I don’t have anything against the above casts. But there's an opportunity here. To help $Degen continue to make a meaningful impact in the world and continue to grow it’s value. Thanks to Jacek’s tipping model for airdrop 2, you have control of the incentive structures. As the value of Degen rises, so does your impact.

For example, tip people who help new casters feel like their not shouting in the void. This all started with just a few hundred people who discovered Farcaster and found a place where they felt heard and could connect with others. Every Degen has an opportunity to help hundreds feel the same way. Who each can help hundreds of others. The Positivity Ponzi.

The more you do this, the more you have to tip. Guess what, you’re now a VC. You can create your own personal bounties or “requests for startups” and help bring to life things you think can have a meaningful impact in the world, or even to the Degen community. Which helps feed back into the value of Degen and all associated projects.

It’s time to start thinking bigger. The Future Reserve Currency of the World status awaits, and we’re not settling for anything less.

See you onchain Anon.

-Syed

What is “the next” frames?

I think it will be very soon, and we already know what it is: Decentralized Channels. This will be order of magnitudes more impactful than channels. Which is one of two things I want to discuss here.

1. Why Decentralized Channels will be such a big deal

   • Hyper-Specialized Clients

   • Compounding of Decentralized Social Protocols

2. Harberger Tax - The Future of Decentralized Public Goods

What are Decentralized Channels?

It’s moving channels from Warpcast to the protocol. So instead of it being controlled by the Warpcast client/team, it will be a part of the protocol. Managed totally publicly and up to each client to implement them how they will. Right now things like the names of the channels, who can join and post in them and other such decisions have been controlled by the main team building the protocol. This was very needed while they experimented on what implementation works. When it’s moved to the protocol it can no longer be controlled by one team. This wasn’t a priority as the focus was on experimenting quickly. Now the team has been very clear that moving channels to the protocol is a priority for them in the coming weeks.

Why is this a big deal?

Two reasons: Hyper-Specialized Clients and Compounding of Decentralized Social Protocols.

Hyper-Specialized Clients

You can think of this as channel specific clients. I cannot stress enough how big this is. What this does is empower online communities with crypto/web3 primitives. Think of subreddits. Now it’s twitter but for a long time, Reddit was at the top of the stream for everything on the internet. It’s impact is hard to understate. Even twitter today cannot compete with Reddit. After the events of the GameStop in 2021, it was heavily neutered so it likely won’t be able to have such an impact in the future (this could be an entire article in itself).

The kind of impact Reddit could have without any of the empowering tools of web3 and crypto is awe inspiring. It’s fitting that it’s final act was to nearly take down the world's financial system (chain reaction clearinghouse default.)

This is all relevant to channels because the mental model for channels is subreddits. Except now they will be decentralized and anyone can build clients on top. Implement the subreddits however they want and the community is free to interact however they chose. No worries about Reddit throttling API access or changing the rules in the middle of the game. This will be online communities at their most magnificent and powerful. This is where we will see Balaji’s Network States in action and they will be considerably more powerful than even he expected.

Compounding of Decentralized Social Protocols

When one client eats, everyone does. This is the beauty of Farcaster and what will make it unstoppable once the momentum starts. If someone builds an Instagram-like image client that’s super successful, all the clients get new users and content liquidity. There are a lot of powerful platforms that could be successful but don’t have the distribution/users to really show off their features. With Farcaster everyone wins together, and the wins feed back into each person building on the protocol. It’s network effects but the returns are fed back into the network.

With clients built for separate communities, not only do those communities benefit but so does everyone else. The other clients, the other developers and the users who are share greatly in the monetary benefits as well since crypto makes financialization so simple and distributed.

Harberger Tax

If you’ve made it this far, then allow me to preach the good word of Harberger to you. This tax is one of the most elegant solutions I’ve seen on how to manage public goods and prevent rent seeking behaviour. Here is a good website: http://www.harbergertax.com/

Simply, how it works is you have an item that is always up for auction and the owner constantly pays a small tax on it. This interval can be set to whatever time frame you want. It’s based on the price of the item. So if the price is low, you pay less tax. Someone who wants it more however, will pay a higher price to get it, but then they will have to pay more tax based on the new price.

It allows the public good to find equilibrium and in the hands of those who value it sufficiently. So imagine if channels were set to have a harberger tax. They would generate so much value for the protocol as a result of the tax. It would also allow communities to own it in a multisig and take care of ownership as it would be in the hands of those who truly value it and are willing to out the money where their mouth is.

It also doesn’t work for a bad actor to buy it for a high price and maliciously control the channel. Since the community can simply move to a new channel and so the user will pay a high price, and a high tax only to temporarily disrupt the community.

A small downside when you consider the downsides for other ways to manage decentralized channels. Especially centralized solutions like the creator being able to own it for free indefinitely.

Man the future is so bright for crypto and Farcaster.

See you on chain Anon!

-Syed

There is a lot of swearing in this one. I'm fcking sorry ok.

None of you assholes appreciate how insane Bitcoin is. Bitcoin solved the hardest problem in human history. Not flight. Not even getting to the moon. It solved a problem we might not have even realized was a problem. We can’t fly is obvious. That giant ball in the sky at night is an obvious target to aim for.

