@BungeeExchange One of my favs, You can bridge or #swap bridge / I recommend using #Refuel as well https://bungee.exchange

@lifiprotocol Advanced Bridge #Aggregation with DEX Connectivity https://transferto.xyz/swap

@ChainHopDEX A one-click cross-chain swap, any token, any #chain. You can swap on the same network or Bridge/ #SwapBridgehttps://app.chainhop.exchange

@ComposableFin The first interoperable infrastructure for modular DeFi https://mosaic.composable.finance

@Orbiter_Finance A decentralized cross-rollup #bridge, which is the infrastructure of #Layer2 I really like this one/ You gonna notice the speed and low-cost https://orbiter.finance

@portalbridge_ A token bridge built on #Wormholehttps://portalbridge.com/#/transfer

@deBridgeFinance Powering secure & seamless cross-chain apps. https://app.debridge.finance

@CangoFi A one-click super #aggregator that finds the best rates for cross-chain swaps. https://cango.fi

@zapper_fi This one I also like a lot, You can Swap/ Bridge/Explore #NFTs and #Defi and their very new mobile app is just the best https://zapper.fi/dashboard

@Clipper_DEX A #decentralized exchange that's built for retail traders. https://clipper.exchange/app/swap

@SlingshotCrypto oh I like this one too, Supports many #networks or is the only place to trade #Cantohttps://app.slingshot.finance you can also join the waitlist for their mobile app with many #rewards including #NFT and $BTC, here is my referral

@swing_xyz another swap that supports many networks and soon #Dogechainhttps://app.swing.xyz/swap

@matchaxyz The best #DeFi experience across many networks Powered by

https://matcha.xyz always one of the best swap rates

@via_protocol Bridge any token #cross-chain the most efficient way. On 25 #networks, Using 21 bridges, With 7 #routers in one UI! https://router.via.exchange also, join their discord they usually got many ongoing #campaigns

@DeFiSaver last but not least and one of the most known names in #web3/defi. You can use the products to do many things including $swap and #bridgehttps://app.defisaver.com/bridge

you can use the swaps between the bridges so you not only using service A but also doing the bridge on service B with a different token. You can do these steps while you're doing your daily routine

Join CryptoVerse for more Early-Stage Projects and Airdrops:

Content:\ 1. Wallets\ 2. Bridges\ 3. Upcoming Projects\ 4. Projects on the Testnet\ 5. Projects on the Mainnet\ 6. Games\ 7. Resources

1. Wallets

As of now, only the following two wallets are available for Starknet. However, more wallets are expected to join the ecosystem.

Argent X

Link: https://www.argent.xyz/argent-x

Braavos

Link: https://braavos.app

2. Bridges

Bridge ETH from the L1 to Starknet using one of the following bridges. For the testnet, you’ll need to acquire testnet ETH from a Goerli faucet, then bridge it to Starknet Goerli.

Official Starknet Bridge

Link: https://starkgate.starknet.io/

Orbiter

Orbiter is a fast bridge that supports a number of L2 networks including Starknet.\ Link: https://www.orbiter.finance

LayerSwap

LayerSwap is an innovative solution that allows users to migrate funds from CEX to L2 networks.\ Link: https://www.layerswap.io

3. Upcoming Projects

Nostra Finance

Nostra is the liquidity layer of StarkNet.

StarkDefi

StarkDefi is a permissionless and trustless hub of comprehensive Defi solutions built to leverage the Decentralized ZK-Rollup on StarkNet. In order to access the testnet, get the Citizen level 5 role by completing the crew3 quests.

zkGraph

zkGraph is a social graph, with limitless possibilities and uncompromised privacy.Link: https://www.zkgraph.xyz/

ZKX Protocol

ZKX is a permissionless protocol for derivatives built on StarkNet.

Kandra

A new DeFi protocol on StarkNet.

Zohal

Next-generation AMM coming soon to Starknet.More info: https://zohal.space

CryptoSwap

Decentralized Exchange on zkSync and StarkNet.

4. Projects on the Testnet

ZKEX

ZKEX is a bridgeless multi-chain order book DEX, secured with zero-knowledge proofs, powered by zkLink, StarkNet, and zkSync.

What to do? See this tweet:

Starknet ID

Identity and naming service for Starknet. To mint your identity and choose your .stark domain on the testnet, see the quoted tweet:

Astraly

Launchpad, fundraising and community building platform on StrakNet.

SithSwap

SithSwap is an AMM on StarkNet featuring stable + volatile swaps, ultra-low fees & slippage, gauged (3,3) rewards & bribes governed by veNFTs. The alpha testnet is live.\ Link: https://app.sithswap.com/swap/

zkLend

zkLend is an L2 money-market protocol built on StarkNet, combining zk-rollup scalability, superior transaction speed, and cost-savings with Ethereum’s security.

Magnety

Magnety is an asset management protocol allowing anyone to build, scale and monetize investment strategies using DeFi protocols included in the platform.

StarkSwap

Building the next generation of DeFi on StarkNet beginning with an AMM, with other DeFi products to follow.

Hashstack

Zk-native money market protocol enabling secure under-collateralized loans.

Brine

A decentralized, trustless and cross-chain order-book exchange for traders. They offer a unique and simple user experience with an intuitive UI including profit-loss analysis while guaranteeing simple CEX to DEX portability.

NFT building and composition protocol. Get some briqs and build the dream. Testnet is live now.

JediSwap

JediSwap is a fully permissionless and composable AMM on Starknet

5. Projects on the Mainnet

Starkboard

Analytics Data Hub — Find all the latest Starknet data that you are looking for.\ More info: https://starkboard.io/

Mint Square

NFT marketplace on zkSync and Starknet.

