Even conferences were exciting. Kind of.

And it worked.

People will say, "Mark, you're just bitter. You don't understand. The industry's matured."

As if wearing a grey suit, the Trump family making billions from memecoins, a fractured landscape of money grabs and layer 2s, lies, ignominy and having an ETF is a sign of a maturity.

Crypto is doing fine. Bitcoin's new home is over $100,000. The global market cap is knocking on $4 trillion. Gold is looking over its shoulder.

And stablecoins offer a way out of financial obfuscation for millions. I hope it works out.

But that's not what I came for.

And certainly not why I stayed.

I stayed for the promise of a decentralized creator economy.

Take back the internet.
Remove the gatekeepers.
Decentralize power.

Yes, there are a few murmurs, a last rebellion holding out.

But really, that philosophy has gone. (And those unique daily user stats you like? take out the sybils, the airdrop farmers and all those multi-wallet degens and they don't look so jolly, do they?)

The scammers didn't leave. They matured as well, didn't they? Now they're Twitter KOLS, peddling the latest TGE to their followers with promises of generational wealth (see point on daily users).

Profiting from the attention economy and referrals, which is really all it is.

Money flows to the top and those who stuck around wrestle for the pocket change.

Nothing new there.

Even the tech has been corrupted.

ZK proofs went from promising privacy to selling AI wrappers.
Decentralization disappeared up its own arse.
And not enough people care.

There's no coincidence the drop in creativity arrived just as AI took off.
Control-V replaced imagination. Beige marketing replaced belief.

Maybe this is what happens when movements grow up.
Or maybe it’s what happens when money drowns meaning.

Either way, the colour’s gone.

And I’m stepping back until it returns.

Good luck, Web3.

Is it even important anymore? 

Juggling chains, collecting points, counting transactions and bridging protocols has worn me down...And almost spat me out. Physically, emotionally - and this is the saddest, dear reader - creatively… I’m a shell of the person who started - unbeknown to me at the time - airdrop farming in the peaceful, tranquil waters of 2022. 

But the fallout from the current airdrop meta scales beyond the personal, the impact spreads like shock waves in the Marshall Islands. When I look around at all the hope and misplaced dreams; when I think about a summer of leaderboards, KOLS and shiny shiny eyeballs clicking buttons on dull screens; when I see a damaged, brittle, divided community collecting bounties, clamouring for dust, screaming for an extra one percent on their community allocations when the TGE eventually rolls into town, I fear not just for the future of crypto, but the collective mental wellbeing of almost everyone in it. 

LayerZero Labs

@LayerZero_Labs

Sybil bounty submissions are re-opening shortly under a new process on Commonwealth that will require a bond.

Submission Criteria
We are implementing a bonding mechanism into sybil bounty reporting, which means only addresses that post a bond are eligible to submit a report on…

1,458

4:00 AM • May 25, 2024

This is only season one. 

Snapshot one. Week one. Round one.

You haven’t even met the real antagonist.

Test nets, phishing nets… please use my referral code.

My name is Mark, and I’m an airdrop farmer in recovery. It’s been ten seconds since my last transaction.

It’s early April, 2024. A milky sun casts weak shadows across my home office. The day starts with a GM on 18 Discord channels, then I jump through hoops for, in no particular order - I really should keep a spreadsheet, but any fun has been sucked from the space without adding a layer of CRM to the shitshow -  Ether-Fi, Owlto, Renzo, Zerolend, Mint, Berrachain, Mantle, Uprock, Orbiter, Zeta, Ambient, Jumper, deBridge, Portal, Mayan, Bob, Hyperlane, Celo, Scroll, ZKSync, Base, Zora, Merlin, Squid, Stargate, Rhino, Bebop, Redstone, Mayan, Drip, Jup, Margin Fi, Kamino, Marinade, Drift, Parcl and… am I too late for Mode? 

Mode 🟡

@modenetwork

Mode Season 2: Points Update

Up to 5x Rewards—Here's a guide to understand all the Mode Points Multipliers going forward.

Read all about it
mode.mirror.xyz/N4tskj44SRFHTl…

2,665

11:46 AM • May 7, 2024

At 8.34 a.m. I open Twitter and a now-too-familiar feeling of anxiety crushes my heart in its vice-like grip. Twenty-seven new blockchains, bridges, perp decks and test nets have popped up overnight. That's like a billion free dollars. If only I qualify for all of the airdrops. Galaxe, Intract, Mercle and Layer3 have launched tasks upon tasks upon tasks like some kind of hellish point driven Fall Of The House Of Usher… but that’s the wrong Poe. This is the torment of The Pit And The Pendulum.  

Orbiter Finance 🛸

@Orbiter_Finance

Welcome aboard Pilot Fest - where the sky's the limit!

Embark on a thrilling 4-week journey filled with diverse themes and engaging activities each week.

Brace yourself for surprises, weekly rewards, and a tight-knit community waiting to take flight with you.

432

12:23 PM • May 20, 2024

The excitement that was so prevalent in the wake of Arbitrum has gone. Clicking buttons? It used to feel special. We were explorers. A rare breed. Adventurous cross-chain alchemists. Now it's A Descent Into The Maelstrom, rewards eviscerated by the wallets of rampant industrial farmers, bored whales and the monotonous shrill of Twitter updates. If this is a numbers game, we’re using their maths now. Line upon line of worker bees clicking ‘sign transaction’ for pocket change.

As the coffee burns on the stove, I manage Chrome extensions. Rainbow, Metamask, Rabby, Timeless, Trust, Coinbase, Potem, Aptos, Argent X, Backpack, Bitget, Leo, Keplr, MagicEden…Solflare. Where I store my passwords is no longer important. They may as well be buried on the surface of Mars. Who cares? 

RPB

@theRPbubble

Monad will surpass LayerZero, zkSync, and Starknet.

$MONAD airdrop gonna be the BIGGEST ever with $224M SECURED for us

Potential: $15,000 and It will only take 20 minutes of your time.

Explore the detailed step-by-step video guide

249

8:05 PM • Jun 5, 2024

Welcome to community building in a permissionless world. Participation is rewarded, but the price is your focus, attention, curiosity and creativity. This is not free money. Far from it. You win points for supplying liquidity. You’re incentivised to borrow, share, and lend. Transactions aren’t optional. They’re your bread and butter. You’re looping so many LPs across so many platforms you’re swallowing your own tail to infinity. 

You try this without a spreadsheet. 

Shoebill Finance

@ShoebillFinance

Another round of boosted METIS Rewards Campaign has started
500 METIS firing up APY for all pools in Shoebill Finance!

Supply seMETIS from @ENKIProtocol
Supply artMETIS from @Artemisfinance
Supply and Borrow METIS

Visit
metis-metis.shoebill.finance/#/

11

1:39 PM • Jun 6, 2024

It’s voting season on Taffy and Snapshot; my mind races. Have I even voted? Did I mint the OAT NFT? What level am I in Discord? What roles do I have? OMG. Anxiety, fear, cortisol and dopamine swirl like ancient forces shaping the solar system of my mind.

Hours vanish. At 11.37, I check Defillama. Another €18 billion has been found down the back of the VC sofa. The promise of a five-figure airdrop reaches escape velocity. 

…Or terminal velocity. 

What’s the difference? 

It's not Requiem For A Dream, but Airdrop farming is an addiction, we’re slaves to transactions on the blockchain, to the promise of high returns.

Money for nothing and your clicks for free. 

Your time in exchange for their TVL.

I’s not a fair swap.

Whatever your slippage. 

Out of interest, how much did you get from Uprock, Kamino, Eigenlayer, Hava, Nyan, Parcl, Kim, Param or Ionic? Wormhole, Jupiter, Jito, Optimism, the aforementioned Arbitrum, these are the exceptions. Not the rule anymore.  

Kroma (✳️_✳️)

@kroma_network

Key Updates on Kroma Tokenomics

Adjusting Total Supply of $KRO from 50M to 1B

Amplifying Community Airdrop Allocation to 17%

Allocating more $KRO rewards for Ecosystem Contributors

Rescheduling TGE to Mid Q3 for Thorough Implementation

Further updates on the…

292

4:43 AM • Jun 5, 2024

Forget the gwei. How many hours have you lost?  

You’ve made a pact with the devil. 

Only the devil saw you coming and had a suite of psychological marketing tools to throw in your face. Sitting ducks.  

Rabby Wallet

@Rabby_io

Ready?

4,150

2:10 PM • Jun 3, 2024

Creating on-chain activity, TVL and massaged DAUs has become a billion dollar science, but it wasn’t orchestrated. It was born from accident. Serendipitous manipulation. The not-so-subtle interplay of psychology, nudges and behavioural design emerging from tried-and-tested web2 marketing extraction techniques.

The exploitation of your need for financial security gained momentum when the results started to look good on paper. More capital flowed in. More rounds closed. It’s not easy to put a date on when the tides shifted. Perhaps Autumn of 2023... Give or take a few months.  

All I know is that by February seasons were increasing as the percentage you were fighting over was decreasing.  

You’re collateral damage.

Prefrontal cortex damage. 

You’re being psychologically manipulated. Every tweet, season, task and collaboration is designed to captivate your attention, spur your participation… keep you coming back. 

Again, and again and again. 

Your happiness, fear, anxiety, anger and ambition are all being used against you. Scarcity, the promise of rewards, act now, think later, priming, reciprocity, social proof. Airdrop farmers have become the farmed. Your dopamine reward circuitry is being activated, your behaviours reinforced. Add in competition, your old friend FOMO and a thousand influences promising €5000 for ten minutes work, and you have a perfect hormonal storm deep within you. You are not in control. 

And that’s the whole damn point. 

It's called behavioural design because your behaviour can be designed. 

They're even using pie-charts against you.

Seeker

@oliversgriff

Renzo protocol either:
- Don't know how to plot a pie chart
- Are misleading people

5

10:54 PM • Apr 23, 2024

A creeping shadow of uncertainty - when is the airdrop? Do I qualify? Could this change my life? -  shrouds your decisions and triggers stress, sending cortisol curdling through your veins. Unchecked. Unconscious. In response, dopamine floods your body, which causes the release of more cortisol, which now acts as a regulator helping to manage your reaction and maintain balance. 

You’re looping LP on Ether-Fi, your body is looping dopamine and cortisol. And it gets worse for you because the fight-or-flight response is designed to be transient, a brief surge created in the crib of evolution to evade danger. You’re not designed to be under constant stress. But they don’t tell you when the snapshot will be, so you are.

It's the not knowing that kills you.

Slowly. 