Currency was a problem that we didn’t (and still haven’t) appreciated until it was solved. It’s no coincidence that the first moneys discovered date back to around the same time as the first civilizations. I guess if you want to build anything larger than a nomadic tribe, you need a medium of exchange to optimize the distribution of work in the community.

Money also doesn’t exist in nature. Something that is easily divisible, transportable, verifiable and unable to be duplicated. It does not exist. You need some kind of government type entity to enforce a currency. Even then forgery has been around since the beginning. Money for all of human history has been a near impossible problem to solve.

Now you can launch a thousand in your underwear while sipping your morning coffee. Currency went from the hardest problem to solve for to something so trivial that anyone can do it in 5 minutes. You no longer need to have a government and associated police force. That is a lot of overhead. Sorry, let me rephrase, that is a metric fck ton of overhead. Again, I’m not being clear enough. That is all the mother fckin’ overhead. The mental model for me here is government=currency and vice versa.

I think of the memecoins as the equivalent of early small kingdoms going to war over resources. We didn’t always used to be 195 countries. We used to have thousands of kingdoms. That’s the era memecoins are in. It’s PvP. People sell one to go to another. It’s kingdoms rising and falling. But even in this war there will be the kingdoms that survive. That generate an empire people don’t leave. As more of the world comes on chain, the more these empires will gain in power. The more real world influence they will have.

They will grow their own governance, norms and rules. These are the countries of the future. Why would you pay tax to an ever inflating currency that does not take care of you? Compare that to keeping it in a currency that is ever increasing in value. As moving on and off chain gets easier, it will be more normal for people to accept cryptocurrencies as payments. This has to do with the deterioration in fiat and trust in traditional institutions as it does with crypto entities “growing up” and being more able to meet the needs of the normal.

The memecoin era is not some flash in the pan. It’s what the future looks like. It’s chaotic. It’s exciting. It’s fcking beautiful is what it is.

See you onchain anon!

-Syed

Asking “what problems do blockchains solve” is like asking “what problems does steel solve over wood?” You can make railways and buildings out of both. I mean take a bow Chris Dixon. I’ve always struggled with “who cares, just use a database” because I agree with that for most use cases. Now I have a good answer. A database works for your treehouse Adam, but we’re going to need something a little better if we have any ambition.

To expand on that, Chris makes the excellent point that hardly any innovation is done on social networks because these are owned by private companies. Twitter had so much innovation happening at the beginning before they locked all the developers out (this is a decade before Elon.) You can’t really build anything on Instagram or FaceBook because these companies could shut you down tomorrow. Not to mention they take all the profits. 30%, 70%, compared to 3% for credit cards for example. That’s a lot of money going to one company instead of a giant ecosystem.

Only 90s Kids Will Remember

The internet in the early days was so beautiful and chaotic. There were more than just 7 sites to visit. You could explore from link to link the entire internet the way you can only do on wikipedia these days. Anyone was free to build anything they wanted anywhere. Before the tech giants of today started accumulating power in their corporate networks. The kids of today only know the internet as the walled garden it is currently.

Network Design and the 3 Eras

It has to do with with the design of the networks. The small decisions that snowball into huge effects as the network grows. The first era Chris refers to as the “read era” from 1990 to 2005. Democratization of Information. Type a few words into a browser and read about anything you want. The next era is the “write era” from ~2006 to 2020. The publishing era, where corporate networks democratized publishing. Anyone can write (or makes videos, audios) and publish to mass audiences. The next era is the natural combination of the previous two, the “own era”. Anyone can become a network stakeholder, unlike before where it could only be a few shareholders, corporate affiliates and employees. This small change in the network has the promise of returning the internet to its dynamic, decentralized and open roots. As Chris says, “People can read and write on the internet. But now they can own.”

The Key Change in Network Design

The big change is in the dynamics of the hardware-software power relationship. Hardware exists in the physical world where an individual or a company controls it. With crypto the software “in all its expressive glory” is in charge. The hardware is replaceable. Think of Bitcoin miners or Ethereum validators. Compared to Google's or Facebook's servers for example. You can see the difference in power dynamics between hardware and software. So fcking HYPE! LFG!

Note: This is all just from the introduction. This is the ultimate hype book for anyone interested in Crypto. It's gets you SO EXCITED to see the future that can be built with blockchain technology.

As I sit here on my birthday (which is what this post is really about. Me fishing for "Happy Birthday to you" casts), I wanted to take some time to write about what makes Farcaster so special to me.

The Magic of the Community

The first thing anyone will tell you when you ask them about what makes Farcaster special is the people. This isn't me waxing a soliloquy, the question has literally been asked several times and this common answer comes up near the top every time. The magic however isn't in the people, and that's saying something because there are so many cool people on Farcaster. The magic is what this protocol has brought out in people. A deep desire to give. To contribute. A desire to give value to the network as a first instinct, rather than to extract. Pretty consistently the question people ask is not what can this protocol do for me, but what I can do for this protocol (shoutout to JFK, rip young king 👑). The word permissionless innovation is one Dan uses (one of the founders of Farcaster.) You don't need anyone's permission to build. Just come in and get to work. Combine this with a community that very much wants to build for others and you start to see how magical this formula is in action. This deep rooted generosity and spirit of giving makes the network more valuable for everyone involved. This is especially important because Farcaster as a technology is something that we very much need in our society. Given how other social networks are evolving.