Aspect

NFT marketplace on Starknet.

Early Starkers

A collection of 1234 Star NFTs aiming to gather the early adaptors and pioneers of StarkNet community. The collection is already sold out. Available on Mint Square and Aspect.\ More info: https://www.earlystarkers.io/

10K Swap

10KSwap is a Layer 2 AMM protocol and is already live on the mainnet.\ More info: https://10kswap.com/

mySwap

Another AMM built on top of Starknet.

6. Games

Eykar

A decentralized game of conquest powered by StarkNet. An almost infinite territory that can be conquered through alliances and wars.\ Mint a free NFT and level up by completing the quests: https://quests.eykar.org

The Ninth

The Ninth is a metaverse world built with Starkware technology. The world is truly owned by users, and land owners can generate various in-game elements and have various gameplay.\ More info: https://ninth.gg

The Redline

Giant robot NFT racing and engineering on StarkNet and UE5.Deep Strategy and Drama Game.\ More info: https://redline.game/

Imperium Wars

A Conquer to Earn NFT game where five empires from all over the globe will ally, betray and fight in order to reach Glory and Fortune.\ More info: https://imperiumwars.xyz/

Frens Lands

On-chain world builder RTS built on StarkNet where you harvest resources and build to create your dream community.\ More info: https://www.frenslands.xyz/

Dope Wars

Modular and extendable game system inspired by calculator game nostalgia.\ More info: https://dopewars.gg/

7. Resources

StarkEvents:

Find all Starknet events and activities (hackathons, conferences, meetups, community calls, etc). This project is managed by the Nostra community.\ Link: http://starkevents.xyz/

Starknet-ecosystem:

Explore all projects building & running on StarkNet L2. This project is managed by the Starknet community.\ More info: https://www.starknet-ecosystem.com/

Some accounts to follow:

Odin:

Nurstar

Starknet Godfather

Starknet Intern

Starkware

Starkevents

Join Alpha Drops for more Early-Stage Projects and Airdrops

📢 TG Channel:

https://t.me/CryptoVerseIR_Official

🐦 Twitter:

https://twitter.com/CryptoVerseIR

Link3:

https://link3.to/dkFugmxt

1. If you let Business Stakeholders dictate How to build features

In your day to day operation, you will come across a number of Business stakeholders who are just as passionate about the product as you are. In the discussion, they may try to dictate or suggest ways to build the product. These suggestions always comes with bias and generally no data backing at all.

As a Product master, you need to ask the stakeholders for a Problem statement and ask a simple question “WHY”. Keep asking questions till you are satisfied with the answer. This helps you get clarity as to what the exact problem statement is and what are you trying to solve. A great article on Why vs What is listed here

Pic Credits: Getty Images

2. If you love solution and not the problem

As a product manager you are supposed to solve problems that a Business / User / Stakeholder is facing. To be able to get the right solution, you should dig deep in the problem by researching, conducting user interviews, analysing data, forecasting data. Once you have understood the problem in detail, you will be able to narrow down as to which solution works best.

Remember, a solution that works in one scenario may or may not work in another depending on the problem statement and how your initial research findings work out.

As stated by a reputed professor: “Don’t fall in love with the solution, flirt will multiple solutions, fall in love with the problem!”.

3. If you don’t use data to make decisions

This pointer seems obvious, but I have seen Product Managers who do not have access to data (not even Google Analytics) and are designing how a new page on the website would look like. All they rely on is Empathy or what looks good.

Remember a product manager cannot be anecdotal. You need to get as much data as you can before taking a decision. Be paranoid with data. Be the devil’s advocate and ask yourself questions “Why ”, if you don’t have a data backing the answer, keep searching.

Pic Credits: IDG

4. If you don’t do at least a low fidelity wireframe yourself

We have dedicated UX/UI designers who are experts in designing wireframes and prototypes but you need to share a rough idea of whats expected and let them go around with their magic. Hence, you need to define a low fidelity wireframe and share it with them.

You can use any prototyping tool like Balsamic, Adobe XD, Figma, etc. to build a prototype. Balsamic is great for beginners. If needed, you can also draw your UX on a paper and share it with your UX designers. The Niche Mind has created an awesome workbook which you can buy from here

5. If you wait to define your Success Metrics post the launch

In the concept phase, its important you define your success metrics (North pole) and do not change it unless something changes drastically. I know product managers who believe in defining the success metrics on the go depending on the response. But as a product manager, you need to have researched all the parameters and anticipate the response and set your goals accordingly, Your success metrics will also help the Marketing team and operations team to plan accordingly.

Photo by Lukas from Pexels

6. If you don’t track your Product Metrics on a regular basis

A number of us believe our job is done once the product is launched. In reality thats where actual Product Management begins. Launching a product is easy, enhancement is the tricky part. You need to define your product metrics and be obsessed with it. You should track it daily to ensure you are on the right track. At the same time, you need to evaluate and look at ways to achieve your product metrics.

Constantly read your product feedback and take it constructively and derive as much value as possible.

7. If you don’t follow the PDLC (Product Development Life Cycle)

In your career, a number of times you will face pressure from the management or stakeholders to skip a step and move to the next one. Do not let others dictate your Product Development process. These guidelines / steps are imperial in achieving success and every small step is important. Ask for time but ensure you follow your process and ensure that you are satisfied in your process.

We are all learning and evolving.

Decentralized organizations enable work to be distributed to the community members instead of being entirely driven by top-down decision making hierarchies. While tokens financially align participants to contribute value to such a network, it is grassroots community leadership and ownership that enables the long-term success of a token network.

