongside reputation - for any future rewards system.

New benefits have arrived! Note that Ponder Pass utility will continue to be improved and adjusted over time as the ecosystem evolves.

• Receive 25% more reputation each week for answering polls

• Reduce fees from 2% down to 0% on bountied polls

  Need a pass? Grab one here

We're big believers in the idea that "quantity has a quality all its own." Getting ten people to answer a question is fine and somewhat useful; getting 1,000 people to answer a question carries a lot more punch.

We consider it our duty to help gather as many quality responses as humanly possible for every Ponder survey that goes out. So, new rule.

Polls that get over 20 votes will be curated and recast in the /ponder channel from our account, significantly increasing your distribution (~30K followers).

This accomplishes two goals: it lets our hardcore poll respondents answer more questions efficiently while giving poll creators more responses - so long as they ask a good question.

We've also implemented direct poll voting in the Ponder web app. This means you can view and engage with all of the questions in an easy to consume format. Check it out here!

Keep an eye out for our next big release - the survey dashboard, where you'll be able to view all of your historic survey response data in one place 📁

Want to make a poll? Get started here: https://www.weponder.io/

Have questions? DC @ba or @cojo.eth on Warpcast

Starting today, you can make Ponder polls in a frame. Why does that matter?

Well, it means you never have to leave the Warpcast app to create them. And now that transactions are live, we decided to take things a step further. You can now add bounties to surveys that you make in frame, on Farcaster.

Why use polls?

Polls let you immediately get a pulse check from a large group of smart Farcasters, giving curious minds a peak into the collective brain of web3's finest. It's an excellent way to learn more about how the social tides are turning while also encouraging engagement on your casts. Currently, we're averaging over 100 upvotes per in-frame poll. Pretty wild.

It's also a great way to let the more timid among us have their voice heard. Even if you don't care to cast a lot yourself, your opinion still gets counted when it comes to polling. And that's pretty cool.

How it works

• Use the top pinned frame in the /ponder channel

• Respond to any cast with @poll, and we'll pop up the frame for you.

How the process works:

1. Add your question. Try to keep it short if possible.

2. Add your answers. Separate them with commas, max of 12 characters.

3. Add a bounty (optional). We recommend using desktop to add bounties for the time being.

4. Add token gating (optional). This is coming within the next week.

5. Finalize & launch. When you launch, the final button will pop a cast compoer up for you with your poll embedded in it . You can then choose a channel to cast it to. If you can't decide, you can always click on the survey and copy the link to post again later.

Bounty payouts for respondents

Every respondent has a 25% chance to earn 1/10th of the bounty until the bounty has been fully distributed. In short, the first 40 or 50 respondents will have a pretty decent shot. The goal here is to discourage botting, which becomes easier when the first 10 responses are guaranteed to pay out.

Example

A 100 USDC bounty is placed on a question (10x10USDC rewards)

• The first respondent has a 25% change to win, and does. Pool drops to 90 USDC

• The second respondent has a 25% chance to win, and doesn't. Pool remains at 90USDC

• This continues until all bounties have been paid out.

Note that we take a 2% fee on bounties from creators that don't hold a Ponder Pass; it's free if you do hold a Ponder Pass.

Coming soon: Data Dashboad for surveyors

We're working now on a data dashboard that will show you all of your past surveys as well as more detailed information about the responses you get and the type of people you're getting them from. Note that any surveys you ask now will be visible in the future dashboard.

Conclusion

Every day we're striving to bring more utility in the form of polls and surveys to the Farcaster ecosystem.

It'll only get more exciting from here. Thanks for Pondering. ✌

1. Enter your question and options. A preview of the poll will appear in real time

2. Hit Generate Link. You'll immediately be able to create your frame link

3. Paste your link into a cast. The poll frame will automatically build in the cast

Here we are making one in less than 10 seconds:

Not sure what to ask?

Here are some example polls that have performed well already:

How should Warpcast approach financialization? - 986 votes

What L2 have you been most active on? - 917 votes

If Michael Jordan is the GOAT, who is second best? - 856 votes

Try it out

🌟 Direct questions w/ bounties (from us)

🌟 Frames (from Farcaster)

With these powers combined (🌈), we're introducing a brand new type of question on Ponder - one that's bringing real ETH contracts into the Farcaster universe.

Questions + Rewards = Fun

Imagine you've got a question that's a little bit spicy; requires specific expertise; or is just kind of...personal. Now imagine you'd really like an answer, but @dawufi is simply not inclined to tell you about his first kiss. Well, you've now got a new tool in your arsenal to overcome his objections - direct questions.