It would be easy to change the strategy. To really ‘put community first’. To be open, transparent, honest and truthful - oh the irony of the blockchain - but if you know the timeline, you stop clicking buttons, your compulsion to interact wanes. TVL dips. Transactions slips. Most of them will go to zero. You’re lining the wrong pockets. 

“We’ll keep the snapshot date and any criteria we’re using under wraps, thank you very much.” 

Find me an airdrop farmer whose sleep hasn’t suffered, whose focus isn’t compromised, whose creativity isn’t weakened. 

Dopamine works on - amongst other places - the prefrontal cortex. That’s the same area of the brain that plans, thinks and moderates your social behaviour. You’re more anxious, depressed… and you still ain’t fucking rich. 

Just the sum of your habits. 

And that’s why I quit. Not because I'm better. Not because I'm immune to their design... and certainly not because I've made my fortune.

I just don't like being told what to fucking do.

I want my mind back. I want my creativity back. I don't want to click buttons for other people.

Maybe ZKSync will save us all. Perhaps Scroll will cook and Layer Zero got it right. Perhaps one of the 55 active layer 2s or one of the 44 that are coming might drop 70% to the community, they might even make a difference. 

But I won’t be there to find out. 

Enough is enough. 

I’m done. 

Down.

But not out. 

Are you going to join me?

And it reminded me that technology is not a replacement, yet people use it as such.

People say we must avoid ‘Tech for tech’s sake.’

But that mantra doesn’t apply only to the tech companies building the future of our culture.

‘Tech for tech’s sake’ applies to you too! To how you experience life, relationships, work and meaning.

Yes, your phone can capture the image.

But it can’t capture the feeling. It can’t capture the awe. It can’t capture the real conversation between you and the universe. (Or you and your daughter.)

Technology is not a replacement for the raw, unfiltered experience.

Next time the universe gives you front row seats, remember: the best way to view it isn’t through your phone screen. It’s with your eyes.

If you’re lucky, you have two. They are on your face. Use them.

Look up.

First, a disclaimer: This is not financial advice (and if you need proof, I aped into a YT pool on Pendle… those returns are so high… I wonder why…and THEN worked out what YT meant.)

Where was I? Oh yes, Merlin. Merlin is a “𝘉𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘰𝘪𝘯 𝘓𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳 2 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘡𝘒-𝘙𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘶𝘱 𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬, 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘭𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬, 𝘋𝘢𝘵𝘢 𝘈𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯-𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘉𝘛𝘊 𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘶𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘦𝘴. 𝘔𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘉𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘰𝘪𝘯'𝘴 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘵𝘴, 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘓𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳1 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘓𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳 2 𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬, 𝘵𝘰 𝘔𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘉𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘰𝘪𝘯 𝘍𝘶𝘯 𝘈𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯.”

…That didn't sound like a whole lot of fun to me, but what the hell...

... I hit a wall instantly. The small amount of Bitcoin I own is in a cold wallet with a broken USB cable. So my first challenge was to swap ETH on Optimism or ZkSync to BTC on Merlin.

Yikes!

It was about as much fun as having root canal surgery.

Speaking of wizards, hopefully blockchain Gandalf Keir Finlow-Bates will roll his eyes and say, “Mark, it’s simple, you just swap ETH for tBTC on Polkadot, or Avalanche and then do some DeFi contortion tricks and…hey presto...”

All the bridges I found required the transfer of Bitcoin. And I didn’t have any BTC in the right place.

And besides, I like a challenge.

As it happens, I could have used BOB (Build On Bitcoin - more on that tomorrow) during season 1 of their spice mining airdrop. I had the opportunity to stake ETH, then bridge it to the BOB mainnet upon launch, then used a thrid-party bridge like Orbiter to bridge to Merlin…but that ship had sailed… and besides... somebody said something about putting the fun back into Bitcoin...

In the end I stumbled upon a solution:

The only thing more frustrating than trying to bridge ETH from Arbitrum to Merlin is using Metamask to do it. My god... Thankfully, I recently switched to Rabby Wallet and saved myself all manner of ticks and mental anguish. If the Metamask experience is like taking the London Underground at rush hour, Rabby is like going on meditation retreat.

What saved me was the Gas Top Up feature. For a hefty fee, I could get BTC on Merlin and pay via any token I wished, on any chain. Yes, it was expensive, but what? Exploration has a price...

Doctor Livingstone, I presume…

- - - - - - - - -

Tune in tomorrow for what the dApp and DeFi experience is like on Merlin.

𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗯𝘀 𝟮𝟮:𝟭𝟲-𝟭𝟳: “𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘰𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘨𝘪𝘧𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘩–𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘺.” 

The Airdrop Wars - the flames already fanned by Eigen Layer - exploded over the weekend. LayerZero was the casualty. Instead of glory, there was Ineptitude, misunderstanding and hastily written PR…But more than that, the airdrop hunters had become the hunted.

And to think, it had all been going so well...

Officially announced six months previously, the LayerZero TGE had in fact been on the radar for years. Lured like horse flies to the pungent smell of free money, almost six million wallet addresses had interacted with the protocol.

On Friday night $ZRO had a pre-market valuation of over $16 billion. Yet by the end of the weekend daily activity on the LayerZero flagship protocol Stargate had fallen 56%.

Twitter was a shambles, VCs, Pudgy Penguins, farmers, LayerZero founders and influencers fighting like demented seals on some godforsaken Arctic beach. How the argument ends could define not only the future of Layer0, but the summer of crypto, what community means in web3, and about $87 million trillion billion dollars.

For those that don’t know, LayerZero lets you bridge between forty+ chains - even those ridiculous ghost chains like Moonbeam and Horizen and Rari that nobody uses - allowing them all to sing, like the New Seekers, in perfect harmony.

Did someone say Interoperability?

Amongst the VC-funded tech arsenal of LayerZero is the ONFT. For the curious, the O stands for omni-chain. With it, you can ship NFTs between blockchains with all the ease and style of Roger Federer in his Wimbledon pomp.

And here is where the chaos began.

There are three major platforms that utilise LayerZero tech to move ONFTs: Merkly, Holograph and OmniX.

With the look and feel of a testing ground, all three allow you to register hundreds of transactions for almost nothing. And as you know, in the world of airdrops, transactions win prizes.

Since Merkly is on the Layer Zero ecosystem page. And since Layer Zero backed Merkly on their Twitter feed. And since Holograph has a leaderboard incentivising bridging... What would you do?

Bridge. Bridge. And bridge some more.

For supporting a nascent eco-system, helping increase TVL and DAUs and propelling Layer0 to the heady heights of crypto stardom, active participants would be rewarded.

At least, that is what they thought.

The LayerZero snapshot was taken on May 1st.

LayerZero Labs

@LayerZero_Labs

More information coming soon.

12.2K

2:00 AM • May 2, 2024

On May 3rd, they tweeted:

“We believe it is in the protocol's best interest to distribute tokens to durable users — not sybil farmers.

If you are a sybil, you have two options:

1. Self-report sybil addresses for 15% of your intended allocation. No questions asked. The deadline to do so is May 17th.

2. Do not report and receive nothing when an address is flagged by our internal sybil report or by bounty hunters.

Yowzers!

They meant business.

And then the shit really hit the fan. 

LayerZero Labs

@LayerZero_Labs

We believe it is in the protocol's best interest to distribute tokens to durable users — not sybil farmers.

If you are a sybil, you have two options:

– Self-report sybil addresses for 15% of your intended allocation. No questions asked. The deadline to do so is May 17th.

– Do…

18.1K

7:03 PM • May 3, 2024

In the beginning, a sybil was defined as, ‘any individual using hundreds, maybe thousands, of addresses to gobble up tokens for the sole purpose of dumping them immediately.’

Clear, concise. If you had a wallet and wielded it with intent, avoided the scammers and the den of thieves and made legitimate transactions, you were not a sybil.

However, for their airdrop, LayerZero had a different definition. More nuanced, more frightening. See their Medium post:

🪂 If you are a single entity with tens, hundreds, or thousands of addresses participating in industrial farming.

🪂 If you minted a “valueless” NFT for the sole purpose of moving it around chains.

🪂 If you have used popular “sybil farming” applications such as Merkly, L2Pass, L2Marathon.

🪂 If you bridged $0.01 back and forth across chains for the sake of having touched a chain.

🪂 If you think you are a sybil, you are most likely a sybil.

Points 1 and 4 are legitimate and don’t need much commentary. Point 5 is too ambiguous to make sense.

Points 2 and 3 are what caused the fireworks after the snapshot had been taken. Mainly because the popular ‘sybil farming’ application Merkly is on the damn LayerZero ecosystem page and almost everyone had used it.

In fact, Merkly was the second most popular dapp in the LayerZero ecosystem.

As you can see, there's a lot of worthless NFTS floating around.

But notice also there is no mention of Holograph or OmniX in their definition. Both LayerZero tools for moving valueless NFTs between chains.

Favouritism?

Vested interest?

Either way, it’s not very ‘permissionless.’

Bryan Pellegrino (臭企鹅)

@PrimordialAA

The bullet point you should focus is the final bullet point

"If you think you are a Sybil, you are most likely a Sybil"

If you're a real user who tested merkly or used it for a gas drop -- you're probably not a sybil.

If you literally only ever used merkly to send NFT in a…

Blur

@BlurCrypto

Classifying Merkly users and people who bridged “valueless NFTs” is insane

It’s quite literally a use case of LayerZero

Using the refuel function on Merkly is genuinely valuable, and transferring ONFTs has been promoted by LZ themselves multiple times

1,608

7:20 PM • May 3, 2024

Anxiety ridden airdrop farmers with 984 transactions over 684 days ago (including Aptos FFS), but had used Merkly, now found themselves ineligible for the airdrop.

Voted 37 times on Stargate?

Pushed $100K in volume?

Nope.

If you had used Merkly to move worthless NFTs around, or refill gas on strange ghost chains, you were now Ineligible for the airdrop.

And then the penguins made it worse. As penguins are want to do…

LayerZero had done some kind of partnership to take Pudgy penguins cross chain. As a result, holders would be eligible for the airdrop. However, it was quickly pointed out the top twenty pudgy penguins holders had made less than five transactions on LayerZero.

Five.

That made a lot of people angry.

But LayerZero weren’t finished. They launched a bounty.

Only these blade runners wouldn’t be hunting androids.

“If a sybil user does not self-report by the end of the 14-day period, we will move into the following 2 phases:

Phase 1: We will release our own list of all identified sybil users — those who are identified and did not self-report will receive nothing.

Phase 2: We will open a bounty where users can submit detailed reports of sybil activity. A successful report will result in the sybil user receiving nothing, and the bounty hunter receiving 10% of the sybil’s intended allocation.

Talk about community building. 

Bounty Hunters are looking at fresh transactions on LayerZeroScan, and reporting any wallet that moves.