The Future of Social

With Reddit and Twitter becoming more and more closed gardens, joining the likes of Instagram and Facebook among others, we very much need an open digital space. Look no further than ChatGPT why this is the case. By having access to all the public data generated by users on the internet, people were able to create the something as close to magic as I've ever seen. Something that Reddit and Twitter want to not contribute to out of jealousy. They feel they're missing out and weren't properly compensated for the data used by their platform. Ignoring the incredible innovation and work that went to make this possible. The most infuriating part of this however is that it's their users data. The same users that love ChatGPT and I'm sure would prefer their data go towards something that can be used for everyone's benefit vs privately sold by the platform to advertisers for profit.

This is all without mentioning the addictive nature of these networks. All their revenue is generated from advertising and the more time people spend on their platforms, the more money they generate. So they are incentivized to build to keep people addicted and not with their users to build something that would benefit them. The incentive structure doesn't allow it. Users have to build apps like One sec to break the addictive loops these social networks have created. The algorithms aren't built to help users better themselves and build a community. They are built to create addictions.

But now imagine these social networks built on a protocol like Farcaster. The underlying data and messages and communication is public (with end to end encryption for private communication.) This means anyone can build an Instagram or Reddit on top. The difference is if one builds for addictive loops, another can build for community. Build things to make sure you spend less time. Or break points where you can take certain teachings and you're not allowed to come back on until you apply them. Or users themselves can pick and chose. It's open and permissionless. Users are in control and any builder is free to come in and innovate something for the users. There is no corporate overlord to start charging tens of thousands of dollars to access "public" data suddenly. Or even block access.

We Need Farcaster

Some users maybe frustrated by the fact that they aren't able to extract as much value as other networks at the moment (like twitter for example.) However this is a good thing. We're still early. The network is still small. The mechanisms to make it truly decentralized and permissionless long term are still being built. The spirit of giving vs taking will benefit everyone in the long run. A rising tide lifts all boats, and Farcaster can help lift a hell of a lot of boats.

The future is brighter with Farcaster and it's why I'm so excited to get to be a part of it and watch it grow from the beginning.

Find me on Farcaster:

https://warpcast.com/syed/

Note: Warpcast is a client built by the founding Farcaster team. Think:
Email = Farcaster | Gmail = Warpcast
Ethereum = Farcaster | Metamask = Warpcast

Another clients is: https://www.supercast.xyz

3 parts:

1. It’s All Going to Be OK, Amazing Even

2. Some thoughts on how to prepare/take advantage

3. Post AGI and how Crypto fits in the picture (because it absolutely does.)

It’s All Going to Be OK, Amazing Even

There is a good chance that in 2024 the knowledge worker is going to go the way of the railroad worker. Actually a more accurate statement would be: knowledge work is going to go the way of manual labor. Most of it will be done by machines. We know in hindsight what a revolutionary change that was. How incredibly good it was. Even if it doesn’t feel like it at times, the quality of life increased dramatically for the vast majority of the world very quickly. If you’re worried it’s a bad thing, here’s a quick example of 2nd and 3rd order effects you might be missing.

In 2023 for a few days, we thought we’d accidentally discovered a room temperature, ambient pressure super conducting material. Here are just a few things that could be done with such a material:

1. No loss of energy during transportation so you could have a few nuclear reactors in the middle of nowhere and transport that energy to every corner of your country. Anything you can conceive of that involves moving energy is now in a different universe of possibility.

2. Maglev trains that go as fast as jets. Cities can now be spread out and connected through super fast public transportation.

As it turns out the experiment could not be replicated and so the hunt for such a magical material continues. But who knows how close we are to such a discovery. With an AGI type support, we might make that break through very quickly. The world as you know would be totally changed overnight. That’s just one break through. Who knows how many breakthroughs there are all over the world across industries. Curing cancer. Tripling the human life span. Do you see why I have little sympathy for software engineers loosing their jobs because coding in Javascript got easier? Stop looking at the tiny door that just closed and look a little to the right and see that the giant gates to heaven are opening up.

To the group saying “What about the doors to hell? This technology is too dangerous talk about that.” To you I say, you guys have always existed and you say the same thing every single time. EVERY SINGLE GOD DAMN TIME. But THIS time is different. Cut it, you wet blankets. The burden of proof is on you. All your doomsday scenarios involve skipping 7 steps in the middle and taking 4 imaginary things for granted. Just stfu.

Ok now where were we, ah yes. World is changing, doors are opening like never before. Breakthroughs possible in all direction.

Some Thoughts on How to Prepare/Take Advantage

Non-Founders

Everyone is a founder. If you’re not a founder right now, you will be, so go to the next section.

Founders

Do

Be ambitious. The things a small team, even a single person can do will soon jump exponentially. Imagine for anything you attempt you had a team of 5 super geniuses from the top Ivey League school, all of whom had top grades. Would you be trying to sell SaaS or trying to come up with a cure for cancer? That’s the scale of change in ambition the new generation of founders needs to have.