How It Works

1. Craft your question. Visit the direct question page and submit your question. You can specify the recipient, attach an image (optional), and select the channel.

2. Set your bounty. Decide on the reward amount in Base Ethereum. There's a .002 ETH min ($5) and no maximum.

3. Preview and submit. Your question will preview in real time as you complete the fields. Once complete, submit it to the queue and it will fire out at the next set interval.

The respondent has 48 hours to answer your question. Once they do, they can claim it directly to their connected wallet - or donate it to Purple - all with a few taps of the frame.

Remember, the quality of the response hinges on asking people you trust.

Reward Mechanics

Once the question is answered, the respondent can simply tap the relevant Claim bounty button in the frame. They can choose to keep it, donate it to Purple, or split it. And here's the kicker: no need to return to the web app - the fund automagically get deposited in your Farcaster-connected Base ETH wallet. Ponder covers the gas!

This isn't just a feature; it's a new way to leverage Base for seamless value transfer, with zero friction for the respondent earning the bounty. These are effectively peer-to-peer transfers with zero fees (for now).

We hope this powers new kinds of interactions on Farcaster. As high-profile casters become increasingly sought-after, the value of direct, incentivized communication will rise accordingly. Expect spicier, more personal, or piercing questions with higher bounties.

Next steps

We're beyond excited to launch this, but keep in mind - it's new. We recommend starting with smaller ETH amounts as we roll out test questions in the coming weeks. Frames are uncharted territory, so let's take some baby steps together here.

Get started by submitting your first survey here

This is just the beginning of what's in store. Stay tuned, and let's start asking some thought-provoking questions, shall we?

Big changes have arrived in the Ponderverse.

First, fun stats- we've now delivered 150 surveys, with over 3,500 responses, 20,000 rewarded actions, and 1,900 unique users.

Roughly half of the submitted surveys came directly from the community. And that's particularly impressive, given it hasn't been easy to submit! Previously it was only possible via our Telegram or a Google Sheet. Not great from a user perspective.

It was time for an upgrade, and that upgrade has arrived.

🪙 Token Powered Submissions

Now, you can submit community surveys directly through the Ponder web app and get results 48 hours after approval. On average, we're seeing 33 responses per survey (Dec 2023). They're a great tool to drive channel engagement for mods, too. People love answering good questions!

The new site lets you:

Submit using PNDR tokens: You'll need to connect your wallet holding Ponder tokens, or purchase them in the app.

Create & preview before committing: See how your survey looks in real time.

Get a helping hand: Our team reviews each submission to make sure it follows the guidelines posted here. If questions don't pass the bar, we'll either make minor edits (spelling, images, etc.) or they won't be published and tokens will be refunded.

Visit the website to check it out

PNDR pricing & utility

First and foremost, PNDR tokens are meant to be used within the Ponder ecosystem. You can think about them like credit card points or Dave N' Busters tickets, with one big exception - you really own them; they're ERC20s. We believe individual ownership is what web3 is all about.

Note that there is no value accrual mechanism for PNDR tokens at launch, and we've put a few unique controls in place to ensure that they don't fall victim to speculation. These are not meme coins - they're meant to actually do things in the ecosystem.

• PNDR tokens will be available for purchase directly from Ponder at a static price, relative to Base ETH (this may change over time as survey demand increases). You'll need to sign in to purchase.

• We've created a one-sided Uniswap pool with massive PNDR liquidity locked within a tight trading range. That means PNDR will only be purchasable to start, and buying and selling will have very minor price impacts. The goal here is specifically to stave off speculation, while still allowing token owners to redeem their tokens if liquidity is available.

Smart Liquidity Management

20M token liquidity pool: 20% of the 100M total tokens are deposited in a Uniswap V3 liquidity pool.

Limited Price Range: In our LP, we'll only offer liquidity within an 8% price variation from median at absolute maximum. In testing, we saw <1% variation even with large sales.

Note that this is only for our own liquidity pool; we can't prohibit others from taking their own buy/sell actions.

Deep One Sided Liquidity: The size of the pool means we'll see minimal price impact of both buying and selling, even with large transactions.

Broad Accessibility: Tokens being readily available on Uniswap means we can attract new users without them having to visit our site.

But... how do I make money?

Soon we'll be introducing surveys with peer to peer bounties attached. Stay tuned 👀

In the mean time, you can build your reputation by answering surveys - which will help you become more prepared to receive bountied questions over time.

In summary

We're striving to create a community where your thoughts have real impact and value. With community submissions becoming more streamlined, we're one step closer to making that a reality.

Visit us at weponder.io to join us.

Keep pondering!

Note - with any new feature, things may go wrong! If you run into issues, reach out to @ba or @cojo.eth on Farcaster.