CC2 (Downfall Arc)

@CC2Ventures

Full-blown war zone out here, and it's more nefarious than you think it is:

The post where Naim mentions a 50 wallet cluster is in fact not really a cluster, but someone dust-attacking a few top-ranking LZ wallets on the dune leaderboard, then driving the narrative that they all…

569

11:37 PM • May 6, 2024

People are dust-attacking random wallets and reporting them.

Accusations are flying.

It’s ugly.

And this is all to say:

Airdrops are broken. 

Wen ZKS?

"I'll sell you an Hbar yoyo for one Bitcoin."

Perhaps, like me, you believe all crypto conferences end with questionable networking, something approaching irritable bowel syndrome from too much rusty coffee, and a year's supply of pens. But no, the asymmetrical upside of attending crypto conferences goes far beyond filling the stationery cupboard: the secondary serendipitous effect is the onboarding of a new generation.

...Say what?

Stick with me. It'll make sense at the end.

CUT TO:

INT. PARIS / THE LOUVRE - DAY

I spent the last five days at Paris Blockchain Week, hired to moderate panels on sustainability, transparency, traceability and corruption resistance aid pipelines. You know, the importance stuff. How blockchain technology can be used to save lives, things like that. Anyway, 17 people (out of 80,000) turned up. WAGMI. Feeling dejected by the apparent number of shits given about humanitarian aid and using the blockchain to hold carbon credit criminals accountable, I went in search of free socks. And boy, did I hit the jack pot. Notebooks, yoyos, stickers, sweets, bracelets, hats, t-shirts and water bottles, it was like I stumbled on a whole fucking cargo ship of cheap tat that had been escorted down the Suez Canal so a bunch of lunatics could sell more bad ideas.

"Great, Mark," I hear you say. "Bit cynical... Not sure Paris are going to invite you back... and... how can I use a bunch of free crap to onboard the next billion into web3?"

I'll tell you how. But first, we need to speak about retail investment...

Retail investment turns your reckless investment decisions into liquid gold. When that fresh money splashes into the market on a tidal wave of FOMO and desperation, your trades 10x. You then waltz out at the top of the bull market to a life of financial security and long-island iced teas on some tranquil, Caribbean beach, leaving all late comers holding empty bags and wondering what the hell just happened to their generational wealth.

"Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music."

- Diogenes of Sinope

"Why does this happen Mark? And again, what does it have to do with crypto swag and onboarding the next billion?"

You'll find the answer at the intersection of retail investment and the human condition. To demonstrate, let me take you back to this morning in the Fielding house. It's 6:31 and my children Alice and Luca are playing 'shop'.

CUT TO:

INT. MY HOUSE / OFFICE - 6:31 AM

Instead of selling their usual payload of cars, books and Lego vegetables to each other, they're selling my crypto swag from Paris. Instead of Euros, they're using Bitcoin. (They call altcoins 'crypto sweets', which I think is entirely accurate and cute.)

I'd explained that Bitcoin was more a store of value than exchange, but they had meme coins flashing in their eyes and didn't give two half damns for my pompe and ceremony.

They create an (over the) counter out of my desk.

Alice is the money maker.

Mirroring a real bull market, the price of a pen in their game of 'shop' escalates from one to nine hundred Bitcoin in the time it takes to program a smart contract and launch a fucking meme coin called 'Killing Me Softly with Airdrop Tasks'.

They trade back and forth for a while, each borrowing more and more capital (from me) to keep their stakes in the increasingly high risk game of 'shop'.

And then Luca, playing the part of the retail investor, meets Alice at the top of the bull cycle.

She sees him coming.

As wiser, older sisters tend to do.

She's already lived through three bear markets and has the scars to prove it.

Luca wants an Hbar Yoyo. Aware of the green candles that have been accumulating like fairy dust, he asks the market price.

Alice thinks about it.

And says, "Eight-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-million bitcoin."

Luca doesn't have an exit strategy. And just says yes.

Alice hands over the yoyo.

And the markets dump.

Alice says they'll rebound, that's it's just a dip. But really she's looking to offload her crypto bracelets and stickers for a tidy profit before the institutions start unloading.

You have no idea what power a knapsack holds, and a quart of lupins, and freedom from care.

- Crates of Thebes

So what's the point of all this rambling?

In 2023 there were over 120 Blockchain and crypto conferences world wide. WOW Summit, NFT Paris, Blockchain For Life, Blacksea Chain, Permissionless, Token2049... on and on, like some kind of crypto snake gobbling down its own arse to infinity. Tickets price ranged from the obscure to the obscene, from the laughable to the vomit inducing... I know, you have a personal narrative, you don't want to convince yourself you got ripped off... I'll do it for you...You got ripped off. But that's not the point I'm trying to make.

The point I'm trying to make... How many non-web3, non-crypto natives went? How many non-web3, non-crypto natives did any of you 'onboard' to the sinking ship? How many?

Please, somebody...

OK, so the number is close to zero.

In fact it's probably less than zero, because for every conference, I'm pretty sure more people lose the will to live (in crypto) than have their eyes opened to the possibility of a blockchain world. Millions is being spent on turning people off blockchain.

"But what about all the projects that get built? What about all the web3 projects that fly off the shelves because of these conferences?"

To that, I say, name two.

And again, they're only successful in the web3 echo chamber.

Onboarding the next billion isn't done with marketing departments and decks and changing the lexicon and travelling around the world talking at blockchain conferences.

It's done with you. At home.

You just need the tools.

You just need the swag.

An hbar yoyo.

And an open mind.

“There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it” - Gustave Flaubert

The year is 2179. You dreamed higher and now live in a world that reflects the philosophy of those who were early, those who demanded more from the fragility of the human condition. Life expectancy is Higher, distribution of wealth, culture and humour are Higher. Enlightenment is global, EQ is Higher. Intelligence isn’t measured in IQ anymore. Family values are Higher. Hell, even the basketball players are Higher because nutrition is understood and taught at school. 

You’re sitting on an iron bench in a park waiting for your grandmother to finish work. She loves her ‘work’. Why retire from your passions? Why would your grandparents give up meaning in middle age? Scientists combined Crispr and whole genome sequencing and gave the results to a ferocious AI. It cost as much as a saucer of milk, and eradicated disease. Lifestyle is health. Health is lifestyle. The only flywheel that matters.  

The air is free of micro-particles, the water free of forever chemicals and the soil free of nitrates. You are free. Female representation is higher. Public trust in politicians is higher. The DAOS that govern are open-source. People vote. There’s a statue of Serena Doolittle, the first female President twenty yards from your bench where you’re sitting, watching the world tick over. Fish once thought extinct swim in eccentric circles in the clear water at Miss Doolittle’s feet. 

.."Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?” - Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

You have a book on your lap. A real one. Made of paper. They used to be rare, but have re-found popularity, like some kind of phoenix rising from the flames of antiquity. Local government rebuilt thousands of libraries at the end of the 21st century. It’s never too late to realise the error of your ways. Even when those errors are hidden deep within a web of bureaucracy. Knowledge thrives, the convergence of art, science and technology carved into the DNA of existence. Reading piles are higher, child literacy is higher. Yoga, meditation, intermittent fasting and healthy sleep patterns are higher. A regular day for a nine-year old starts with financial strategy and ends with music lessons. Or is it the other way around? Education is focused on how to learn, not what to learn.

Happiness is higher.

Optimism is higher.

 Creativity, curiosity, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.

Eat the rich. 

...Somebody did?

Oh. 

Good. 

Economies transcend the dollar. 

Geography means nothing, borders a memory. You are the sum of your environment and the people that parade around it like virtual quarks in a flamboyant thought experiment. 

Artificial Intelligence takes care of the mundane. It was hard at first. To give up control. A hundred years of transformation, bickering and infighting tells very little of the pain. Many industries disappeared. Many appeared, they too replaced. Dynasties fell, institutions tumbled, epi-centres of control, power and wealth chased each other around the globe in search of ever diminishing supplies. 

“You don’t make art out of good intentions.” - Gustave Flaubert

Algorithms couldn’t conquer culture or destroy art. How do you destroy philosophy, maths and language? How do you destroy imagination? How do you obliterate the human need for craft and creation from memory? This is a world of art now. Cubism, futurism and art nouveau on the streets, walls and coffee shop awnings. Graffiti fused with surrealism and pop art and The Barbizon School, the offices and shops that once moved the cogs of materialism and consumerism are now open-air extensions of the human condition. 

Music, painting and sculpture. Cinema, literature and dance.

These are the currencies of the world. 

We found our purpose. 

 But…people still remember ‘the Old World’.

The human condition is still fragile.

There are societal issues, infrastructure problems. Neighbours fall out. Hearts get broken. So do families. So do bones. 

This isn’t nirvana. 

This is reality. A higher reality. But reality…

“We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means.” - Gustave Flaubert

Part 2

…And if you want to get here, you’re going to have to fight.

Not with violence. With conviction. With thought. With ideas. With resilience and passion and patience and clear thinking, with the very damn essence of everything you are.  

There is no free lunch. No slow walk to the promised land. Evolution comes for the many from the revolution of the few. You are part of the few, you have great responsibility, what happens next is on your shoulders, the result of your actions, thoughts, deeds, promises and mindset. 

The odds are stacked against you.

It won’t be easy. 

If this universe plays out ten times, you lose nine on the bounce. Make this one count.

Ask yourself… What are you up against? What stands between you and the Higher vision? Trillions of dollars and the status quo that doesn’t want change. Do you have the stamina to change a system that isn’t imagined, designed or constructed to change? Do you have the resilience to champion the fringe, to celebrate the small, strange, freaky outsiders in a popularity contest that favours mind-numbing simplicity? Can you inspire a population tricked into thinking one way, when you know it should be thinking another? 

This is a Higher call to action, a wake up call. Wanting to change the world and making the world change are not the same thing.

If this universe plays out ten times, you lose nine on the bounce. Make this one count. 

Aim Higher.     

“What would have become of Hercules do you think if there had been no lion, hydra, stag or boar – and no savage criminals to rid the world of? What would he have done in the absence of such challenges?" - Epictetus

I’m sitting on a chair in the mottled brown reception area at the Googleplex, Mountain View, California, waiting for my number to be called. Every second seat has been cordoned off in yellow and black police tape, as if I’m sitting in the middle of a murder scene. I have a job interview. Marketing department. Assistant manager. In order to elevate my clarity of thought, I’m listening to brain waves at 50 HZ. When you want bat-like perception and savagely quick problem solving, quite frankly, no other brain waves will do. I'd read in The Daily Mail Google use complex interview questions to disable applicants. Why is a man-hole cover round? Name six biscuits. Where is time? That kind of jazz. Gamma waves are my go-to frequency to offset any Google-shaped funny business.