Don’t

Stop looking at ability. Ability does not matter. When it comes to startup success, ability is not at the top. It probably isn’t even top 3. AGI means everyone has a super suit for their brain. I see a lot of job descriptions asking for X or Y skill set. This is already an outdated practice. You’re not building for a world with AI. Look at their interests. Their drive. Their work ethic. Their values. Their vibe. Is there alignment? Is there a fit? These are the people you’re going to need to build with. Or you will be eaten alive all day everyday by the teams that optimized for this.

Post AGI and How Crypto Fits in the Picture (Because It Absolutely Does)

(Because it absolutely does)

The pace and scale of change happening in the world of AGI means we need structures that can update our social fabric at this point. Or it’s like having a Ferrari engine on bicycle tires. Crypto is the technology that allows us to capture and distribute the value that will be generated. The old models of monetization, equity, and regulation are not just slow but lethal if you're trying to compete in today's world. Don’t bother. Build on and for crypto. The world will come to you. It won’t have a choice.

The golden age of entrepreneurship is coming. Be ready anon!

Alignment with Farcaster Goals

Farcaster is all about community. Ensuring the quality stays high as the users scale into the thousands, millions and eventually billions. The current community is full of artists and builders and thinkers who are optimistic about the future and care about each other. Easier when it's a small village but how do you maintain that at scale? That’s the challenge.

On the side of $Degen, the goal is to get the token into the hands of users that care about the network and won’t simply dump it for profit. You want to be able to reward meaningful interactions and encourage building, sharing, and connecting. Never mind what the initial reaction and gamification is. That’s what the beta is for.

It’s an offensive mindset. Rather than waiting for hypothetical problems with scaling you create the circumstances for them to come so you can address them head on now. Create the norms as you scale instead of waiting for the problem. Bring them to today and address them now. We can see on Twitter (X) how this part of crypto culture has made that platform much lower quality. It’s now being addressed here from the beginning.

Community Enforced Sybil Resistance

Speaking of which, once wash trading (tip me and I’ll tip you) is banned, we can see how the community can police behaviour purely from incentive alignment. I have a limited amount of tips, so there’s no reason for me to reward poor content. The vast majority will go to those who contribute meaningfully. So on the other side you’re now incentivized to build and share meaningful things. To earn your token, which then makes you even less incentivized to give to people who you feel aren’t working to earn the tokens.

So the incentives are structured to overtime contribute meaningfully as the most efficient way to farm. The better your contributions, the better reactions you get, the more you’re able to contribute the following day. So overtime quality users have more influence on how funds are distributed. The low quality airdrop farmers will have virtually nothing to give. Not to mention attempts to subvert will make it easier for the Warpcast team to identify and flag behaviour which makes the network stronger over the long run.

Psychological Framing of Giving

We would be remiss if we didn’t talk about the psychological impact at play. The subtle difference of having a daily allowance that is of no use to oneself is a masterstroke. There is no evaluating the cost benefit for yourself. So it becomes all about giving. When you give constantly and are met with gratitude it creates a framing for the token and for the community. It’s the hardest part and the part that was nailed the most beautifully. The more users that come in trying to farm the token, the more they realize the optimal strategy is to be a quality user. The more they do that, the more they are intrinsically rewarded and are extrinsically rewarding others. It’s an impossible balancing act. Intrinsic rewards are better for long term outcomes but you want to be able to reward extrinsically for people putting in hard work. But extrinsic rewards directly hurt intrinsic rewards. By diverting attention. This balancing act was struck perfectly with airdrop 2.

Many More

This is just the initial. The more angles you look at it the better it gets because it just works. It’s elegant in it’s simplicity. The future looks brighter by the second. I know I’ve been saying you’re not bullish enough. I thought I was bullish enough. I mean to be the bar was so sky high, it was in space. However as bullish as I was, one thing I’ve learned is that I’m simply not bullish enough.

For this to launch at the same time as Frames and as frames goes virally across the cryptoverse. That kind of universal alignment might easily be mistaken for destiny. Which by the way let’s take a moment to appreciate that the launch was done with a small amount of tokens to test behaviour and make sure it works. So now the tip wash trading can be blocked. Not to mention Frames allows a much better UX experience. Where you can have a bot able to be called to place a frame where people can give their tips instead of flooding a popular post with hundreds of comments. Which can be kept beyond the airdrop as the behaviour is ingrained. I mean that timing has to be destiny.

See you on Farcaster Anon, destiny awaits!

Pre - Agriculture

This is the first arc. Not much to say to the whims of nature. Our destiny was not in our hands. Wandering the land, living in rhythm with nature. Not really thinking beyond the immediate future. Actually now that I think about it, it’s likely this will be what the end of our evolutionary journey will look like. Except a bit different. Hoverboards and interplanetary travel and all that.

Agriculture and Centralized Money (Giant State as Overhead)

The invention of Agriculture changed the trajectory completely. The first stand against the whims of nature. We decide where and when the food is. The most important stand because this is what allows our groups to grow beyond what can be sustained by the hunter gatherer lifestyle. This unlocks a huge upside potential; the division of labour.