**Ownership is not fostered through financial incentive design but rather through a long-term focus on community building. **Without a sense of ownership, you will struggle to attract the necessary contributors to decentralize different areas of protocol operations, such as governance and working groups, for your token network.

We can think of the community building process as a 3-stage funnel that takes a potential member from the community discovery stage to sustained positive-sum participation. In building this funnel, community builders should aim to do the following:

1. Creating opportunities for people to discover the community/project

2. Creating ways for people to get involved meaningfully

3. Creating opportunities for participants to build a sense of ownership

1. Creating opportunities for intrinsically motivated contributors to discover the community

Early on with token networks, a large part of your focus should be generating ‘top of the funnel’ awareness to attract community participants.

This work might include:

• Community branding and communications

• Content creation and features in media publications

• Retroactive token distributions and airdrops

• Collaborations and partnerships with other relevant communities

• Community events such as hackathons, panels, and community calls

• 1-on-1 external outreach to potentially relevant potential contributors

Your goal here is to attract primarily intrinsically motivated community members as opposed to purely extrinsic reasons.

• Intrinsically motivated network participants are driven by internalized reasons, such as alignment with the project’s ethos, mission, or even other personal or professional goals. Intrinsically motivated community members form strong communities and sustain their participation even when the monetary upside is uncertain.

• Extrinsically motivated network participants are often driven by external rewards such as financial gain or attention and often optimize for zero-sum short-term self-gain. **Extrinsically motivated community members form the basis for weak communities and drive away other, more intrinsically motivated participants. **This is especially common in bull markets, where you’ll notice an influx of extrinsically motivated people in your communication channels driven by token price movements.

While people tend to be motivated by various reasons, the goal here is to center the community to attract and retain long-term intrinsically driven participants. Like attracts like, and this applies both ways.

**The biggest mistake projects make here is overly focusing their marketing around monetary incentives, **such as token liquidity mining programs or price movements, which attracts the attention of mostly extrinsically driven participants.

Instead, focus on creating awareness around what differentiates the community: from how the product was built and designed, ways to participate in the community, the community’s existing contributors, the people behind the project, its mission and values, narratives, memes…

2. Building a relationship with new community members to foster minimum viable contributors

The next goal after attracting community members is to understand what they want to achieve and then guide them towards their own goals to achieve** minimum viable participation.**

Early on, it is unlikely that new community members are willing to commit a large amount of time or energy without knowing that their efforts will be put to good use. The goal of minimum viable participation is to foster a relationship, from which further trust and engagement can be built.

This process looks like:

1. Community member self-signalling

Investing in building a relationship with every new community newcomer is generally impractical. Instead, you want to focus your efforts selectively on those who want to get involved meaningfully. One way to surface these individuals is to enable people to self signal their intentions.

This can organically emerge through a simple “Introduce yourself” or “I want to contribute” or “what we need” threads/channels where community members can signal their willingness to get involved and express how they want to get involved. This could come in the form of bounties to attract open source contributions or creating structured grants programs catering to developers or specialized network contributors such as liquidity providers, stakers, governance participants, etc.

Eg. Bounties are more useful to those who want to contribute but don’t know how/where to start. Bounties scope out the work to be done and minimize the coordination overhead for those that want to jump straight in.

The key is making sure there are call-to-actions for the different community contributors you are aiming to attract.

• Gitcoin’s Stewards program

Discords for RaidGuild, Bankless, MetaGame

2. Relationship building and community member success

Once you’ve identified community members who want to participate meaningfully, you want to better understand their goals and needs.

• What brought them to the community in the first place?

• What does their journey into crypto look like?

• Are they aware of different opportunities to get involved?

• Is there anything they are particularly interested in?

• Are they working on anything else themselves?

The goal here is to focus on building a relationship first and only then can you better understand where someone can fit in the community and how the community and help them each their own goals. This can happen through ‘new contributor’ community onboarding calls or even 1-on-1 outreach calls to the most actively engaged community members you identify.

3. Directing community members to opportunities to participate

As you have a better sense of a community member’s level of capacity to contribute and preferences, the next step is to continuously share and create opportunities for them to engage and contribute. As each contributor invests more into the community, you need to match those efforts with relevant positive feedback — whether it may be social recognition, monetary token rewards, or even more responsibility.

You want to think of monetary rewards as a means of acknowledging the value that a community member brings to the community as opposed to being the direct incentive to participate.

3. Fostering community ownership

Everyone wants active community governance from day one, but the reality is that only once community members have grown to become familiar with a community and invested enough of their time and energy, is it possible for them to grow an ownership mentality.

And once you do, much of everything else in between takes care of itself.

Once community members are sufficiently involved with a community, your next goal is to create an environment where community members can safely express their voice and sense of ownership. This may include:

• Being given opportunities to influence and participate in key community discussions, decisions, and forums of importance. The key here is making sure community members feel heard and feel empowered to have a real impact on the future direction of the community.

• Being given opportunities to take on increasingly more responsibility via community leadership roles such as running working groups. eg. Index Coop Biz dev working group, MetaCartel Paladins role

• Being rewarded with vested tokens/network ownership for their work, commitment and value they bring to the community.eg. Index Coop full time retention proposal

Being able to foster this sense of ownership is key to retaining key community contributors and participants.

There should always be some level of progression on these levels.

Conclusion

We are still in the early days of understanding how to properly build and leverage the capabilities of decentralized organizations to their fullest extent.

Your community is the future of your decentralized network.

If you hadn’t started, the best time to start is today.