There is no such thing as free will where Google is concerned, however many times you throw the universal dice. Besides, Delta waves below 4HZ strip you of body awareness. Ideal for transcendental sleep. Not ideal for a job interview. Theta and Alpha waves are more suited to your four o’clock meditation practice.

Preparation is the dark matter of job security. I’m using my final ten minutes to visualise a universe with me at the helm of the Google Marketing Department. Fuck you Seth Godin. The universe, as is so often the way, has other ideas. My positive visualisation is duly derailed. Bill Gates sits down next to me. He looks like a hobo. From the orange headphones and second-era Panasonic Walkman he has strapped to his bum-bag, I assume he's also listening to brain waves.

“Tony Robbins,” he says, patting his Panasonic and reading my mind. “Never leave home without him.”

I nod my approval, even though I think Tony Robbins is full of shit.

Bill Gates crosses his legs, makes himself comfortable, and starts dishing out life, business and morality lessons like he’s doing a fucking Ted talk.

"As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
― Bill Gates

He says it casually, as if commenting on the weather. No doubt he’s right. “What about the next century of assistant marketing managers,” I ask. 

Bill Gates is a goddamn lunatic. He looks at me sideways and his glasses slide off his face. For a split second he looks like Hercule fucking Poirot. After a lifetime of buying up the competition, he’s easily agitated. Fidgeting. He inhales deeply, closes his eyes and prepares to say something mystical. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how much faith you have in Bill Gates, he’s cut off mid-sentence by an thunderous flash of light, as if meteorites are raining down on the Googleplex. The whole building trembles under the shockwave. Meteorites, however, is wishful thinking. Google’s not over, It’s Steve fucking Jobs. When he speaks, his voice comes from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, reaching some kind of perfect oscillation as it smashes wine glasses in Dakota. 

“Don’t listen to this guy," he roars, jarring my body like recently laid cement. “He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas." - Steve Jobs

He floats down and takes a seat on the other side of me. He’s wearing his black polo neck and eating a pear. Bill Gates gives him a Windows Vista death stare. It’s like a 1997 keynote speech from SXSW. God, I hope he’s not going to recite his Stanford commencement address. 

“Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” - Steve Jobs

I tell Steve I don’t want to get fired, I’m here to be hired. He apologises, takes off his Bose headphones, presses stop on his Sony Walkman and floats three feet above the seat, meditating. 

Brainwaves?

“Waterfalls,” he says, hearing my thoughts.

Bill Gates doesn’t like being upstaged.

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.” - Bill Gates

Steve Jobs mulls this over as he examines his pear, turning it over and over in his hands like a quantum Rubix Cube. He’s searching for a respite, an oval shaped counter attack to Bills square.

"Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith." - Steve Jobs

Bill launches a retaliation, hurling his wisdom over the trenches like a furious Dictator.

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” - Bill Gates

I tell Bill I only have six minutes before my job interview.

“If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.” – Bill Gates

Bill is playing basketball on Steve’s court now, only he didn’t bring his ball. 

Steve drops his pear.

The Sun hiccups.

“Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology.” - Steve Jobs

Being dead for twelve doesn’t do anything for your manners. I take out the job description. It stresses the importance of creativity. That makes sense. Creativity is the number one desired trait for HR departments in 2024.

My synapses transcend business strategy. 

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while." - Steve Jobs

“Seems a bit vague Steve…” I say. “I get what you mean… just… sounds like… lazy bullshit. It’s just connecting things? This is a fucking Google job interview.”

Bill Gates sniggers. 

“Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated.” – Bill Gates

“I can’t say that either Bill. Oh, it’s just connecting things and not very complicated. How do you think that’s going to go down?”

Screensavers. 

Tech gods.  

Your system needs an update.

“He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger” – Steve Jobs

“Steve,” I ask. “Are you telling me I should bring up my drug history… In a job interview?”

“I failed in some subjects, but my friend passed In all. Now he's an Engineer in Microsoft and I am the owner of Microsoft.” - Bill Gates

He's probably not really your friend, but I’ll update my LinkedIn profile. Thanks Bill.

Bill and Steve are bickering like me and my brother on a road trip. Can’t they even let bygones be bygones and exist peacefully together over creativity? 

“If you've ever watched a child with a cardboard carton and a box of crayons create a spaceship with cool control panels, or listened to their improvised rules, such as "Red cars can jump all others," then you know that this impulse to make a toy do more is at the heart of innovative childhood play. It is also the essence of creativity.” - Bill Gates

Steve looked impressed.

So do I. It’s a good quote. 

Steve fires back. 

“When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” - Steve Jobs

And then the fabric of my visual field begins to oscillate violently. Distant voices I can’t comprehend battle with Steve and Bill. Steve says something but his voice distorts as he rejoins the atoms, connecting quarks and anti-matter, creating his own event horizon from dust. 

He clicks his fingers and the world stops for a billion years. The noise of crashing planets dissipates, somewhere in space it rains asteroids the size New Hampshire. Only I can’t hear it because Steve Jobs is now controlling my mind. 

"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste. I don’t mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas and they don’t bring much culture into their product.” - Steve Jobs

Mic drop. 

Planet drop.

Airdrop. 

Bill flounders like an upturned tortoise being attacked by a pack hyenas on some godforsaken beach. Out of nowhere the fabric of my visual field begins to oscillate violently.

"Patience is a Key Element of Success.” - Bill Gates

Desperate.

And then an angel speaks to me, “Mr Fielding… Mr Fielding…

Only It’s not an angel, it’s Derek Jones from HR. 

“Mr Fielding, we’re ready for you now,” he says.

I wipe the dribble from my chin. And reality smashes into my slowly waking prefrontal cortex. I’ve had the wrong brain waves on. I’ve been listening to Delta waves. 18 Hz. Fucking hell. It’s basically like eating 80 mgs of DMT. Behind Derek, Steve and Bill are sitting there, looking at me, floating, wishing me luck. As I stare, they fuse together, the soul of Steve and Bill becoming one, transcending the particles that make the fabric of the universe. My brain runs through a windows upgrade, purple i-macks and pink i-phones start flickering in and out of existence, windows and apples, windows and apples, cascading like cards at the end of a game of patience. 

Someone takes an apple-shaped bite from my visual field.

I’m in a daze as I get taken into the office.

“Have a seat Mr Fielding.”

I float to a comfortable black chair.

“So Mr Fielding, tell us a little about creativity and why you want the job.”

"Stay hungry. Stay foolish." - Steve Jobs

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.” - Socrates

Fade in:

INT. A SUBURBAN LIVING ROOM, LONDON – MORNING

What you notice about this home is how terrifyingly normal it is. A WOMAN (45) who's spent the last 724 nights looking after her small children sits at a cheap IKEA table staring intently at the Coinmarketcap tab on her laptop screen.

A CHILD walks into the room dragging a teddybear and a fire truck.

The woman closes the laptop.

We see TEARS as her daughter runs to hug her.

INT. AN OFFICE, LOCATION UNDISCLOSED – DAY

This must be the most boring office space in the world.

A sly-faced FTX Twitter Account sits at a table reading ‘The World’s Shittest Joke Book’. Sitting opposite, combing his stupid hair, is SAM BANKMAN-FRIED. Also at the table are an avatar of CHANPENG ZHAO, who is really in Decentraland playing Whack-a-Mole, and CAROLINE ELLISON.

FTX OFFICIAL (4th November, 1.11 a.m.)
What would you like FTX to build this bear market?

FTX

@FTX_Official

checking the threads we're getting tagged in today

1,224

6:30 PM • Nov 7, 2022

EXT. PARIS – MORNING

A police car drives down the Champs Elysée, past the luxury boutiques on Rue Rivoli, across the Pont Neuf and into the winding side streets off Boulevard Saint-Michel.

EXT. CHENNAI – AFTERNOON

A pack of stray dogs fight and growl as they run down the narrow, empty alleyways of the world’s biggest slum.

INT. OFFICE, LOCATION UNDISCLOSED – DAY

Sam Bankman-Fried stands up and prowls around with a demented grin on his face like some kind of candy-floss selling psychopath.

FTX

@FTX_Official

if people like new office videos..

about a month out from moving into our new Tokyo office

1,102

7:40 PM • Nov 7, 2022

SAMUEL BANKMAN-FRIED (6th November, 12.18 a.m.)

BTW on the blue check marks: so far the discourse has centred around them as vanity, but remember that for people in finance, they help weed out scammers posing as someone else. Also this post is gonna get a lot of scammer spam, isn’t it?

CHANPENG ZAO (6th November, 4.47 p.m.)

As part of Binance’s exit from FTX equity last year, Binance received roughly $2.1 billion USD equivalent in cash (BUSD and FTT). Due to recent revelations that have came to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books. We will try to do so in a way that minimizes market impact. Due to market conditions and limited liquidity, we expect this will take a few months to complete. Binance always encourages collaboration between industry players. Regarding any speculation as to whether this is a move against a competitor, it is not. Our industry is in it’s nascency and every time a project publicly fails it hurts every user and every platform. We typically hold tokens for the long term. And we have held on to this token for this long. We stay transparent with our actions.

SBF passes Caroline a folder. Caroline takes the contents out of the folder and studies it like an over-eager teenager doing work experience, which is really what she is.

CAROLINE ELLISON (6th November, 3.32 p.m.)

A few notes on the balance sheet info that has been circulating recently. That specific balance sheet is for a subset of our corporate entities, we have > $10b of assets that aren’t reflected there. The balance sheet breaks out a few of our biggest long positions; we obviously have hedges that aren’t listed. Given the tightening in the crypto credit space this year we’ve returned most of our loans by now.

Caroline

@carolinecapital

@cz_binance if you're looking to minimize the market impact on your FTT sales, Alameda will happily buy it all from you today at $22!

8,573

5:03 PM • Nov 6, 2022

CAROLINE ELLISON - CONT'D (6th November, 5.03 p.m.)
@cz_binance if you’re looking to minimize the market impact on your FTT sales, Alameda will happily buy it all from you today at $22!

CZ looks at Caroline. He’s about to answer but is interrupted by ridiculous Sam Bankman Fried, who from here on out will be referred to as SBF because his name is stupid and far too long and doesn’t deserve repeating anyway.

SBF (6th November, 6.50 p.m.)