A very dominant trait to have for a species. Especially knowing what we know about our brains and how they learn. The efficiency gains from compounding in one area of knowledge are exponential. The problem however is that while it works on a macro level, on an individual level it doesn’t quite work. Everyone makes different things and once these things get beyond 2 or 3 trading becomes difficult. The country as a whole is incredible but on an individual level it's stagnant. It would be like a cell that has all the ingredients but none are moving. No chance at life.

So we need a way to create movement. So we have currency. However currency does not exist in nature. The best currency is one that is easily divisible (to account for different relative values), easy to verify (no forgery.) In order to have such a thing you have to basically invent the state as we know it. Along with all the bells and whistles. An army, police etc. Along with rules for this entity, what we know now as different forms of government.

This entity, given it’s control over the most important resources, the source of the movement, allows it to have a very strong say in how the whole functions. Fast forward to the 1600s and the rise of the banking families that started the renaissance. Of course there would be a split between the money managers and those managing the entity rules of the society. It’s grown too large to function as one. A sort of system of balances and checks, both believing the other holds true power.

Which is where we are today. At the end of the 2nd arc because we have now a new system for money. Which removes the overhead that was necessary for the past 10,000 years.

Decentralized Currency (No Overhead)

We can now have a currency which is divisible (virtually infinitely so), easy to verify and essentially impossible to forge. A child can create this currency in a matter of minutes and send it out into the world. What would have once required an impossible amount of resources.

The rules and requirements have changed at the most fundamental level. An evolutionary equivalent of the invention of the cell. The possibilities are likely beyond what can be contemplated at the moment. The change is too fundamental. The 3rd Arc of humanity.

Curious that the timing of that would line up with the invention of AGI.

Anyway that’s it. Thanks for reading!

-Syed

Farcaster’s destiny is what @Balaji calls a network state. You cannot have that without a currency. (Need to write on why I think this.)

All the Farcaster clients builders can build around this. Same with the other builders. The OG’s can spend the Degen they were airdropped on quality projects. The token can be worth $0. It can just be for fun. As long as it’s distributed internally and a robust economy is created. Price doesn’t matter.

This place is full of techno optimists and people who want to build and contribute. I have high confidence that we can build a Disneyland for our Disney dollars. It helps us separate Farcaster the protocol and Warpcast. Let Warpcast experiment with Warps. The network doesn’t need to be held to that. Everyone else can experiment with $Degen.

The name $Degen is also beautiful. It means we can be free to spend it and not take it seriously. That’s SO IMPORTANT. It’s important to not take ourselves too seriously and the spirit of $Degen captures that. You combine that with a room full of techno optimist builders and a bunch of people who are incentivized to play in this room (aka users for Farcaster clients and apps.) Holy shit that experiment sounds exciting as fuck!

You get The PERFECT mix of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. $Degen token is just for fun, I want to build cool shit, but also, holy fck this thing could be worth millions. But even if it isn’t, being Degen is fun, and Top Hats are fun, and fuck this is actually fun.

I don't care how bullish you are on the future Anon, you're not bullish enough.

Imagine building your own Instagram, making some changes like time limits and sharing it with your friends. Imagine it becoming bigger than Instagram. Or someone copying your idea and making changes. It’s all fair game. The underlying data is public. There is no company in the middle holding ownership. No one to shut it down since it exists in hundreds maybe thousands of computers around the world.

It’s a new world view of social media. To me it’s inevitable. But even that isn’t what makes Farcaster so special. That alone would be enough but it misses the magic ingredient. The thing that makes Farcaster feel like wonderland. The people. The community.

We in Farcaster love Farcaster. We LOVE it. It’s a magical place to meet all kinds of wonderful talented people. But more then that there is a desire in everyone to contribute to and help Farcaster and our fellow casters grow. We understand this is the future and we’re surrounded by people who also understand. Being surrounded by builders and thinkers and artists who have an optimistic view on what the future could be. Who care deeply about helping each other and the network.

Crypto was one of the central pillars that made all of the above possible. However, our beloved network didn’t have a token. For good reason. There was no point. There was no point in building it to attract airdrop farmers. However, a lot of the builders are in crypto and so it was natural there was a side that was missing. Regulatory clarity being missing meant the founding team couldn’t mess around too much with experimentation in this area.

So you have this network that cares about each other, that is full of builders and entrepreneurs. Some even very connected with the top organizations and teams in crypto and tech. You now give these people their own token to play with. I can’t speak for myself, but I’m looking to spend my tokens on projects built by other casters. I’ve seen lots of casters excited to build stuff for $Degen.

Not to mention the tokens were airdropped the vast majority to the above community. To people who care deeply about Farcaster.

I hope you can see all the ingredients in the above post. Something magical is at work. The $Degen experiment is just beginning. The future of Farcaster hasn’t even left the ground floor. When it does, everyone will be watching. This is the future. It’s an exciting time. If you’re reading this and not on Farcaster yet, it’s time to fix that.

See you onchain anon!