Hopefully, this post can help builders get a better sense of how to grow decentralized communities and why community building will establish itself as a core practice of Web 3.0 — if you’re a community builder with more questions, feel free to reach out to ask more questions ~

In the morning, you’re picking crops on the farm. By afternoon, you enter the arena to do battle. This isn’t a remake of the movie Gladiator. It’s one Anon’s day in the world of crypto games. As DeFi, NFTs and other blockchain-based technologies compete for mindshare, the entire crypto world is not only borrowing heavily from game mechanics but increasingly becoming a single massive integrated game itself. This is the inevitable result of user sovereignty. Interoperable protocols provide the freedom to move between thousands of dapps and blockchains, so developers are leaning into gamification in order to put a leash on existing users and keep them coming back for more.

Game designers are, of course, experts in terms of keeping people engaged for long periods of time, even more than social media companies. Where social media companies have a recurring strategy to get someone to engage and then keep them engaged (ie. monetizing their attention through ads), games are different. Games look to draw you in at an initial (often free) engagement, but then encourage you to build status and identity within the experience itself. Mapping all this to crypto is easy. The users make purchases (see: NFTs) that make your social involvement (see: social tokens) unique. The experience blends intrinsic and extrinsic incentives to keep you invested (financially & socially) in the experience itself.

Despite this focus on gamification however, crypto games continue to struggle with designing exciting game mechanics that both drive long term engagement and live up to the decentralized and democratic ideals of the blockchain. Even the most popular games such as CryptoKitties and Top Shots have fairly similar bell-shaped curves in terms of transaction volumes and DAUs. We see significant concentration with limited adoption by broader groups participating at a fairly skewed playtime.

Why is this? Well, for the most part, cryptogames are borrowing pay-to-win and other non-meritocratic game mechanics instead of building the accomplishment loops that drive user/player delight, long-term engagement and mass adoption. They reward power users and big spenders, leading to a cycle of ‘rich getting richer.’ All this is based on non-skill-based mechanics that reward wallet size above all else. For example, users who buy rich assets are granted future potential benefits (more inflation, more exclusive opportunities to purchase in early sales) leading to them getting richer and putting themself further ahead. That’s not to say there aren’t success stories -- nor opportunities for skill, hard work and grinding to be rewarded -- but until the ecosystem learns to adapt the best of games, by rewarding all kinds of human capabilities, it cannot reach its full potential.

Cities & Culture

In Economic Flows & Cultural Products, we discussed how the path of protocol and creator (ie. DAOs) adopting will mirror the growth of culture in our first cities. That is to say, culture and creation via patronage and communal backing. Ironically, games were one of the first major applications and products built by crypto enthusiasts looking to drive greater adoption and mass participation in their new decentralized economy. In 2018, many of the biggest NFT marketplaces (OpenSea and Bitski) went all-in on crypto games as many proclaimed they were the future of crypto adoption and that crypto was the future of gaming.

This made sense. Gaming was already one of the most popular activities in the digital world, with significant overlap between the crypto and gamer audiences. And looking at the example of both Facebook and mobile, it was evident how important the rise of platform-specialized games had been to the popularity of those platforms. On top of that, gaming seemed like a particularly perfect fit for decentralized technology. Players have long been used to purchasing digital goods and participating in digital economies, with a natural belief that games ought to allow players more freedom and control over their virtual possessions. Vitalik Buterin has credited Blizzard’s arbitrary destruction of his World of Warcraft Siphon Life Spell as impetus to create Ethereum.

Three years later, despite all these efforts and focus, crypto games still haven’t seen anything like the viral adoption we saw within Facebook and mobile. Most remain much more like speculative investment vehicles than entertainment hits. And with high gas fees and challenges in scalability and infrastructure, the player ranks remain small and concentrated.

There are several reasons why crypto games haven’t scaled to mass adoption--

• Platform: platform issues remain rampant. Today there are high transaction costs and problems with scalability, problems that would be even worse if user bases and demand were bigger. Plus there are big ugly unavoidable questions regarding the benefits of decentralization to the high-twitch vivid environments many serious gamers demand.

• “Revenue”: business models remain challenged and misaligned. Today the opportunity for game-makers to earn a SHIT-TON of money from sale of land and items leads them to maximize these types of products -- this can make the core of the game suffer from ‘asset inequality,’ an experience too expensive for entry-level players, and a sort of preening Yuppie-ness that isn’t that cool.

• Immersion: there is insufficient immersion - the crypto-ness of the games (many are thinly veiled yield farming) and interoperability of assets across games into marketplaces reduces the game’s intensity and believability and its sense of place and escape.

More importantly though, crypto games are competing with DeFi itself and, in that, often losing. If the game is just thinly veiled speculation and/or yield farming, why not just do that with the thousands of fun tokens minus the game pretext? It may actually be simpler to play the purer version, and, with the addition of social media group behaviors, even more fun.

DeFi is a more accessible game than crypto games and the rules can’t be changed by any single entity.

It’s possible that, because the use of the blockchain for the trading of digital assets as NFTs is so obvious (and lucrative) that crypto game designers have missed the larger possibilities of decentralization. Rather than centering their communities on competitions of cooperation and creativity, we get shallow status contests and themed casinos. And incentives can be seriously mis-aligned. With crypto games, the original creator can mint more NFTs at any point which causes inflation.

There’s no question that videogames have a God-dictator that determines the story, controls the economy, and tries to create the best possible experience. This helps make the games more fun and playable by altering the “meta” and ensuring playability and balance. This authority may be camouflaged in games, but it's always there. And it is essential to how successful games work. DeFi, in comparison, is competing 'games' (blockchains and dapps) within a metagame (the game of token vs token), with nobody in charge, or perhaps lots of people in charge. In the world of crypto, everything and nothing is a game at the same time.

