First things first, let’s lay the groundwork for onchain communities. These are online-first communities that use smart-contract platforms to coordinate financial and human capital and are co-created by their internal builders/creators (e.g. via user-generated roadmaps). Whereas legacy online communities, such as those formed on Reddit and Facebook, rely on pre-internet financial and legal infrastructure for formation, custody, payments, and capital allocation, onchain communities have several benefits 👇

Onchain communities can be set up in minutes, making it easier to start and experiment with new ideas. They can flexibly distribute ownership, giving users upside in the value they create. They can dynamically track contributions, creating more adaptable ways to incentivize and acknowledge work. They can be open-source and transparent, cultivating trust within the network and sharing learnings throughout the space. They can automate rules and tasks to run on code, reducing the need for a corruptible centralized intermediary. They are borderless, making it easy for anyone worldwide to collaborate toward a shared goal. They are permissionless and forkable, allowing for entirely new group decision-making dynamics.

This brings us to JokeRace: it’s a simple platform for onchain communities to make better decisions. Users begin by creating a contest with a prompt – for example, “What protocol should we build on next?” or “Who should be our next podcast guest?”. Contest creators can let anyone submit responses or set requirements around respondents (e.g. token-gating for a subset within a community). During the submission period, community members can submit entries – for example, “zkSync” or “Elon Musk” – and, during the voting period, they can vote on their favorite entries. Contest creators are also able to define the parameters of the contest, including: 1/ submission duration, 2/ voting duration, and 3/ voting type (1-token-1-vote, quadratic, etc).

These JokeRace features are important because they enable bottom-up decision-making and broader participation for communities. Major projects like EigenLayer, Polygon, and Arbitrum have used JokeRace for diverse use cases, including: 1/ selecting and distributing grants, 2/ ideating around hackathon themes and selecting and distributing rewards within hackathons, 3/ co-creating user-generated roadmaps, 4/ user surveys, 5/ giveaways, 6/ content curation, 7/ co-learning & much more! 

The most exciting feature the JokeRace platform offers communities and contest creators, however, is programmatic rewards: the ability to programmatically define whether a contest will include a prize pool (e.g USDC or the community’s own token), decide how prizes are paid out (e.g top 3 ranked respondents split the prize pool), and invite others to fund the prize pool too. This is a huge unlock for online communities of the web2 era because legacy financial rails have prevented them from hosting internet-native contests. In other words, in using JokeRace, online communities have a direct path to monetization via contests.

This is particularly exciting for smaller online communities, which have previously been acts of kindness rather than financially sustainable and profitable operations. One example of a smaller community finding success in building on JokeRace to grow and monetize is Rehash, a web3 podcast whose listeners select guests via regular, viral JokeRace contests. Having their listeners select podcast guests on JokeRace helped Rehash go viral. More importantly, it enabled Rehash to determine from onchain data that 20% of its user base were Zerion users—and leveraged that insight to go to Zerion and get it to sponsor Rehash’s next season. A second example is Bytexplorers, an onchain community of data analysts, engineers, and scientists, who recently announced they’ll be using JokeRace for their airdrop by rewarding winners with their tokens. In doing so, they incentivize meaningful participation while putting tokens in the hands of the people most likely to hold onto them—the ones who have played a meaningful part in the community’s growth.

If you’re part of an onchain community, we’d love to hear from you! What do you think about JokeRace, and how could it be applied within your community? We strongly believe JokeRace can help onchain communities make better decisions, grow, and monetize. If you’re keen to dive in deeper, please join JokeRace’s own Telegram community here or send me a DM!

Framing Frames

Farcaster launched Frames two weeks ago. Since then, 85,000 frames have been cast and Farcaster daily active users have increased 10x, from ~2,500 to ~2,500. Frame hackathons are being hosted, memecoins are being created, cookies are selling out, and experimentation is at an all-time high. Frames are built using the Open Graph protocol which powers social embeds across the web. Taking the Open Graph protocol onchain is a huge unlock – as AGM explains it, “Frames are a new web3 primitive that web2 could never really power: an easy way to run app X while a user is still inside app Y, with little coordination between X and Y. The interoperable identity and transaction record of the blockchain, along with the seamless handling of money and digital ownership, makes it possible to have a real and universal graph of user actions across consumer apps, something even Facebook, at the height of its popularity, couldn’t manage.”