Seriously SEND is awesome. It’s the omni box for money (soon we’ll merge blockchain into the same box!) Right now, sending money internationally is a pain in the ass.  People are paying 10’s of percent’s, waiting weeks, and hoping that it lands. Crypto can do better. It works domestically and internationally.  It works with relatives and with employees. Because that’s how blockchain works: it just works. Anyway I was going to write a different thread, but I took a deep breath and reminded myself of something we’d all do well to remember: that we’re all in this together, and I wish the best to everyone driving the industry forward. Because I respect the hell out of what y’all have done to build the industry as we see it today, whether or not they reciprocate, and whether or not we use the same methods. Including CZ. Anyway, as always, it’s time to build. Make love (and blockchain), not war.

SBF

@SBF_FTX

1) Posting about what everything wants to know more about:

SEND!

2,096

6:50 PM • Nov 6, 2022

ELON MUSK, never one to be left out of proceedings, drives into the room in a Cybertruck, climbs out of its broken window and sits between SBF and Caroline.

ELON MUSK (6th November, 11.53 p.m.)

Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended.

Elon Musk

@elonmusk

Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended

604.6K

11:53 PM • Nov 6, 2022

SBF (7th November, 12.28 a.m.)

A huge thank you to everyone who has supported us. We’re excited to keep climbing together. And especially to those who stay level headed during crazy times. We deeply appreciate it. A bunch of unfounded rumours have been circulating. FTX keeps audited financials etc.  And, though it slows us down sometimes on product, we’re highly regulated. We’ve already processed billions of dollars of deposits/withdrawals today; we’ll keep going.  (Taking up anti-spam checks to process more, sorry if you got those). We’re hitting node rate capacity, will keep going. Also tons of USD <> stablecoin conversions going on. And in the end you should do what you want, and trade where you want.  We’re grateful to those who stay; and when this blows over we’ll welcome everyone else back. As always, a huge thank you to our supporters. And to everyone else, as well, as long as they keep building and keep moving the industry forward. We’ll keep building too.

FTX OFFICIAL (7th November, 1.11 a.m.)

Need David Attenborough to narrate crypto twitter today

ELON MUSK (7th November, 1.15 a.m.)

Widespread verification will democratize journalism & empower the voice of the people.

Elon Musk

@elonmusk

Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That’s our mission.

713.2K

1:25 AM • Nov 7, 2022

INT. GARY GENSLER’S OFFICE, WASHINGTON D.C - DAY

A smiling GARY GENSLER studies a spreadsheet, turns the page and draws a giant CROSS across the page. He CACKLES like a maniac as he rocks backwards and forwards on his FTX cushion.

INT. AN OFFICE, LOCATION UNDISCLOSED – DAY

Someone has written ‘stop fucking shitposting FTX Twitter‘ on a whiteboard.

FTX OFFICIAL (7th November, 1.23 a.m.)

Ah sorry – to be clear: FTX is fine, withdrawals were slow as we refill hot wallets but have been processing all day. Support updates: matching engine/etc. all running smoothly. BTC withdrawals: churning through them; node is throughput limited. We’re switching it to process from both ends, which should help speed it up. Stablecoins: processing. Banks are closed for the weekend, though; USD <> stablecoin creations/redemptions might be slower until wires clear tomorrow, especially for some coins/chains.

ELON MUSK (7th November, 4.40 p.m.)

Hardcore Democrats or Republicans never vote for the other side, so independent voters are the ones who actually decide who’s in charge!

DAVID HASSELHOFF walks into the room carrying a Scorpions Greatest Hits Record. He sits next to CZ.

DAVID HASSELHOFF (7th November, 5.54 p.m.)

Hasselfluff . Good name for a cat ! Thanks to the firefighters who rescued the cat!

David Hasselhoff

@DavidHasselhoff

petpalstv.com/post/cat-named…

75

5:52 PM • Nov 7, 2022

FTX OFFICIAL (7th November, 6.51 p.m.)
Reminder that FTX is like 300 people and you can estimate our revenue from our weekly buy and burn. This thread will be our last serious one on the topic before we go back to our normal updates and shit-posting. We have one of the highest revenue/profit/valuation per employee as any company in the world.

INT. GARY GENSLER’S OFFICE, WASHINGTON D.C - DAY

GARY GENSLER  is rolling around on the floor.

FTX

@FTX_Official

This thread will be our last serious one on the topic before we go back to our normal updates and shitposting

We have one of the highest revenue/profit/valuation per employee as any company in the world

712

6:54 PM • Nov 7, 2022

INT. AN OFFICE, LOCATION UNDISCLOSED – EVENING

FTX OFFICIAL (7th November, 8.28 p.m.)
Can you add some cucumbers?

A montage of computer screens, numbers and notifications tumbling down:

Withdraw failed.

Withdraw failed.

Withdraw failed.

Withdraw failed.

EXT. ANCHORAGE, ALASKA. SUBURBS - DAY

Seven polar bears walk down an empty street.

INT. AN OFFICE, LOCATION UNDISCLOSED – AFTERNOON

SBF (8th November, 5.03 p.m.)

Hey all: I have a few announcements to make. Things have come full circle, and FTX.com’s first, and last, investors are the same: we have come to an agreement on a strategic transaction with Binance for FTX.com. Our teams are working on clearing out the withdrawal backlog as is. This will clear out liquidity crunches; all assets will be covered 1:1. This is one of the main reasons we’ve asked Binance to come in. It may take a bit to settle etc. We apologize for that. But the important thing is that customers are protected. A huge thank you to CZ, Binance, and all of our supporters. This is a user-centric development that benefits the entire industry. CZ has done, and will continue to do, an incredible job of building out the global crypto ecosystem, and creating a freer economic world. I know that there have been rumours in media of conflict between our two exchanges, however Binance has shown time and again that they are committed to a more decentralized global economy while working to improve industry relations with regulators. We are in the best of hands.

EXT. US SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, WASHINGTON D.C.

GARY GENSLER  gets into a limo.

INT. AN OFFICE, LOCATION UNDISCLOSED – SAME TIME

CZ (8th November, 5.09 p.m.)

This afternoon, FTX asked for our help. There is a significant liquidity crunch. To protect users, we signed a non-binding LOI, intending to fully acquire FTX.com and help cover the liquidity crunch. We will be conducting a full DD in the coming days. There is a lot to cover and will take some time. This is a highly dynamic situation, and we are assessing the situation in real time. Binance has the discretion to pull out from the deal at any time. We expect FTT to be highly volatile in the coming days as things develop.

STAN (8th November, 6.07 p.m.)

Oh my God, they killed Kenny.

CZ (8th November, 7.57 p.m.)

All crypto exchanges should do merkle-tree proof-of-reserves. Banks run on fractional reserves. Crypto exchanges should not. Binance will start to do proof-of-reserves soon. Full transparency.

GARY V (8th November, 10 p.m.)

#humble, #positivity #grateful

EXT. SYDNEY – NIGHT

A man sits in front of his computer, crying.

EXT. CARLISLE – DAY

A woman sits in front of her computer, crying.

CZ (8th November, 11.05 p.m.)

Two big lessons: 1: Never use a token you created as collateral. 2: Don’t borrow if you run a crypto business. Don’t use capital “efficiently”. Have a large reserve. Binance has never used BNB for collateral, and we have never taken on debt.

EXT. NEW YORK – DAY

A woman sits in front of her computer, crying.

CZ (9th November, 10.56 p.m.)

Sad day. Tried, but 😢

SBF (10 November, 3.13 p.m.)

Meaningless drivel

FADE TO BLACK

“You have to know the past to understand the present.”

Carl Sagan

Ethereum wasn’t even one year old when the DAO hack happened. Even in its infancy, the hack gave the mega brains running the show a $150 million-headache and caused the community to wonder how decentralized Ethereum really was. It also gave us Ethereum Classic. I missed the insanity of the early years, and felt like I should give myself a history lesson. So here is. What was the Ethereum DAO hack? How did it happen... why did it happen... and that's about it. I've got meme coins to buy at the top.

Let's start with some generalisations. A DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organisation) is an alternative to the traditional ways of governance and hierarchy that have led to the cultural, professional, financial and economic imbalance we know and love today. In a DAO, centralized power brokers resplendent in their thirst for power are replaced by code. Instead of ridiculous people and incompetent management, a self-executing smart contract takes care of business.

We’ve all worked for people who should have been replaced by a smart contract.

Hold up... a DAO is a smart contract and a smart contract is a DAO?

Not quite. You still need people to program the thing, to define the rules of the organization, decide and vote on where the money, ideas and decisions go. These are written into the smart contract. And back then... hunting season for the hackers ensued.

...Is a smart contract sentient?

No. It’s a piece of code sitting in untouchable splendour like some kind of dead French King. Smart contracts work on IF / Then principles. You know, if... Imagine you place a bet with friend on who's going to win the FA Cup, or the Superbowl... Or the Stanley Cup, I don't know, people watch Ice Hockey. Instead of an intimidating bookie with a cut-throat razor, we get a smart contract to execute the payments to your friend when you recklessly predict Blackburn Rovers to win 8-0.

The DAO (not A DAO, THE DAO) was a financial tool, a decentralized investment fund without third party brokers shovelling their cut into retail investment in London. Investors put ETH into the smart contract and projects in the Ethereum ecosystem could bid for investment from it. The DAO community would then vote on which projects to invest in.

"The price of not having another DAO hack is eternal vigilance.”

Vitalik Buterin

Two (as it would turn out, very ineffective) preventative measures were written into The DAO (I don't know why I'm using italics anymore.) smart contract. The first was to stop a 51% hack, the second allowed you to remove your Ethereum from The DAO if you didn’t agree with the projects put forward for investment. This worked by creating a copy of The DAO – a child DAO – to which you could remove your ETH, burn your tokens to The DAO, and have ownership of your ETH in the new DAO.

Clear as mud? Great.

Let's go on.

Here's the fun part. Once investors had moved funds out of The DAO into the child DAO, a time mechanism was used to stop the funds being moved on again. Gavin Wood told Dutch media the time lock was 39 days, most sources say 28 days. Who knows? Details...details. Vitalik?

The DAO was launched on 30th April 2016. It quickly became the largest crowd funding project in history.

2016!

Remember that next time someone says “We’re early.”

$152 million was invested in The DAO, or 14% of the Ethereum in circulation at the time. Gulp.

There were issues.

Which is not what you want to hear when 14% of the total supply of anything is locked up in a place where code is the king and the wills of the people mean nothing.

Oh God... Was it... a bug?

Yes.

Crap.

In The dao? Shit. What was the bug called?

The recursive call bug.

Catchy.

Yes.

And people knew about it?

It was flagged by the Ethereum community, yes. But Stock.it, the creators of The DAO said there was nothing to worry about.

Yeah, well, they would.

Firstly it’s important to remember it wasn’t a problem with Ethereum. The problem lay with the smart contract code. The DAO hack bug exploited a weakness in the smart contract which allowed investors to remove their ETH.