In many ways, the problems facing crypto games reflect the inherent tension between those aspects of a game that ‘want’ to be decentralized and those better or more easily accomplished by a centralized solution. The development and management of innovative gameplay experiences, complex storyworlds and game economies are simply easier in a centralized setting. New crypto users, with their need for fiat and customer service, make this problem even more acute. Perhaps the two most popular gateways to crypto, Coinbase and Dapper’s TopShots, accepted the need for a compromise, but it is often an uncomfortable synthesis. The disruptive capabilities and ambitions of crypto sit restlessly within a bounded environment, like a caged wild animal looking for its opportunity to escape and wreak havoc. How to bridge this gap? Everyone agrees, to use the most common example, that it would be awesome if Fortnite enabled you to buy and sell and use Fortnite stuff outside of Fortnite. But that stuff is only valuable because Fortnite is awesome, and that awesomeness is the product of a highly managed environment. That's not to say we will never build decentralized systems and governance for a thing like Fortnite. We can and will eventually have Creator DAOs that build and run worlds. But we're not yet very close to being able to do that. And until then, we will mainly have crypto games that are more DeFi than delightful, more on-ramp to the blockchain than an engrossing destination.

by Reimond Verse

“When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth.” - Steve Jobs

We do these things…

“…not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” - John F. Kennedy

Let’s begin with some facts.

‘Centralization’ isn’t failing or fatally flawed. Centralized products and platforms are popular and successful. Centralization provides users with convenience, incredibly low prices, comprehensive directories and marketplaces, and just about everything else we associate with compelling innovations. Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, Apple, and Twitter are all examples of fantastically successful centralization that provides value every single day.

But centralization absolutely does limit the number of big ‘winners.’ The omnipresent power law skews value relentlessly to the top. We see this across top companies, investors, creators, influencers and beyond. The more centralized the platform or business, the more this tendency proves true.

So the real argument for crypto, and more broadly decentralization, is not that centralized systems are broken. Or that the current business models of the internet are not working. Because, in fact, they are for most consumers and many tens of thousands of creators. It’s that they are so functional that only a radical redistribution of control and ownership could wedge new opportunities to create more equity. It’s an attempt to counterbalance the massive ‘power law effects’ of these centralized systems.

Here’s how it works, at least in theory:

“Hey, Ms. or Mr. Developer or Creator or User, we are really worried about centralized systems. We’d like you to help us build alternatives. But we also know that you not using or working on those super-successful centralized things is a cost to you, and that developing these decentralized alternatives is going to be hard to pull off, so we’re going to make you an amazing once-in-a-lifetime offer. We will architect this whole new alternative system such that you will actually earn and/or buy inexpensive ‘shares’ and get a meaningful voice in what might just maybe be the next biggest thing. Maybe the biggest thing ever. And so, if and when all this does actually happen, you’ll be one of the big winners. We promise. And we don’t just promise. We’ll put it in a (smart) contract.”

Crypto is a direct, maybe even desperate, financial and emotional appeal to shift your ass from passive consumption to active collaboration.

Now, a gambit this great only makes sense if you believe in the massive self-perpetuating appeal of centralization. The competitive disadvantages of decentralization are so immense that it only works if the offered incentives (economic, cultural) outweigh those disadvantages. Which is why the incentives are a historically unprecedented amount of money and status. Think of it like the biggest XPRIZE in history, being offered to everyone on the planet.

But it should be noted, this incentive system does lead to a signaling problem. To keep people motivated to believe, work hard and spread these decentralized environments, it’s very helpful that the prices of the shares (ie., tokens, etc) and that triumphant vibe within the culture — all plausible evidence of the potential size of the prize and our progress towards it — continue to grow. And when we engineer the incentives correctly (tokenomics, ftw!), they do. The problem is that we have this natural mental association that assumes that when prices go up, when people get famous, and when huge sums of money are raised that means that the new thing is already working.

But in this case, that’s only partially true. It’s true that the incentive system is working, that people are flocking, that we’re getting artists and developers paid, that there’s a great feeling of community and commitment, and that there’s a growing awareness and interest from folks on the outside. But it’s not necessarily true that decentralized technology is working particularly well as a feasible replacement for those centralized competitors. At least not yet or any time soon. After all, as we know, the problem is incredibly hard. We wouldn’t be attacking centralization in this insane way if it wasn’t.

And one of the specific consequences of the signaling problem is that it leads some people to underestimate the ability of the centralized systems to adjust. There's a natural assumption that successful systems get fat and lazy and that their processes become calcified and resistant to new information regarding threats. And after all, why would everything on the decentralized side be going up in value, if the competitor wasn't ripe for the killing?

But that assumption, that centralized systems don’t know what they’re doing, is delusional. These tech companies are fucking smart. They are led by nimble (and paranoid) leaders, with a ton of money and other treats to hand out, who have no problem understanding the importance of disrupting themselves (see Facebook). If their ‘number of winners’ problem gets too noticeable and acute, there’s a lot of tuning they can do, both symbolic and real, to adjust and make the situation look a lot better. And, here’s the kicker: it’s especially easy for them to co opt the user-friendliest features of decentralized culture to make themselves more popular. Not only that, but the incentive-seeking folks on the decentralized side will be overjoyed that they are being embraced by the big centralized companies (see Twitter verifying NFTs!). Because it increases the value of their ‘shares.’

So, given how daunting the challenge actually is, let’s ask ourselves again: Is centralization really as dangerous as those of us on the Web3 side believe? Does it lead inexorably to oligopoly, censorship, and the constraint of innovation? And if so, do those risks outweigh the difficulties and disadvantages posed by the blockchain gambit? On this, reasonable people can disagree.