Some highlights from the Seed Club Ventures portfolio 👇

Daylight launched a frame that enabled users to seamlessly check for unclaimed airdrops in one-click within the Warpcast client. It’s since led to 1,488 people checking for unclaimed airdrops, 514 new users signing up for Daylight, and 220 people completing transactions. Check your unclaimed airdrops here! 

Paragraph launched a frame that lets users paste any Paragraph URL and turn it into a frame for users to: one-click subscribe to their newsletter, read the entire post straight from the feed, and visit the post online, with the original caster getting all referrer rewards.

Seam launched a framed that lets users create template Seam profiles from their on-chain data using their Farcaster accounts. 5,800 profiles were claimed and the Seam frame was reposted 53 times by different users.

Jayme from Launcher wrote a piece on how builders can leverage frames. TLDR – Frames are a superpower if your product leverages billboarding, i.e. use of your product is visible to others because it's repeatedly shared. Sharing is key because, if your URL is shared, your frame will be seen and engaged with, and vice versa if not.

SC07: Consumer Crypto

In hot pursuit of a dramatically more interesting internet, Seed Club launched its seventh accelerator cohort, SC07: Consumer Crypto. The accelerator is a 3-month program that brings together founders of weird, novel, and socially ambitious consumer crypto projects. The general focus is on projects with onchain distribution, an onchain business model, that are strongly memetic. Within that broad definition, we're specifically seeking projects exploring:
- Using memecoins as primitives for social products
- Fresh takes on prediction markets
- Everything apps (branded bundled protocols for specific audiences)
- Products for the Farcaster ecosystem
- Products purpose-built for viral ephemeral experiences
- Products unlocked by protocol rewards
- Pushing forward the onchain media distribution ecosystem
- Bringing new types of assets or experiences onchain
- The intersection of AI and onchain experiences 
- Games in traditionally unfun categories
- Points

The application submission deadline is Friday, February 16, at 11:59 pm PST.

Internet Explorers 

Internet Explorers is a new Seed Club production – a weekly rundown show where Jess, Josh, and Peacenode broadly explore the most interesting consumer crypto topics and new internet experiences. It's hosted every Friday at 10AM PT // 1PM ET. The latest episode features Brian from Unlonely, Yancey from Metalabel, and discusses where we’re heading in Crypto x AI. Catch up on YouTube and mint episodes on Pods! 👇

Until next time

Thank you for taking the time to read through the monthly Seed Club Ventures digest. Please don’t hesitate to share any feedback and suggestions – we’d love to hear from you! If you’re interested in getting involved with Seed Club or any of our portfolio projects, please don’t hesitate to DM Anthony! 🌱

Central to Seam’s unique approach are its “mini-apps”, open-source software that enable users to creatively interact, whether through posting on friends' walls or personalizing their profiles. Beyond mini-apps, Seam empowers developers to build themes and templates, complete with on-chain creative attribution and royalties, for users to deploy across their profiles.

In an era where traditional social media platforms have become monotonous and negative network effects are preventing people from sharing authentic content, Seam stands out by encouraging whimsical, intimate online interactions. This is achieved through the use of mini-apps that allow users to drop content into curated social spaces and web pages. Seam’s approach is a departure from the mainstream social media feed. Instead, it focuses on fostering genuine connections within small, trusted communities and makes social media personal again.

Seam's innovative approach extends to its business model, transitioning away from the prevalent ad-based revenue systems. It introduces a marketplace for user-created mini-apps, themes, and templates, where users earn Seam Points for their creations and interactions. This not only encourages a cycle of creativity and personalization but also aligns with our vision at Seed Club Ventures of supporting platforms that prioritize user agency and ownership.

We believe that the future of social media lies in platforms like Seam, where personalization and user ownership are at the forefront. If you're excited about the prospect of a more personal, engaging, and user-driven social media experience, we invite you to join the Seam community and create your Seam profile at http://seam.so. If you’re a developer, you can also launch new mini-apps using Seam’s Block SDK, and easily port existing open-source code into Seam!