P.S. You can read more about $Degen on the main site: https://www.degen.tips

Side note on why c/acc and not d/acc (decentralized acceleration): I went with c/acc when I first wrote the call to action because d/acc wasn't a thing at the time. Shortly after Marc Andreessen went all in on d/acc as the terminology for accelerating decentralized technology. Coming from the guy behind a16zCrypto this was annoying.

But after thinking about it more, I realized this is a good thing. c/acc can be specialized on upgrading society using crypto. I expect c/acc to be a mix of decentralization where power is concerned and centralization where efficiency is needed. Instead of just trying to decentralize everything which is what d/acc sounds like it would be about.

So how do we in crypto accelerate our society to be ready for a world of AGI and acceleration?

Step 1: Come up with some general categories.

Step 2: Take a bunch of new startups and see how they map to the categories and change accordingly. We’ll start by covering step 1.

The 4 categories where Crypto can upgrade society off the top of my head are:

1. AGI Guardrails

Solving for p(doom)

p(doom) just means the probability of doom. The idea that a super intelligent entity could randomly wipe out humanity the way we would wipe out ants (which by the way we aren’t able to do and aren’t even close to being able to do.)

It’s a lot of fear mongering, but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be some rules around AGI eventually. For now, long as the stochastic parrots are not connected to the Boston dynamic robots I think we're fine.

Proof of Human (Identity)

A human could use AI to shape online discussions and manipulate online public opinion. It could be one person with a bunch of programmed LLMs that make it look like it’s different people agreeing. Captchas and Turing tests are no longer good enough. We need cryptographic proof of humanity. The default will soon be that someone is AI until proven human, as opposed to the other way around which is what it currently is. There is a lot of work being done in crypto around identity and even specifically proof of humanity. This is an area that will need to have mature solutions in the market very quickly. The most promising solutions are hard and require real world work. Things that are difficult to artificially copy. Like scanning an eyeball for Worldcoin. Or having a crypto wallet with lots of quality transactions over time.

2. Equitable Resource Distribution (Inputs to Means of Production)

Think of this as the “Rules of the Game” for capitalism. Equally applied to everyone and the reality everyone agrees to work around. A fairer competition means a higher level of competition and a higher caliber of athletes.

Video games can be a good reference. Yes, I am being serious. Imagine everyone being airdropped 3 eth when they turn 18 for example. Or raw material stores being held by a group contract. Like all American’s working in hardware tech in SF with <10,000 users have access to the (A) raw materials in (B) storage stored in (C) country.

3. Decentralization of Power (Governance)

Decision making close to those being affected by those decisions. Moving closer to a greek city state model. Moving governance decisions on chain from a bottom up seems the most logical way. The more that municipal level decisions move on chain, the more quickly and locally we can adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. Any project based on polling public opinion would fit in here. These tools could be used to make decisions at a local community level if onboarded properly.

4. Meritocratic Reward Functions (Compensation)

Most crypto startups are here. Distributing rewards based on merit. It’s the scoring method of capitalism. The better and more equitable the scoring/reward system, the more fun the competition will be. Important to think about when more and more of the “need to do” things get out sourced to A.I. and we’re left with “want to do.”

Think Money, but money is the most basic version of this. Programmable money allows for more creative solutions.

Fundamentally we aren’t built to lie around and do nothing our entire lives. Retirement is against our very nature. When AI and Robots can do all the work, we’ll need to still have things to do. The mechanisms here will greatly decide what that future world will look like.

Do any of those domains make sense? Do they actually work as a framework for c/acc?

The easiest way is to take real life crypto projects and see how they work with the above domains. There is a list of hundreds of projects on Farcaster. I’ll be going through them and seeing how they perform/match up along our 4 categories. Either it will go nicely or I’ll see the categories aren’t useful in practice and some reorganizing will need to be done. Either way, we should have a useable framework to evaluate how crypto projects fit in c/acc and how good they are in preparing us for a world of AGI. It might also help to find where the opportunities and gaps are which would be nice. So that will be the next article. But for now this article is a good resource for us to look back to.

Want me to look at your startup? Comment on Farcaster and I’ll move it up the list of projects to look at.

How to join c/acc?

This isn't a formal organization. It's more a feeling. About crypto's ability to make a deep and meaningful change. A feeling of optimism about AI and accelerated technology and a world of miracles. If you feel the vibe and are excited about building for it, you're in. Let's build for the exciting new future ahead!

• Solves trilemma of privacy, verifiability and censorship resistance (using p2p network)

• Network —> oblivious sharded hypergraph database

  • With Database OS system on top which provides services to build applications

• 3 Levels —> communication, query planner, storage

Communication Layer

Planted Clique Addressing Scheme

• A graph (dots and lines) has a subset called a clique (all dots with same connections to each other)

  • This subset is difficult to find if you’re autistic and impossible if you’re not

  • If you make a clique by amending a graph (I guess that’s allowed, but it feels like cheating) then this is called a planted clique.

    • Don’t even bother trying to distinguish between a random graph and one that has a planted clique, you can’t

Triple-Ratchet Protocol

• Extension to double ratchet (I should have guessed)

• Asynchronous DKG ratchet to provide group key as counterparty receiver key plugged into double-ratchet algo’s Diffie-Hellman process.