To be in The DAO investors had to buy a token that gave ‘entry’. Once part of The DAO, if anyone wanted to remove their investment, this token would be burned AFTER the ETH had been removed. And there lay the point of failure, the three of clubs in the house of cards.

Knowing this, a programmer could interrupt the sequence, confuse the fuck out of the smart contract, tell it to give the ETH back and then, just before it burnt the token (but after it had moved the ETH), tell it to remove the ETH again.

It would go like this:

“Hey smart contract, move my money.”

“Hello hacker, smart contract here, let me check the balance. All present and correct. I see your token is still here too, I’ll move your ETH to the child DAO right away. Then I’ll burn your token.”

Smart contract has a cigarette break before burning token.

“Hey smart contract, move my money.”

“Hello hacker, smart contract here, let me check the balance. All present and correct. I see your token is still here too, I’ll move your ETH to the child DAO right away. Then I’ll burn your token.”

Or, in smart code language…

for(uint32 i=0; i < 1000000; i++) {
   sha3('some data'); // costly computation
}
DarkDAO.splitDAO(...); // render the transaction invalid"

The hacker then repeated the process until the cows came home, or $150 million had been drained away.

Whichever came first.

Gavin Wood makes it sound like a Monty Python sketch.

On the 17th June a hacker exploited the bug and started draining funds from the smart contract.

Merde alors.

Once they realised what the hell was happening, all Sockit could do was watch from the side-lines as the hacker stole 3.6 million ETH, worth about $50 million at the time.

Ethereum was trading at around 20 dollars back then. Today it’s nearer $3000

You could buy France.

Don’t piss off a smart contract.

When I said all they could do was watch from the side-lines, that’s not completely true. In order to slow transactions, Slockit asked the Ethereum community to spam the network in a 2016 version of a Yuga Labs gas war. It stemmed the flow, and was perhaps partly why the hacker stopped draining funds.

Of course the hacker may have just got bored, or intimidated by the vast sums of money they were now stealing. Either way, there was still $100 million left and an advertised blueprint on how to steal it.

Like a bad movie, two days later more bad actors started using the same hack to drain the rest.

The Ethereum community was now very upset. A group of white hat hackers improved the hack (I don’t know how) and drained the $100 million themselves into another, second child DAO.

So now you had The DAO, a child DAO with $50 million sitting in it, and a second child DAO with $100 million furnishing its coffers.

And if you remember, a time lock.

Aha!

Blockchain is fun, isn’t it?

27 days ladies and gentlemen. The clock was ticking.

The community came together in search of a solution. Three options were proposed:

• Let the hacker get away with it.

• Soft-fork Ethereum and freeze 14% of the total supply indefinitely.

• Hard-fork the motherfucker. Force the smart contract to release the ETH, returning the original investment back to the investors and create a new Ethereum.

The decision was put to a vote. Exchanges ceased trading as Vitalik and the Ethereum community wrestled with inner torment and decentralization and the technicalities of how exploiting a loop hole for millions of dollars is actually in-keeping with the philosophy of the blockchain.

And the world of smart contract programming held its collective breath.

When the results were in, it was a landslide victory. 88% in favour. 

On July 20th 2016, during mining for 1920000th block, Ethereum hard-forked.

Three days after the hard-fork, the alternative chain, which was really the original chain, was listed on one of the world’s biggest exchanges.

It was called Ethereum Classic.

Meanwhile, the new and improved Ethereum continued on its new, merry way.

The day The DAO died.

But as the demand for events – both virtual and IRL – grows, can organisers, venues and rock dinosaurs use NFT tickets and blockchain technology to solve the challenges facing the industry? Can fans experience a smoother, safer, cheaper and more entertaining ticketing experience? Can we all get our goddamn sanity back?

Dynamic pricing – automatically raising and lowering the price of tickets inline with demand – in an attempt to beat ticket touts and bots (60% of ALL tickets are bought by automated bots) is great in theory, but a nonsense for fans of Harry Styles and Bruce Springsteen. When The Boss used dynamic pricing on a recent tour, prices exploded to over $5,000. The backlash was immediate and strong. NFT tickets remove the need for dynamic pricing, eliminate fake tickets and give artists new channels for marketing, community engagement and avenues for additional revenue.

Smart contracts are customisable before mint and immutable afterwards. Smart Contract 101. But that’s life changing. If your tickets can be permanently and undeniably ‘programmed’ with a secondary price that the most advanced ticket tout in the world can’t change, then what? With NFT ticketing, artists and event organisers don’t have to beat the bots and the touts, instead they make them ineffective and unprofitable. Even if bots buy the whole supply, they can’t sell them for more than face value – or the price set by the organiser. I think. Have I got that right?

What about fake tickets? As each NFT is unique and verifiable, if 10,000 tickets go on sale, event organisers and concert promoters can account for every one of them. Because smart contracts establish trust in a trust-less world, buyers can be sure the tickets they are buying on the secondary market are legitimate and reasonably priced. Using QR codes, venues can authenticate tickets on the door.

Not only can event organisers and artists use NFTs to remove fake tickets, overly-priced secondary markets and bots from the process, they can do so with a flourish, capitalising on an assortment of secondary advantages to make people feel special and add individuality to proceedings.

BUILDING COMMUNITY WITH NFT TICKETS

In days gone by, fans would buy a ticket and then forget about it until the night of the concert. With tickets going on sale one, or even two years in advance, NFT tickets are an opportunity for artists and event organisers to ramp up their community, interacting with ticket holders in a new and immersive way.

As well as airdrops, competitions and stories from the road, further utility could include token-gated Discord channels (or whatever web3 solution supersedes it) with behind-the-scenes interviews and video footage, artist interviews or a ‘day-in-the-life’ mini-documentary. Experiences that are simple to create but have a lasting impact on fans.

What about B2B? Companies could add further utility to team building, training, conferences and exhibitions. Dynamic NFTs could be used to authenticate completion of training courses, opening further training material, bonuses or rewards. An enterprise business hosting or sponsoring a global exhibition could use NFT tickets to give access to meet-and-greets, exclusive seminars and networking events.

An NFT ticket plugs into web3; it’s a gateway to increased security, tracking, trading and the addition of life-changing experiences and fan-artist and B2B interaction. Customisation and increased utility can be achieved with existing ticketing systems, but using NFTs makes it quicker, more efficient and more entertaining – the power of the latter should not be underestimated. People love to be entertained. Emails and paper tickets simply can’t compete on the same stage.

"When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat."

George Carlin

LOYALTY PROGRAMS WITH NFT TICKETS

Dynamic NFTS can be programmed to update each time a fan attends a concert or match, buys merchandise or downloads an album. This loyalty could then be exchanged for cheaper tickets, exclusive merchandise, once-in-a-lifetime brand experiences or all manner of corporate, professional and business premiums.      

DIGITAL COLLECTIBLE NFT TICKETS & POAPS 

Music and sport are synonymous with nostalgia and collectibles. POAPs (Proof of Attendance Protocol) are the web3 equivalent of a ticket stub, a blockchain memory of your attendance at an event. POAPs can be programmed to record details of the event, but they can also have their metadata changed after the event, adding to their collectability. 

The NBA are good at experimenting with blockchain technology, let’s use them as an example. A fan goes to game four of the playoffs. It’s an iconic match, one that transcends the history of the game. The Chicago Bulls come from 10 points down with two minutes remaining, winning the game at the buzzer with a 40-yard 3-pointer. Fans receive a POAP, cementing their presence at the match to the blockchain, and that POAP could be updated to include the game–winning moment.  

NFT TICKETS AND DEFI

Barring strange occurrences, Ariana Grande isn’t going to use decentralized finance on her next tour. But DeFi is an opportunity for artists and event organisers to pre-fund concerts, experiences and bank roadmaps. A new rock band riding a wave of media hype? They could collateralise future ticket sales to fund studio time or a world tour. Combining DeFi and NFT ticketing is an advanced and new concept, and whilst not for everyone, it’s one that’s gaining traction and a utility we may write more about. 

NFT tickets have the potential to change the status quo, to remove the centralised incumbents of the industry and create a fan-driven, safe and secure system; a system that works similarly to current offerings but with a vastly improved experience for fans. From improved access between an artist and fans, a more immersive ticketing experience, the tools to build a community, better loyalty programs and more entertaining tickets that double as digital collectibles, the reach of NFT tickets is vast.

Centralised entities are setting the prices, ticket touts are controlling the second hand market. Not the bands. Not the clubs. And not the fans. That might be about to change.  

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Gustave Flaubert

I’ve got a confession to make.

I’ve not been the best dad of late. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been there for my children. Every. Single. Day. But I haven’t always been present. And as you know from a cacophony of useless Zoom meetings, being present and being there are not the same thing. 

Instead of encouraging my children’s mental and physical growth, strengthening their resilience and kicking the wolves of mental anguish from their door, I was clicking buttons. Reading Paragraph articles when I should have been reading fairy tales. As the world spiralled into a highly unlikeable dystopian version of its self, I found myself more and more… there but not.

Do you know what I mean?

"There is a subconscious reaction to the mere sight of a smartphone. Its presence causes those around you to feel less important than they otherwise would. We are training our children to feel unimportant."

It was time to rein in the addiction. I made a commitment to my family: two weeks with no smartphone or internet. A 14-digital detox. I’d be 100% present, whether they liked it or not.

Day 1

I’m packing for a long voyage, a modern day Scott setting out to the digital Antarctic. He died, I very much intend to stay alive. I leave a forwarding address and my wife’s phone number with relatives. The instructions are clear: call only in an emergency.

After a nostalgic scroll through the NYT, FT, CNN, ABC, Time, BBC, RTV and Reuters, I send goodbye messages on WhatsApp and, weirdly, LinkedIn. I schedule enough Twitter and Instagram posts that people won’t think I have died.

Finally, as an act of complete recklessness, I give my phone to Alice and ask her to hide it.

Alice is my daughter. She looks at me, a tractor in one hand, a toy microphone in the other, and says, “Daddy, are you… alright?”

“I will be,” I say. “In two weeks.”

“Is it my birthday in two weeks?”

"34% of internet addicts access their favourite websites and check for status updates before getting out of bed."

Scientists

DAY 2

The morning of day two and I awake from a dreamless sleep, my hand unconsciously scrambling for a phone which isn’t there. I go to the kitchen and make coffee in silence. I sit on the sofa and feel estranged. Any other day I would already know major world headlines in alphabetical order.

I drink my coffee, shell-shocked.

Luca and Alice alleviate my confusion. They’re moving in pincer formation towards the kitchen. They’re like fucking velociraptors. I tell them there’s no point sneaking up on the enemy if you’re screaming.