But any reasonable person would also admit that the competent and popular centralization of our current moment puts massive, historic, practically God-like powers in the hands of a few dozen men (basically, all men) and a few thousand of their execs. That’s a few thousand ‘big winners’ among billions of people. They are for the most part not subject to boards or shareholders. While one or two may stumble, it's hardly far-fetched that the current pantheon will remain more or less unchanged for decades to come. Our devices will get cheaper, our networks more powerful, and our online experiences more engrossing. The number of lives influenced by this small group will continue to increase. So will the power and subtlety of their influence.

And any reasonable person would again agree that it is not some panicky conjecture that these few leaders will acquiesce to, even collaborate with, authoritarian governments and anti-democratic movements when they think it unavoidable, when it protects or extends their corporate power. Despite how rich all these folks already are, this is happening today, as a matter of normal business. If the realistic prospect of a technology like the Metaverse, deployed in partnership with dictators and demagogues doesn’t qualify as a danger, then there’s probably not much that concerns you.

Will the ‘Hail Mary’ of crypto, with all of its chaos and con jobs, do a better job with these threats? Come on. Nobody knows. As much as the wild incentive system doesn’t necessarily mean it will work, it’s equally wrong to say that it can’t. The underlying structure of the Internet is decentralized. Open Source projects are decentralized. They work. But they also imperfect, and have left massive openings for centralized systems to address their gaps and limitations.

Based on everything we know, the most likely outcome is one of partial success. Some additional and important functions of the communications, media and financial system will be taken over by reasonably decentralized protocols and governance. This will be accompanied by the spread of platforms that enable groups of creators and inventors to fund their growth without as much dependency on the centralized networks. And this will lead some of the centralized systems to adopt and co-opt the features and culture of the blockchain which in turn creates new opportunities and openings. A different group of people, hopefully many more of them, hopefully not mostly men or Western, and with different (perhaps not objectively better but fresh) aspirations, ascend to the echelons of hyper-influence. In other words, a somewhat more dynamic and democratic system.

We think it’s worth trying.

As with the ‘real world,’ the things we own enable important connections to other people. If we own related things, we may share similar personalities, interests or life situations. We may have a common vested interest in preserving or increasing their ongoing value. We may also be engaged in a kind of game with each other, competing to purchase more or more special versions of the item. We are bound together by economic commitments.

The archetypal example in the physical world is real estate. Where we live is a huge part of our identity and, usually, our net worth. By owning property in the same neighborhood, we have committed, at least to some extent, to a shared destiny. When we volunteer, for example, for an event or organization that makes the block a nicer place to live, when we organize or sponsor services that enrich the area, it enhances the value of everyone’s home. As the value of the neighborhood increases, we benefit together, both in terms of status as well as financially. As our relationships and sense of self become more embedded in the neighborhood, we become more attached to the property, deepening the connection and spurring active engagement. In healthy neighborhoods, all residents benefit from this ‘virtuous circle.’ Ownership leads to meaningful engagement which leads to increased desirability..

NFT collections, and especially the latest wave of ‘avatar communities’ aka PFP collections, have the potential to mirror this healthy dynamic. When we own a SupDuck or Cryptoad, we have a motivation to engage in behavior that makes everyone’s ownership more significant. As ‘residents’ of that virtual neighborhood, we all have an interest in broadening the list of ‘stuff you get’ as part of your NFT. And yet, the vast majority of these projects pay only lip service to that potential. The vast majority of projects offer only hand-waving assurances of future amenities. Rather than investing in genuinely valuable services for its community, the focus tends rather to be on shilling and stunts to generate FOMO.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the mortgage bubble made home ownership more affordable. Builders responded by investing a lot of money to purchase land in areas that allowed for mass development of residential neighborhoods. There was so much money that developers built entire neighborhoods in the middle of nowhere with hopes of driving individual interest and eventual communities. Twenty five years later, some people still live there, some projects are completely torn down and one thing is for certain; none of them were built to last. These homes weren’t built in places that were convenient or around major metropolitan cities or downtowns driven by existing communities and culture, they were built where land was cheap. But people were like whatever. And eventually there was a huge market flippening in these spaces.

Most of today’s Web3 virtual neighborhoods are following the history of the physical world’s McMansions; building 10,000 ‘homes’ in the middle of nowhere hoping people move in. The awareness that needs to take place in order to avoid a mass flippening is the approach Web3 takes to constructing neighborhoods. Instead of just finding land, developing homes and hoping community fosters through a shared space, developers need to invest in making sure individual buyers get value out of their experience. This means making sure that every single day, there is something happening in the community. NFTs communities can be awesome, we just need to start building shit inside of them.

A community first approach to neighborhoods.

In order for virtual neighborhoods to be long lasting, attention needs to move from owning space and land to developing robust services  within the areas where people live. If NFTs get you into the club, what happens once you’re in it? One likely way this question will be answered is to focus the collection community on a particular shared interest. When members share values, it becomes vastly easier to determine and develop the benefits that they will consider valuable.

What sort of shared interests might be well-suited to token-communities? Unlike Web media, NFT communities are participatory environments. It’s not about passively consuming but actively participating with the content and community directly. Content takes on an entirely new role of creating virtual space, like physical space is a venue for cooperation and collaboration. So they can be smaller in total audience size than those required to support an ad-based business, provided the members’ commitment is sufficiently intense. So there’s no shortage of potential interests that might be addressed.

Communities can be built around professional networks, for example. Picture an NFT collection celebrating and welcoming designers or teachers or security experts. Another possible focus could be causes, like the climate crisis or free speech. We might also see cohesive communities around hobbies (fashion! surfing! hunting!) or fitness/wellness activities (crossfit! fasting! meditation!)