Redefining onchain organizations

Hats Protocol is a way for onchain organizations to create and manage roles. In bringing roles onchain, organizations can ensure the right addresses have the right permissions at any given time. Hats (roles) are represented onchain by ERC1155s, enabling interoperability with other onchain organizations and applications.

In December, Hats Protocol hosted its first-ever Demo Day, exploring the future of onchain organizing and presenting a diverse set of 9 organizations using Hats in innovative ways. Highlights included: Mochi’s Autonomous World Machine, which curates decentralized AI datasets using Mochi, Hats, JokeRace, and CollabLand & Sobol’s Hats Composer, the first AI-enabled Hats tool that uses an LLM to build onchain organizational structures including Hats Trees, Safe multisigs, and Moloch v3 contracts all deployed from a unified UI. In case you missed the Demo Day, check out the recording 👇

CoLinks: SocialFi evolution

Coordinape is a platform designed to enhance collaboration in decentralized teams and onchain organizations. It revolves around the concept of "Gift Circles," where contributors allocate 'GIVE' tokens to each other based on the value of each member's contributions, fostering a culture of appreciation and accountability. This system not only allows for equitable reward distribution but also aids in building individual reputation both within the organization and across web3. By empowering members to recognize and reward impactful work, Coordinape aims to strengthen team connection, encourage ownership, and facilitate the engagement of contributors.

In December, Coordinape launched CoLinks, a socialfi platform and fork of friend.tech built on Optimism. Similar to friend.tech, to build your social network, you buy the ‘links' of other users. Link prices are on a bonding curve and, once you’re linked with someone, you can see their content in a private global feed.

Unlike friend.tech, CoLinks assigns a reputation score to users based on their LinkedIn, GitHub, and Coordinape activity. CoLinks is also post-based rather than chat-based, and has a less aggressive bonding curve and high fees on selling, which dampens speculative activity.

CoLinks is gaining steady adoption, contributing to a healthy and more useful product experience. The new launch supports our thesis around the negative network effects of large networks and that people are willing to pay, directly or indirectly, for access to smaller, curated, and trusted places online. Be sure to check out the app on https://colinks.coordinape.com/ & use invite codes: 

alpha-movie-auction
camera-kid-tiny
electric-often-pride
fetch-cute-glad
grid-jazz-lecture
once-seminar-maximum
panel-evolve-patient
there-unknown-skill
valve-guard-near
weasel-tenant-tobacco
margin-gun-cushion
neck-drive-laugh

Internet Explorers 

Internet Explorers is a new Seed Club production – a weekly rundown show where Jess, Josh, and Peacenode broadly explore the most interesting consumer crypto topics and new internet experiences. It's hosted every Friday at 10AM PT // 1PM ET. The latest episode features Natasha from Boys Club, Sam from Fini, Jon from Cabin, Jiaqi from Sofamon, and Lucas from Pods. Catch up on YouTube and mint episodes on Pods! 👇

Until next time

Thank you for taking the time to read through the monthly Seed Club Ventures newsletter. Please don’t hesitate to share any feedback and suggestions for future newsletters and editorials with the team – we’d love to hear from you! If you’re interested in getting involved with Seed Club or any of our portfolio projects, please don’t hesitate to DM Anthony or get in touch directly! 🌱

Earlier in 2023, TRAME partnered with Art Blocks, CPG Club, and Néolice on Craft Nouveau, a series of collections advancing generative art and craft. The debut collection, Navette by Alexis André, was a series of 200 onchain generative artworks and accompanying loom-woven tapestries. The first-of-its-kind project united 3D printing and textile craftsmanship to create uniquely coded digital outputs with complimentary physical artworks.

This week, at Art Basel Miami, TRAME introduced two new collections in the Craft Nouveau series: 1/ Optimism by Jeff Davis, a series of handcrafted stained glass procedurally generated from custom algorithms, and 2/ Portraits by Martin Grasser, colored Venetian glass procedurally-generated from the artist’s Abstract Type Generator.