I used to make breakfast whilst checking for Nasdaq fluctuations and BitCoin price. As the children threw their oats and water at each other, I’d sit on the sofa and check my emails. Again.

My first lesson from my two week digital detox is served in a cereal bowl: breakfast is hilarious.

It’s sad to write, but I had never noticed. The children are at their best first thing: energised, excited, funny, curious. Questions and wonder at every turn as they dissect their dreams and their plans for the day.

I put my coffee aside and drink it in.

I have a lot of time to make up for.

The top five online activities for internet addicts in China include social networking (94.73%), school work (86.53%), entertainment (82.44%), online gaming (73.42%), and online shopping (33.67%). Brits spend 8 hours and 41 minutes per day staring at a goddamn screen.

Science Direct

Day 3

My favourite time of the day used to be when the kids had gone to bed. Now it is when they wake up. Three days is nothing. Three days is everything.

FOMO washes over me. My brain firing neurons I didn’t know existed as it tries to trick me into getting a dopamine hit. What the hell is happening in Jakarta? I’m sure I need to know. What is the FTSE doing RIGHT NOW?

The importance of a LinkedIn chat escalates to unbearable levels.

Neurosis grips me as I feel the urge to be online, my past life attempting to sabotage my experiment to be a better, more present father.

I need a cure and need it quick, so do something no sane parent would and volunteer to help with homework. I must be delirious. My hands are shaking, I’m sweating. Apocalypse Mommy doesn’t care, freed from the shackles of diphthong pronunciation she dances out the room, leaving me to some early morning English pronunciation for 4-year olds.

Devoid of notifications, I’m completely in the moment, Buddha holding my hand as the morning passes in Zen-like beauty. I watch and feel – really watch and feel – my daughter’s mind evolving. Right before my eyes.

Is this what being a parent feels like?

"We are communicating messages to our children even when we are not talking. Adults and children express emotional energy on their faces, in their voices, and in the way they move or stand. Because children are still developing their language skills, they trust the message of this non-verbal communication far more than they do mere words."

When you’re on a phone you’re not looking at people.

Your non-verbal communication is communicating to your children – and I am really labouring the point here, because it needs fucking repeating – that they are not as important as what you are looking at.

Again. And again. And again. And again.

This is your family.

These are your relationships.

This is your life.

One screen at a time. 

DAY 4

I haven’t checked my emails for four days. I feel… alive.

The kids start playing football in the house. To the delight of my new found cerebral clarity, my patience holds. Reminiscence of an old impatience is so diluted I barely notice it. They’ve had a traumatic year, I say to myself. 

Instead of staying stop and checking the Australian football scores, I join in. And score three goals.

Day 5

Can I still do one thing at a time?

I haven’t tried since 2003. I start with a mindful trip to the toilet. Luca has beaten me to it, dragged a bedside lamp and plugged it into the murky water at the bottom of the U-bend. He stands, his mouth on the side of the bowl, stirring the water with the upturned lamp. I’m completely present for this milestone.

When evening comes, I read 53 pages of a book.

"Addictions activate a combination of sites in the brain associated with pleasure."

National Institute of Health

Day 6

Stripped of ‘blue light’, my sleep is transcendental.

Feeling more refreshed than Buddha, I wake up before the alarm clock. I read another 53 pages of my book to prove the day before had really happened.

After a breakfast of music and delightful conversation on how the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World can be made of Lego and jelly, my wife and I talk without distraction. The kitchen work surface doesn’t vibrate. If there's a coup d’etat, I don't know about it.

After lunch I play hide-and-seek with Alice and Luca. Not only do I win because my vibrating phone isn’t there to give away my location, but I also choose a different hiding place to the wardrobe I usually choose so I can  scroll Instagram for something interesting even though I know Instagram isn’t interesting and never is but that hope. Oh my god, the dopamine hit should something actually happen is overwhelming.

It’s a monster. An uncontrollable, rampaging monster.

Internet addiction causes psychiatric disorders. Mood disorders, poor sleep quality, impulsivity, self-esteem, and suicide.

Many Science Journals

Did you know internet addiction has an effect on the part of the brain that’s involved in decision making, executive attention, cognitive control, and emotional processing?

I’ve fried my own damn brain with lifestyle and business blogs, with celebrity gossip about celebrities I’ve never fucking heard of.

Day 7

I become an asshole on day seven. I want to tell the world of my superiority. “Look at my new found resilience and willpower”, I want to shout from the roof. “I’m the best dad in the world.”

Can I put a photo on Instagram which shows the world how not on Instagram I am?

Shaking the thoughts away, I take stock of my situation. Half-way through my detox. I have scaled the summit and now all I have to do is get back to smartphone base-camp, a better man, a better father.

“Don’t forget,” Apocalypse Mommy reminds as we sit watching The Queens Gambit. And only the Queens Gambit. “More people die coming down than going up the mountain.”

Pawn takes Q6.

Day 8

Before I started this human experiment an hour walking with the children seemed like an eternity of unread emails, breaking news and networking opportunities missed. Either that or an exercise in foot dragging and a spaghetti western stand-off yards from the front door.

When I remember I’m not tracking how many steps I have taken today, my hearts starts malfunctioning. That thought is replaced by a more pressing milestone: toddlers can run long before their reptilian brain can articulate the danger of their new gift. Nature played a hideous game when she gave movement before speech. Luca is off. I missed his first steps as they coincided with Boris Johnson contracting Coronavirus. However, I am completely in the moment for the milestone of running, and catch him before he reaches the main road.

"Many of the problems with mobile interaction relate to distraction from the physical presence of other people. According to these studies, conversations with no smartphones present are rated as significantly higher-quality than those with smartphones around, regardless of people’s age, ethnicity, gender, or mood. We feel more empathy when smartphones are put away."

University Study

Day 9

I hallucinate during breakfast. Notifications float out of the toaster and the fridge. The children start speaking and babbling in speech bubbles. I realise Luca is actually trying to say something. “Crane.” A new word. A milestone. To celebrate he repeats the word over and over again like some kind of broken down polygraph skipping over presidential lies.

Crane is a one syllable word made of four sounds: ‘k’, ‘r’, ‘ei’ and ‘n’. The third sound is a diphthong. The ‘r’ sound is made by bringing the tip of your tongue near the alveolar ridge at the top of your mouth – without touching it – whilst simultaneously scrunching your lips together. The final ‘n’ sound is made by touching your tongue about a centimetre away from the back of your front teeth, and directing air through your nose.

Luca was doing all of that. No wonder he was impressed with himself. I’m there for this. It makes me happy.

Day 10

Ladies and gentlemen, phantom vibration syndrome has left my pocket on day 10 of my digital detox. My leg is no longer calling me.

Gains come from all sides, battering my ambition with clarity, focus, mood-control and energy. My decisions are cloud free, multiple and sound. It’s like I have internalised every self-growth book on the New York Times bestseller list. Mark Manson is in my fucking head.

I see the children setting up to quarrel and jump in with a game and a puzzle.

My negotiation skills could release hostages; convincing Alice and Luca they should eat peas is child’s play.

They don’t know they are being hoodwinked.

Foolish children.

Day 11

Every parent goes through five stages when their toddler learns a new word: laughter, joy, frustration, boredom, hate.

I’m there for all five and have no desire to take a photograph of any of them.

Further, the idea of even taking a photo hasn’t crossed my pre-frontal cortex for eleven days now.

In the future I’ll take less photos. I won’t be one of those people saying ‘Im taking a photo in my mind’, but neither will I have eight thousand photos of every fucking moment.

Photos are a reminder, not a diary.

Day 12

I feel like some kind of advanced parenting A.I..

Three new words today: rain, brain, train. I sense a pattern.

Day 13

I am Nero in the Matrix. Ironic that the descending binary code is representative of clarity and thought. It’s the language of technology, the language of binary is not what I need here. It is the wrong analogy. I’m thirteen days into a digital detox. I shouldn’t be seeing programming language.

I don’t see ones and zeros, I see everything and nothing. I am White Fang, the city was my internet addiction, now I am returning to my family, to the clarity of a pre-internet age, to the sanctuary of the wolf pack, to the forest.

No coverage here.

End of the fibre-optic line.

Day 14

Balancing work, family and the never ending surprises of life without a smartphone is not only easier than I thought, but immeasurably more fun. I’m not going to miss any more moments or milestones for want of breaking news or a LinkedIn sales message.

What scared me the most during my detox of discovery was how powerful the subconscious influence was, not just for me but for Alice and Luca. The inherent power of a device influencing how they viewed their own importance was startling.

My notifications will be accessible, but only during certain hours of the day or when the kids aren’t present. When my kids are in the room and talking to me, they need to know they are most important thing in the universe.

Even if they are driving me up the fucking wall. 

All that said, I do need to make a phone call.

I ask Alice where my phone is. She has no idea what I’m talking about.

Two weeks is an eternity for a child.

She asks me to do a puzzle.

And I say sure.

She knows what I’m thinking and says, “Three hundred pieces?”

And I say yes.

I’ll look for the phone tomorrow.

The video was a deepfake made by Muonium AI, the Indian based media tech firm that was co-hosting the book launch. The resurrection of deceased politicians, whether for nefarious political gain or click-bate marketing, gives us a glimpse of where we are heading. The influence of AI is spreading. Is the election process under siege? Is democracy as we know it is at risk? We’re about to find out. 

Within the next twelve months, more than two billion citizens from 50 countries will go to the ballot box. There are General or Presidential elections in the United States, The UK, Indonesia, El Salvador India, Mexico and Pakistan. The European Union will hold its parliamentary elections in June. Staffan Lindberg, the director of the Varieties of Democracy, calls 2024 a ‘make or break year for democracy worldwide.’ 

But this ‘make or break’ year has been building. It's been four years since the deepfake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appearing drunk; seven since lip syncing software was being used to make videos of Barack Obama. That software ‘uses artificial intelligence (AI) to match audio of a person speaking with realistic mouth shapes, which it then grafts on to an existing video’. There’s an instruction manual online.  

But this is 2024, not 2017. Things have moved on. I’d ask AI for a quip right here, but it would just tell us all to ‘fasten our seatbelts.’ Buckle up. From the grass roots, all the way to the White House, in a bid for electoral advantage, politicians, authoritarian regimes, state-funded hackers and YouTubers are harnessing AI's capabilities to streamline campaigns, change public opinion and reshape the narrative of democracy. 

Gulp! 