  • That’s an actual sentence in the paper. This (derogative) loves stringing big words together. Now I have to spend 20 min using my Intel Pentium 3 processor brain to try to understand it.

    • Uses a triple ratchet in a double ratchet to get a group key. No I don’t know what either of these ratchet’s are, let’s keep reading.

    • My eyes are glazing over. Going to just try to understand through osmosis. Seems to be we’re trying to get a group key where not all the homies have to be online.

• Ok so it was about trying to get a group key where the homies don’t have to be online and they key is only for homies. Don’t know what we’re doing with this group key, but we can make it now.

Shuffled Lattice Routing Protocol

• Anonymity is hard. Shuffling. Lattice. Ok so the goal is to make things anonymous. What things? Let’s find out.

  • Our messages. That’s what we’re trying to make anonymous. We’re in the communication layer. Duh.

• We’re doing a bunch of math on the comms until it looks like gibberish to someone. Oh wait it’s coming together. That planted clique. Ok wait we can do this.

• The random planted clique is a group, and the make a key, and prob sign it so we know it was homies only, then they do the lattice shuffle so no one can tell who this set of homies are. Gossip layer is prob how they talk to each other xoxo.

Gossip Layer

• It totally was how they talk to each other. We’re using GossipSub. Oh wait no, we’re throwing on a filter called bloom. So now it’s BlossomSub. Triple Double ratchet vibes here.

  • SLRP cluster under BlossomSub is where to go if you want to try to understand. Good luck

Query Planner Layer

• Ok so this is a paragraph at the end. I guess there’s stuff we need to know.

Storage Layer

• The next step looks like it’s the storage layer.

• Built as a Verifiable Delay Function driven proof of storage with query processing proof of validity. I’m just going to throw this picture in and we can try to decipher it together.

  

• We can do this team.

• Ok so a VDF is a function that is a sequence, so processed one after another, you can verify the result faster than you can calculate it and the result is unique.

• But of course that’s not good enough for us. We don’t want the basic VDF. We want the upgraded Wesolowski VDF. The basic ones uses prime numbers but this one uses imaginary quadratic field. Of course we’d use that one. Prime numbers for security? Bleh. Imaginary numbers are way stronger.

• And we’re using the bloom clock from the messages in our last section as inputs to our VDF. So our clock filter is now merged with merkle proof selection. So that’s basically our hashed data.

• Ok so hashed data, plus the time stamps into VDF so that’s how we know the order. VDF is doing the job of a blockchain in terms of setting the order.

• No I don’t know what this all means, but it feels like I have a sense of the individual pieces even if idk exactly how they all fit together. That’s got to count for something.

Oblivious Hypergraph

• Ok I’ve heard this buzzword a lot from Cassie and it sounds cool af. Maybe now we can understand it.

• Nope. Not a chance. Ok I’ll try again for a bit. You know what it is. She’s putting the words in a sequence that don’t normally go together. But you understand the words so you think I should understand it. But then they combine and your brain short circuits.

• Oh wait the next paragraph has a nice first sentence. A hypergraph is a graph where the the lines can connect more than two dots. So they have an intersection point that’s not a dot (even though I guess technically there is a dot where they intersect. These types of lines (edges) are called hyper edges.

• Ok this is useful because there are higher level relationships you can show in a hypergraph, so you can model any database over one. So it’s a useful tool for representing and querying such a database.

• It’s not that the hypergraph is better, but being able to generalize it means you can have a query pattern that can be made oblivious. So the nodes that are evaluating the queries don’t know who made the query or where or how it got there.

• Ok that’s easy enough. Hyper graphs are the dots and lines except a line can connect 2 or more dots instead of just one line between two dots like in a normal graph. Which is useful if you want to make it hard to know where a message came from or what path it took. Simple enough.

• Ok the next section says simple OT (oblivious transfer) and I’m going to skip it because if there’s one thing we should have learned is we don’t do the vanilla version of anything. Give us the kinky.

• Right on queue, Correlated OT, a variant of OT. Instead of sending a singular choice, the choices themselves are implicitly correlated. This choice is random because of course it is. We know the drill at this point.

• For Quilibrium we’re using Ferret: Fast Extension for Correlated OT with Small Communication. Pretty self explanatory sounding name, bless you Ferret.

• RDF to Hypergraph. Idk, can’t figure it out. Good luck, section 4.3, godspeed.

• Ok so now we know the roles of query planner and evaluator are separated. Someone to I guess figure out the path and one to get the result and through the magic of the above stuff it gets done and verified.

• It’s Turing complete. Cool. Next section is the Operating System. So by seeing the oblivious hypergraph in action I’m thinking we can get a better sense of how it works.

Operating System

• Ok, so on hypergraph trying to do familiar things. File system, schedular, IPC, etc.. Here is the picture. Universal resources, initially the account resource is where we’d store the balance of individual holders’ of the network’s reward tokens.

  

• Ok RDF is just relationships in a database. So now we have to do it on a hypergraph, which I guess what the last section was about, (very) roughly speaking.

• Ok so the final section is just going over those orange boxes but the picture does a good enough job.