But we need to be realistic about the effort needed to create compelling experiences with these ‘neighborhoods.’.  Web3 communities need programming. In an era where NFT drops serve as a catalyst for community building, there is a tendency to hope that  individuals will  build the culture and activities of their collection This does happen but is probably insufficient for lasting value. The reason why traditional media has done a good job for decades of readership is that there is a content cadence that drives discussion, consumption and community engagement. But the real opportunity for Web3 to break out is the reverse incentive of the contribution of work. Today’s creators deal with a sort of volunteerism where the small percentage of individuals who do break through actually make money. Authenticity is lost in exchange for trying to grasp an audience, and free labor often results in… free content. But looking outside of the media to build Web3 communities is a catalyst for innovation, where content becomes the space for activities, participation and relationships. For example, in the physical world, SoulCycle has built an entire culture around physically working out but then digitally learning how to eat better and meet like minded individuals who want to live a similar lifestyle. Individuals reside in these “neighborhoods” because there is constant programming to keep them engaged and incentives to build the community up to better themselves and those around them. Purpose is driven through the development of content, and Web3 communities must proactively work to make the places where people reside a daily habit. It is important to invest in the ability for individuals to get value out of their experience, that every single day there is something happening.

Good things cost money, and you can’t get valuable experiences without investing in the community to build them. A worthy investment for NFT projects is around education. A key value of communities and neighborhoods is that individuals are able to teach one another. We are starting to see this foster in Web3 through community driven discords, telegrams and WhatsApps but oftentimes, this is happening outside of the project owners themselves. Arguably, this is a feature not a bug as the community is free to build on top of the IP distributed by the origin creators but as we think about lasting value, there needs to be an incentive to cultivate contribution through shared learning from one another. This means that it should be instilled at a foundational level that then bubbles up through the community regardless of which platforms they are spending time with one another one.

Putting interests at the forefront of infrastructure.

Today’s Web3 neighborhoods are mostly being built around financial interests. And the promise of getting rich does lure people to these neighborhoods---the 10,000 houses may well be occupied, at least for a while. But we’ve seen this play out IRL, with gold-rush Boomtowns from the 1800s becoming today’s Ghost Towns, having failed to attract real residents and establish a culture. Visit one of these places today and you’ll see they didn’t get much built beyond a saloon, a place to meet up and talk about finding gold. Visit the discord of a forgotten PFP project from July and you’ll see something similar--a now abandoned general chat, containing little but a discussion of prices and sales. \n \n But there were exceptions--- some Boomtowns attracted families and developed a thriving culture, becoming San Francisco, Chicago, Denver. The great HBO show Deadwood is the story of how a historical Boomtown developed a culture and transcended the speculative interests that drew people to it in the first place. Its creator David Milch felt that a true society often starts with a “symbol agreed upon”. For Milch this can be a cross, but it can also be gold (or perhaps even drawings of apes.) And it’s that agreement that liberates individuals to participate and find their “identity in the collective.” For Milch, you can start with speculation but you can’t stop there.

Deadwood posits that if a lasting culture is to form, it will be aided by spaces, artifacts, rituals, and symbols. And with NFTs and DAOs we might be seeing the emergence of the digitally native forms of these essential human primitives. But it’s up to these nascent Boomtowns to use them, with success being observed with the deepening the group’s interactions and the expansion of their interests and reach. Certainly beyond the narrow motives that drew people to them in the first place, but beyond crypto as well.

On the flipside, building for interest groups has its challenges that will need to be met. By building neighborhoods around a particular interest, we are deliberately constraining the market size which will slow down value and decrease speculation. It becomes a stabler, yet less exciting investment. Why it’s critical to incorporate both financial and societal interests to maintain the right balance.

New communities are emerging on the internet by way of NFTs, giving individuals an opportunity to stake land and foster community in designated spaces constructed through residential avatars. But the approach of building communities this way is fragile. With unlimited space online and a gold rush to occupy mass areas, builders are overlooking the need for community in exchange for ownership. And that method, while momentarily successful when individuals have money to spend, deconstructs in the long run.

NFT communities today are rewarding individuals for buying land and naming the sub-development versus what should be the true promise of crypto which is rewarding individuals that make the neighborhood flourish. It’s not the local mortgage services or banks that make a strong community, it’s the artists, restaurants and families that do. Today’s Web3 communities are building neighborhoods to attract community versus building communities to foster neighborhoods. This needs to change.

Before Web3

At the end of November 2021, I left a stable, well-paying yet still highly autonomous job in the corporate world of technology consulting. I had been climbing the corporate ladder for five years before taking nine months off, then leaving altogether.

For years, I persuaded myself to believe that job was it. The best job I’d ever have. But the veneer eventually wore off, and I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. I didn’t hate the job but I’d long ago plateaued in learning and felt a constant nag of being totally bored and uninspired while the company continued promoting me.

On my way out, I took on freelance gigs as a consultant in psychological safety, connection and learning design. They were all focused on online communities. I was an adjunct professor, a coach, a curriculum designer, a cohort-based course manager and a tutor. And I was always on Twitter. I was trying to find my angle and craft my brand. I was exploring, journalling, and pondering.

Daunting Web3 Interview

Two months later, an internet friend I had come to know well and respect deeply for their work in EdTech mentioned that their DAO was looking for a social experience lead. The role would require me to obsess over how to create friends from the DAO's semester II. But not just any friends—I'd have to think about how to develop friendships so deep they would eventually invite each other to their weddings. Given my Twitter bio was literally the job description, I was sold. I just had to sell the interviewer too.

The interview was daunting in a way I had not experienced in a very long time. An extreme extrovert and typical life of the party, I have always felt confident in the eloquence of my speech and the processing speed of my brain. I’m sarcastic, witty and humorous. In short, I felt that I had the gift of the gab and the spoken language was my strength. However, when the interviewer, a senior at Duke, popped onto the screen for an informal chat, I didn't know how to behave. I’d done my due diligence beforehand, I always do, but somehow, I still felt under-prepared.  I tried too hard to impress her and hated myself for it.