Optimism and Portraits are both exciting expressions of the power of collaboration between digital artists and traditional artisans. We believe generative technology will be applied far beyond generative art – we are excited for consumer use cases ranging from fashion, architecture, and product design, and proud to see TRAME transforming the generative manufacturing space.

Powering builder energy

Backdrop closed out Build V2, a free and online 4-week program bringing together 450 builders to launch products in AI (LLMs, ML, Gen AI, etc) or Crypto, with $90K+ in grants and participation from AWS, Base, NEAR, BuidlGuidl, Ceramic, Fixie, Guru, Quix, Langchain & Stability AI. In only 4 weeks, Backdrop helped launch 170 products and selected 32 of them as finalists. You can check out all the projects here.

Ask: Backdrop is planning a V3 in February with >1000 projects, expanding the “tracks” to include: AI, Crypto, Gaming, Open-Source, AI/VR, Dev Tooling, and General infra (AWS, Supabase, etc). Please reach out to Joey DeBruin if you’re interested in working with Backdrop V3 to attract builders with grants to build with your tech and in your ecosystem!

Leading open-source gen AI

Only in the last two weeks, Stability AI released 3 groundbreaking, open-source generative AI models: Stable Diffusion Video (foundation model for generative video), SDXL Turbo (single-step image generation), and StableLM Zephyr 3B (3B parameter LLM). The releases mean Stability’s models now span image, language, code, audio, 3D, and video. 

With open-source models now across 6 modalities, Stability is shifting business model and rolling out Memberships – while “stable series” models remain free for non-commercial personal and academic use, commercial users will need to have a paid membership to access all core models. Members are also able to sign up separately for Stability’s other commercial services, including enterprise support and custom model creation. Stability's goal with this move is to focus on building and distributing great models as widely as possible, while working toward their mission to build the foundation to activate humanity's potential!

Internet Explorers 

Internet Explorers is a new Seed Club production – a weekly rundown show where Jess, Josh, and Peacenode broadly explore the most interesting consumer crypto topics and new internet experiences. It's hosted every Friday at 10AM PT // 1PM ET, recent guests included Jesse from Base, Patrick from The World's Largest, and Ben Roy from Accelerate Art. Catch up on YouTube and mint episodes on Pods! 👇

Until next time

Thank you for taking the time to read through the monthly Seed Club Ventures digest. Please don’t hesitate to share any feedback and suggestions for future newsletters and editorials with the team – we’d love to hear from you! If you’re interested in getting involved with Seed Club or any of our portfolio projects, please don’t hesitate to DM Anthony or get in touch directly! 🌱

In case you’re new here, Seed Club Ventures is a venture DAO backing early-stage founders building for a world of internet-native organizations. We’re proud to have a membership of 60+ leading innovators and investors, be part of the Seed Club network, and to have invested in the pre-seed and seed rounds of 50+ diverse projects across decentralized science, art & music, social, and artificial intelligence.

Our Digests typically include ecosystem updates, events we’re hosting or attending, and product launches and requests from our portfolio projects. Looking ahead, we're exploring the introduction of in-depth editorials and thesis pieces, Q&As with our members and founders, as well as other onchain media experiences. Without doubt, the best place for us to build this decentralized media empire was Paragraph, one of our early investments, which leads us nicely onto the Digest itself – let’s dive in 🚀

New tools for writers

Paragraph is an all-in-one web3 newsletter publishing platform. It does everything you’d expect from a web2 newsletter platform, like Substack, but also uses onchain primitives like token-gating, membership NFTs, wallet delivery, and collectibles to supercharge content creation, distribution, and monetization.

Updates: Paragraph added support for Zora network, letting creators turn written work into NFTs and letting readers own their favorite content. Paragraph collectibles are also featured on the Zora homepage, helping creators build not only a collector base but a subscriber base of true fans. Inspired by Zora’s protocol rewards, Paragraph also announced Referral Rewards, a new way to incentivize growth for creators. By adding wallet addresses to any Paragraph URL, creators can get paid in crypto when users click links and take qualifying actions. Moreover, if other creators join Paragraph using their link, they’ll get rewarded - indefinitely - every time they monetize.

t2 is a social writing experience for the modern digital age of publishing. In introducing new ways for writers and readers to interact, they aim to foster community discussions on niche subjects and help people spend more time in meaningful interactions.