Greetings, friends!

It's time to introduce something that Ben and I have been toiling away on in the background for a few months now - Ponder. Ponder is the parent application that will live one layer above Surveycaster, and will house our survey distribution and rewards logic across multiple platforms. It will allow us to set the foundation for a knowledge sharing system that can become much larger than (the already mighty 💪) Surveycaster. And it's something we're trying to make so low friction that you'll really only be interacting with it on social platforms 90% of the time.

The Birth of Ponder

Think for a moment about Xitter polls. They're fast, easy to answer, and the good ones get you excited to learn what the rest of the world thinks of that topic. Ponder is distilling the essence of that experience down, reformulating it, then dosing it with some high-quality, web3 steroids - all thanks to the capabilities of Farcaster.

It started with Surveycaster, which came about as a means to gauge community interest on topics that are relevant to the Farcaster community. But we believe giving more structure to the current system can help make the whole experience more fun, consistent and emotionally rewarding to take part in.

To make this happen, Ponder will live in a unique space between the worlds of an app and a protocol. For now, the app format lets us keep things simple and deliver quality surveys; but we're building Ponder to become a decentralized protocol that will govern and reward the transfer of original human thoughts. You know, simple stuff. But if we're going to get there, we'll need a mechanism to reward good responses. That's where the PNDR token and Ponder Pass come in.

Yes, we do think a token is necessary. You can read more about token details at the end of this post.

First, some numbers

So far on on our quest with Surveycaster we've:

• Delivered 66 distinct surveys

• Engaged 907 unique Farcasters

• Amassed over 1,406 responses

• Elicited 3,772 total reactions

These aren’t just numbers. They're a testament to a purple tribe united by curiosity and candor, answering surveys ranging from socially risky (like whether we should have Universal Basic Income) to light-hearted (like when we'll get our first real AI friends).

Why Farcaster?

We hitched our wagon to Farcaster not just for its "sufficiently decentralized" promise but because of you – the community. The quality of discourse here would make Socrates nod approvingly (and yes, he did influence our immaculately rainbow-bearded logo). By engaging the high signal Farcaster community as an initial test lab, we're able to resolve much of the zero-to-one distribution problem - and we'll explore replicating this across other decentralized social networks in the future. We're focusing on Farcaster for now, but as long as a wallet is attached to the respondent on a given platform, Ponder surveys will be simple to implement.

How we're thinking about credentials & using EAS Base

Right now, being on Farcaster is its own credential. You have to get through the gauntlet of Dan Romero, or be invited by someone who did. But imagine a world where we can identify and harness the wisdom of verified experts, as proven by immutable credentials on chain. Our test with Research Hub gave us a (very limited) sneak peek. With the erosion of institutional trust leaving knowledge voids in its wake, a transparent network of blockchain-backed experts might be a legitimate, real solution.

To that end, we're planning to use the Ethereum Attestation Service (Base) to log all survey transactions at the most primitive level with a brand new schema we're developing. What this means, in short, is that your answers to surveys will begin to aggregate towards you having your own knowledge credential that you can carry with you outside of Ponder. More on this in a later blog post, because it's awesome.

Why this all matters

But we still need to answer, "Why Ponder?". The reality is, we're teetering on the brink of an era dominated by AI-generated content. While 95%+ of online content is currently human, in a few years we'll see that flipped, with most being crafted by our silicon counterparts. In that new world Ponder will continue to exist as a bastion of unfiltered human sentiment. We believe in the uniqueness of human experience that's been informed by both nature and nurture - one that AI, however advanced, may never* replicate.

In fact, we may need tools like Ponder to help solve the alignment problem that's rapidly come into focus. Human input is a critical element in the feedback loop for training modern LLMs - incredibly, there were only a few dozen people doing this at OpenAI in the early stages of ChatGPT development. They just put out a call for experts in two dozen research areas - imagine if we could incentivize high quality input from real humans on a global scale. Ponder - in its final form - will be able to help solve this.

In short, Ponder aims to be the lighthouse of genuine human insight standing above an ocean of AI content.

Looking into the future

Ponder is more than a product. It’s a harbinger of a new chapter in digital discourse, and a way to inject human insights into an ever more algorithmic reality. It’s early days, and while AI might consume vast swathes of our digital playing fields, we're here to ensure that the flame of human insight continues burning bright. All you need to do to participate, for now, is to keep answering the survey questions that are delivered every week.

Hop in. The Ponder odyssey is just beginning.

Colin & Ben

Want to get the Ponder Pass? Grab it here
Want to learn more about the PNDR reputation & token distribution system? Check out this page