Conclusion

• Ok, so the feeling is like staring at a bunch of puzzle pieces. I see some possibilities. Where the colours match, the edge pieces. A sense of what the final picture might look like. But the entire puzzle is very much unsolved.

• That’s ok though. I think even seeing more of the network implemented should make it easier to put the pieces we have together.

• This was me operating on a Pentium 3 processor brain. I mean as smooth as it gets. I encourage you to read the paper yourself. Especially if you have a math background. Understanding the hieroglyphics section I’m sure would make it all a lot easier to follow.

• It’s been long enough that I no longer understand them, and am frankly too lazy to put in the effort to try. It is what it is.

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These are meme names but they map fairly consistently to known ideologies like capitalism (e/acc) or authoritarianism (EA). In the cultural battle, it becomes important to consider how you engage with these other non e/acc ideologies.

I propose to you that the cultural battle is irrelevant. Continue to build, and post memes about accelerating. Engaging in an intellectual battle is equivalent to wrestling with pigs. You both get dirty but they like it.

The only winning move is to not play. Focus on the future. Focus on building. Focus on optimism.

c/acc - after getting a heavy dose of e/acc I'm radicalized. Crypto needs to accelerate. To build the rails on which an accelerationist, abundant society can run.

The A.I. division of e/acc is accelerating closer to AGI. With the promise of quantum leaps it offers for us. Empowering every person on earth to the work of 100 or 1000. Like going from manual labour to the steam engine, except for our brain.

Society as exists right now is not ready for this technology. This level of sudden spike in productivity will break too many things. (Insert Suffering from Success meme)

Crypto is the only hope in upgrading our societal infrastructure fast enough. Consider this a call to action for all of us in crypto. AGI is coming. It’s up to us to make sure everyone is ready.

The Nov 20th, 2023 Sam Altman firing I believe was a turning point. Crypto wasn’t ready. DAOs could have been a model to manage A.I. development and the members could have been all of humanity. In saying that, Worldcoin is probably meant to solve just this. Although I think the idea with Worldcoin is more to share the spoils. So that what the AGI does can be distributed as universal basic income among World coin holders. It’s less about decentralized control and more about equitable rewards distribution. But that’s because it’s equitable rewards distribution that crypto has made the most progress. Pitiful as that progress may be (relative to what I believe we’re capable of.)

4 Domains

With that in mind I propose 4 domains for decentralization to accelerate on: AGI guardrails, equitable resource distribution, decentralization of power, meritocratic reward functions.

These aren’t areas for projects to focus on. Projects I expect will often cross multiple domains.  These domains are more a measure of crypto acceleration as a whole. Specifically as a way to measure preparedness for AGI. The further we progress in the 4 domains, the more ready society is for AGI.

We don’t have a lot for time. Team AI is full speed ahead unlocking the benefits of AGI. With goals like curing diseases that have ailed us since time immemorial, like cancer, and progressing us along the Kardashev scale to a type 2 civilization. Not to mention the nuclear energy division that is full steam ahead in helping us to solve the energy crises by developing safe and clean nuclear energy.

It’s time for crypto to accelerate along side our friends in e/acc. It’s time to do our part and upgrade the infrastructure of society to make sure we can handle the speeds we will soon be reaching. If we succeed, a world of straight out of fantasy and make believe awaits us.

It’s time to be optimistic. It’s time to accelerate. It’s time to build.

Coming Next: Grouping and measuring crypto projects on Farcaster to gauge our current trajectory in c/acc.

(Link Coming Soon)

Next Steps

1. Network States already exist

2. It’s the Interfaces that are missing

3. RWA onchain is likely the next leap.

With initiatives like City of Praxis and what not, there is this idea of needing to create a network state and what’s missing is a physical place. That’s what will make Network States a reality. I think that’s the wrong framing. A physical location is just one of many possible interfaces. We can build others and we can build them fast. We don’t need to wait for something as grand as City of Praxis.

Network states are your online communities. Nothing more and nothing less. The whole point is they exist in a non-physical plane. Which give us unique characteristics that we can and should take advantage of. For example, the lines/boarders are mental not physical. Whether that’s by the game you play, the faction in the game or your even your philosophical ideology. These are different borders and as real as any national border in the physical world. You can be a part of many different network states. Just like you can have more than 1 passport.

Giving them a physical place is just one interface. A way for your online community to interact with the real world. The question is what are other possible interactions? Real World Assets seems obvious and is a big unlock to accelerate crypto. Imagine your online WoW guild was earning Eth. And used that to buy and store a bunch of houses around the world in Gnosis safes, accessible to guild members. Imagine that world. I don’t know about you but I get an adrenaline of excitement thinking about all the possible implications.

There’s also the community dashboard. Like the central bank publishing macro economic data about a country. This dashboard would give real time info about things the community/network state cares about. What about that dashboard being connected to smart contracts that execute real world actions? We’re in starting to enter DAO territory. These boundaries between online communities, DAOs and Network States I expect will become blurred over time. Conceptually they refer to similar concepts. Remember, Network states don’t replace physical states, they redefine them. As the interfaces increase, this will become more obvious.

Think about ways for your online communities to interact and interface with the physical world using onchain behaviours and you’ll be accelerating network states.