Updates: t2 released Territories V1, the first phase of social writing experiences on the platform. Territories are borderless common grounds where writers and readers explore interests, from general to self-defined niches (t/DeSci, t/NeededAdjustments). t2 also opened registrations for Friends Who Write, a full month of writing sprints with a $5,000 prize pool. Applications close November 15 – be sure to gather a group and sign up by then!

Onchain superpowers for communities

Hats Protocol is a way for onchain organizations to create and manage roles. In bringing roles onchain, organizations can ensure the right addresses have the right permissions at any given time. Hats (roles) are represented onchain by ERC1155s, enabling interoperability with other onchain organizations and applications.

Updates: Hats Protocol launched Hats Modules – programmable extensions for each hat. Modules can be connected to hats to expand their functionality, such as automatic granting/revocation and activation/deactivation based on specific conditions. Any builder can create their own module and plug it into their own organization’s hat structure permissionlessly, while also making their module available to any app supporting the Hats Modules Registry. Apps can also tap into the Hats Modules infrastructure to offer these same module options to their end-users.

Asks: Whether you’re a member of an onchain organization or individual builder, Hats are welcoming folks to join their community and to claim a Community Member hat. The founders are also taking calls with those looking to get started in paving the way for new automations that drive higher levels of organizational performance.

Lore helps communities coordinate initiatives at internet scale. Using the Lore platform, a community can quickly form to kickstart an initiative, crowdsource ideas, create media, and pool capital onchain.

Updates: Lore launched a new and improved Create flow for community leads to easily launch community-driven initiatives onchain. Use cases have included the community creation of IRL basketball courts, the co-purchasing of museum memorabilia, and Basepaint artists acquiring brushes and voting on what to paint next together.

Asks: Lore is currently working with select communities to help them launch successful initiatives over the next few weeks – apply here or share with communities to work with them directly!

Onchain efficiency and yield

MetaStreet is an onchain high-yield credit protocol, enabling users to borrow against or lend NFTs instantly, efficiently, and without permission.

Updates: MetaStreet announced its Wolf of MetaStreet affiliate program for users to earn cashback on interest generated when friends start borrowing/lending on MetaStreet. Each user successfully referred earns a 1% bonus from interest earned with referred Borrowers and a 2.5% bonus from interest earned with referred Lenders.

Asks: MetaStreet’s mstETH pool was launched with an initial issuance of $1.2M. It’s now 100% utilized, earning 11-17% yields. They’re now increasing the mstETH cap to $8M and seeking intros to potential LPs / DeFi influencers. They’re also rolling out a simplified UX, “MetaStreet Earn”, a mobile interface, and the tokenization of all lender positions and seeking intro’s to potential DeFi integration partners and DeFi podcasts and newsletters.

Den is the fastest multisig for onchain teams, powered by Safe. Den helps teams create, understand, and execute complex transactions fast. Their latest offering is a full bookkeeping and financial insights suite.

Asks: Den are seeking introductions to onchain organizations as prospective customers, including: DeFi and other onchain protocols, teams using DeFi via self-custody or multisigs, and other organizations generating revenue or paying expenses onchain. 

Seed Club network updates

The Event marked the end of SC06, our sixth accelerator cohort and first explicitly focused on consumer. We worked with 10 projects building things uniquely enabled by crypto, and aligned with our vision for a dramatically more interesting internet. They blew some brains open and we’re so excited about the future they’re carrying us towards! A huge thanks to everyone who joined and made The Event so special. For those who missed it, be sure to catch the recording. 

Internet Explorers is a new Seed Club production – a weekly rundown show where Jess, Josh, and Peacenode broadly explore (romanticize, even) new consumer internet experiences. It's live and online every Friday 10AM Pacific – tune in!

Until next time

Thank you for taking the time to read through the monthly Seed Club Ventures Digest. Please don’t hesitate to share any feedback and suggestions for future digests and editorials with the team – we’d love to hear from you! If you’re interested in getting involved with Seed Club or any of our portfolio projects, please don’t hesitate to DM Anthony or get in touch directly! 🌱