Prior Life as an AI ethics Pioneer

I was 25 when I built one of the first teams to bring AI ethics as a discipline into the industry.  A pioneer in a boiling space, I felt valuable, powerful even. I led a team to build the first tool to quantify fairness in algorithms, taking the discussions from academia into the mainstream industry. And received wide media coverage for our work including in TechCrunch and The Voice of America.

During that time, I could tell that colleagues and clients thought that tech was moving too quickly, and they struggled to keep up. Those moments increased the power I felt, especially because I was a young woman of colour and many of them were white men. Now in DAO land, with the tables somewhat turned, I felt sorely unsure of myself. While this may not be true, it felt like everyone was still in university or about to drop out of grad school. I know that I am still young but I finished grad school years ago! Every inch of me was convinced that by entering this space in my late twenties, I had completely missed the boat.

First Gig as a DAO Contributor

Of course, all of that self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy were just in my head—similar to many experiences before this. Two days later I was offered the role and told I was the clear choice despite the other candidate having lots more experience in DAOs. Sweeping the demons inside me under the lumpy rug along with the countless others I’d conquered before, I beamed and began my role.

To excel in my job I needed to understand tokenomics, NFTs, DAOs, and everything else associated with building an organisation on the infrastructure of web3. I had to understand tokenomics because I get paid in it—my monthly salary is a stable coin and a token, aka equity, of the DAO for being an early believer.

The purchase of an NFT was how our learners accessed the private member-only experience. We had to be on call when learners had issues minting their NFT so I had to understand it too.

We are a DAO so I had to grasp that too, since the way we make decisions and default to asynchronous communication is the foundation of our day-to-day. This was different from my previous job filled with back-to-back meetings and 'Let's hop on a call?' frequently pinged across Microsoft Teams. The DAO style of working, I quickly realised, was what I had always preferred.

All The Mistakes

At the best of times, I learn through someone else’s mistake and the learnings they kindly shared. At the worst of times the lessons came from making my own mistakes.

This includes the time, for reasons beyond the scope of this article, I entered the wrong wallet address into our spreadsheet. Combining my mistake with the mistake of another contributor, we ended up having to redo the entire NFT process. Mistakes were happening left, right, centre. We were stumbling our way towards greater comprehension but when I made a mistake, I felt like the sky had fallen and I was the one to pull it down.

Another time, we were configuring a Discord bot called collab.land to token gate our Discord channels. Due to some issues, another contributor tweeted collab.land’s official account to seek help. I monitored the replies and told him that some ‘kind people’ were asking us to fill out a Google form with the issues we were having. The form had also asked for our wallet's recovery phrase, which I thought was odd. As if that didn't signal a red flag. I thought I was being such a team player! Turns out those were scammers. Everyone knew to ignore them— apart from me. Never tweet the word Metamask because the scammers will swarm upon you like bees to a pot of honey.

Biggest Takeaway

Being in a nascent space is novel and exciting, but it can also be scary. It is already stressful trying to learn things you don’t know. It gets harder when you don’t know what you don’t know. Web3 is full of those potholes. I came into web3 with half a decade of work experience under my belt and the confidence that comes with accelerated promotions and building pioneering teams, but that experience also means I’m stuck in some of my ways. Learning to unlearn quickly became a skill I rely on. And learning the ways of Discord and web3 from younger natives is immensely humbling.

Disrupting yourself before you get disrupted is a skill that will likely be more and more necessary too. I won't say it’s easy, especially with a critical internal voice. But the way your curiosity gets fed, the people you meet, the projects you build and the possibilities of building a brighter future are damn worth it.

Let’s build!

If you enjoyed this, say hi and follow my journey on Twitter here!

In this article, we will review all the important things that affect the price of $eth. So stay tuned until the end and share if it is useful!

🔴 The most important factor that can be effective after the success of Merge is the passing of the historical curve, the conclusion of research, tests and developments of ethereum in the last 7 years and finally reducing the investor's risk in investing on ethereum!

In all the media, they are trying to reduce inflation by 90%, but one of the most important priorities of an investor is security and the amount of risk that is possible, and reducing inflation by 90% is not attractive if there are relative risks! So the reduction of these risks after Merge means the entry of new actors to invest in Ether!

But the next thing I mentioned is the 90% reduction in ether inflation! After Merge, the reward for new block production in Ethereum will decrease by 90%, which is equivalent to three bitcoin halvings, and it is known as Triple Halving in Ethereum, that the daily production of Ether will decrease from 13000 to 1300, and even if after Merge, the demand We have a severe supply reduction in the new form.

The next thing is the increase in demand for stick ether in the network and confirmation of blocks in the network due to the change of the consensus mechanism from proof of work to proof of stake or POS, in addition to that, the profit of stick ether in the network will increase from the current value of 6% to above this The value comes and the motivation and risk to become a validator in the network increases

🔵 The next thing that basically happens with the increase of activities in the network, which happened after #eip1559, is the burning rate of ether in the network per transaction. It is estimated that after Merge, if the gas price is around 16 gwei, it will neutralize all the inflation from the production site of the new block, and more than this amount, which sometimes increased up to 500 gwei in the rising market, will cause negative inflation in ether or deflationary! Of course, this happened temporarily before Merge, but it was not permanent! But now, with the decrease in the inflation rate, this problem shows itself more

🟠 There may be other minor factors, but I wrote the most important factors that came to my mind here. In the next article, I will write a series of misconceptions about merge!

thanks for your attention🙌🏼