Examples Of Political Deepfakes

Let’s start… here, with Andrew Grey, an independent running for office in England. He’s young, and open to the possibilities of using AI to hi-jack power. In fact, he’s so enthused he’s using it to write his manifesto and canvas residents on local issues. Further up the UK political food chain, a deepfake of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson and leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn released (‘released’, it’s not a bloody blockbuster.) in 2019 shows the embattled leaders giving their public support for each other. I know I said this was 2024, but 2019 deepfakes were so cute and fluffy. 

Politicians attacking politicians isn’t new, but the technology now gives them more ammunition, more fronts of attack. In July, a pro-Ron DeSantis super PAC used a fake version of Donald Trump’s voice in a television ad attacking… Donald Trump. In the New Hampshire primary a deepfake of Joe Biden was used to discourage democrats from voting.

From Presidential film reviews, to manipulated images of the British Prime Minister pouring a bad pint, you may laugh it all off. Many deepfakes aren’t particularly deep, many look decidedly fake, but don’t be lulled into submission: deepfake video and audio is being wielded in much more dark and nefarious worlds. Venezuelan officials are using AI to create fake media platforms, spreading fake news with avatars, manipulating the media narrative, driving a gigantic wedge between an already polarised population. Days after this video of Gabon President Ali Bongo surfaced, the military attempted a fucking coup. 

Most of us can find a laugh (even though we perhaps shouldn’t) when Donald Trump posts manipulated audio of Elon Musk berating Hitler, the Devil and Dich Cheney to his Instagram, but it really isn’t a laughing fucking matter when innocent people are being murdered in Central Africa. 

What Can We Do To Stop Deepfakes?

What are governments and tech companies doing to overcome the challenges and dangers? How do we stop more coups and rigged elections? How do we prevent Instagram from becoming a real life Saturday Night Live? How can we ever trust what a politician says again? MidJourney CEO, David Holz, says the AI image creation company is considering banning the creation of political images. “I don’t know how much I care about political speech for the next year for our platform.” That takes care of the memes. What about the $2.6 billion that’s spent on online political advertising in the US each year?  

Google has updated its political content and advertising policy. In most countries only advertisers who have been verified can run ads. Yet the tech giant still has ‘different requirements for political and election advertising based on region.’ Probably different in Gabon. Can’t find the policy. Maybe it’s been held hostage by a virtual politician.   

What we call deepfakes, Google calls ‘synthetic content’. And when it comes to synthetic deepfake content, advertisers on Google must… ‘prominently disclose when their ads contain synthetic content that inauthentically depicts real or realistic-looking people or events. This disclosure must be clear and conspicuous, and must be placed in a location where it is likely to be noticed by users.’ 

Our furry fluffy friends at Facebook already ban the use of deepfakes, but they rely on third parties and humans for verification and fact-checking, which is like trying to use snowballs to freeze the sun.  

In the EU, the A.I. Act is being used to establish ‘transparency’, ‘accountability’ and ‘awareness’. They love a good key-word, it’s like they write their policies for ethical search engine optimisation. 300 pages of legal frameworks that might one day be applicable… somewhere… aren’t going to slow down the fake-train. What’s that? Breaking news… Open AI have just released Sora…Are people still trying to convince us filters and watermarks offer tools to discern between authentic and fabricated material? 

Eleven Labs, whose technology was used for the Biden ‘don’t vote’ deepfake, are working on ‘addressing important concerns related to the misuse of AI and synthetic speech.’ I don’t know about you, but to me it all feels so vague, so wishy-washy, so… weak. Like it just won’t work. And the parts that do work, will be far too late. Any horses bolting any stables long since melted down for glue.  

What About The WEF?

The World Economic Forum has proposed four countermeasures:

1. Technology

“Multiple technology-based detection systems already exist today. Using machine learning, neural networks and forensic analysis, these systems can analyse digital content for inconsistencies typically associated with deepfakes. Forensic methods that examine facial manipulation can be used to verify the authenticity of a piece of content. However, creating and maintaining automated detection tools performing inline and real-time analysis remains a challenge.”

The stumbling block there is the last sentence. 

2. Policy Efforts

“We need international and multi-stakeholder efforts that explore actionable, workable and implementable solutions to the global problem of deepfakes. In Europe, through the proposed AI Act, and in the US through the Executive Order on AI, governments are attempting to introduce a level of accountability and trust in the AI value system by signalling to other users the authenticity or otherwise of the content.”

You can’t even play Mario on X-Box. 

3. Public Awareness

“Starting from early education, individuals should be equipped with the skills to identify real from fabricated content, understand how deepfakes are distributed, and the psychological and social engineering tactics used by malicious actors.”

Good luck with that. I wish… I really wish this could be implemented. Maybe deepfakes are the push we need to truly overhaul the western education system. 

4. Zero-Trust Mindset

"In cybersecurity, the “zero-trust” approach means not trusting anything by default and instead verifying everything. When applied to humans consuming information online, it calls for a healthy dose of scepticism and constant verification."

As far as I can work out, that involves curiosity, a diminishing resource.

The World Economic Forum really isn't going to save us.

Which leaves us with: 

Can Blockchain Prevent Deepfakes?

Web3 has a community driven solution to everything these days. Maybe blockchain is the only way to protect democracy from the virtual clammy hands of the deepfake. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin (Hey Vitalik, if you read this, what would it take for you to appear on my podcast?) suggests a really complicated - obviously - solution could be the use of old jokes, family anecdotes and communal memories as a way to defend ourselves from imitation and fraud. 

Part of his solution involves shared experiences. (With the hyper-personalisation of gaming and media, shared experiences might soon be a thing of the past. But that’s for another day.) He probably hasn’t ‘cracked the deep-fake code’ - knowing the name of your invisible friend when you were six isn’t going to stop a North Korean pawn taking two videos off YouTube, splicing them together and creating some kind of political event horizon from which no truth can ever escape. Or something. Might stop fraudsters stealing your social media persona though. Or stop things like this happening. 

Whether blockchain can be used in the raging inferno against deepfakes is beyond my pay remit. But if we do manage to create a fair and transparent (ish) election process; if Google can clear the path for an honest campaign advertising trail; if Open AI (lol), MidJourney and Dall-E can somehow block the creation of images and videos and text; if you can indicate whether audio has been voiced by a real person or a bot; If Muonium AI and Eleven Labs and their ilk can hold fire on the marketing; if politicians themselves can leave the goddamn prompts alone for five seconds, what about the day itself? What about the ballot box? Can we keep that safe? Can we guard the humanity of Ancient Rome in that? I mean, robots can’t vote yet. Deepfakes can’t close a curtain and ‘mark it X’. 

Blockchain Elections

Sierra Leone held what is generally regarded as the first blockchain election. Or did it? “The National Electoral Commission (NEC) is the "sole authority" on Sierra Leone's public elections, and the group has gone out of its way to make it clear that it did not use blockchain in the March 7 election.” 

Which makes Thailand the first country to hold a blockchain election. Kind of. In fact, Thailand’s Democratic Party used Z-coin to elect its leader. “Live e-voting was held from November 1–9, 2018 and more than 120,000 registered Democrats voted via blockchain to elect former Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva by a margin of 67,505 votes.”

Which makes Switzerland the first country to hold a blockchain election. Or not. 72 people voted on made-up questions in a trial in the city of Zug. Oh Switzerland. Which makes Japan…Do you ever get the feeling that what you read and believe isn’t based on reality? 

Many will say the journey toward AI-resilient, deepfake averse democracies demands concerted efforts across technological, legal, and regulatory domains. When YouTubers can make videos of politicians saying anything they want in about eighteen seconds, those concerted efforts need stepping up. I don’t mean to be the bearer of bad news, but two billion people are going to the ballot box this year. Deepfakes and fake news coupled with a divided population easily manipulated by social media? Democracy might not be in such great shape in 2025. 

And since I’ve got this far, and nobody likes a pessimist, dare I say deepfakes are not the problem? To quote my friend Owen, ‘lobbying, self-centred policies based on capital gains, and the co-opting of the legal systems to protect the rich and powerful, has led to a situation where most people are fighting and working to survive and feed themselves and their families, and aiding industrialisation in the process, and causing the massive pollution that will kill the system.’ Most people really don’t care what politicians say, real or fake. 

Fast forward 14 years and JP Morgan – technically a blockchain division of JP Morgan, but let’s not split hairs – opened a virtual lounge in Decentraland. MANA rose 10% in the wake of the announcement, pushing the market cap of the decentralized metaverse platform to $6 billion.

Quite how JP Morgan entering anything could cause excitement was beyond me.

And the reason I took a holiday in the metaverse.

It nearly cost me my marriage.

And my mind.

At the time of writing, if Decentraland was a country, based on GDP, you'd find it between the Maldives and Montenegro.

“Why don’t we go to the Maldives instead of the metaverse then?” my wife says when I point this out.

“JP Morgan have built a lounge in Decentraland,” I say, shielding her from the graphics. “Who needs a sandy beach and cocktails in a hammock when you’ve got the metaverse? This is the future. All holidays will be in the metaverse one day. We’re vacation explorers. We’re like Thomas Cook.”

“I’m choosing the holiday next time,” she says.

“Deal,” I say as the screen goes dark and inoffensive music fills the void.  There’s no rock n’ roll, no punk, no metal, no grunge. The metaverse is elevator music. Tedious.

Simplicity kills.

Brain cells.

CREATING A LONELY AVATAR

I have to create an avatar. A pixelated reflection of myself. Since I don’t give a shit what I look like in the metaverse – I’m here for the truth, not a fashion show. Unless the truth is a fashion show. In which case I’m underdressed – Scottish pirate-wrestler it is.

Decentraland won’t let me put a space in my name. I thought mass adoption was the biggest problem? I wanted to be called Bugsy Siegel. You can be anyone in the metaverse, but you can’t be called anything you want. Only one word. No special characters. BugsySiegel it is. 

A ¾ jazz beat replaces the elevator music. I can’t work out if I’m happy or sad about that. 

MY OWN PRIVATE DECENTRALIZED METAVERSE

No check-in, no ticket inspection, no queues. I remember a holiday in Wales I took eighteen years ago. The road into the resort was cut off because of a landslide somewhere near Abergavenny. It took 72 hours to reach my log cabin. I’m in Decentraland in three seconds.

A ball-shaped droid named Alice joins me in the waiting lounge. She explains the basic controls, shows me a handful of useful shortcuts and explains how to interact with the world. Decentraland is set-up for a QWERTY keyboard. I’m using a French AZERTY laptop and bash my head into a wall.

Metaverse teething problems.

I’m floating on a cloud. In front of me is a small pool. There’s a vortex in the middle and I wonder if that is metaphor for life. Or maybe the emergency exit. The music is beyond irritating. My mind seeks escape through my ears. Motionless avatars called Peanut and Bongo and #dghdk spawn nearby. First timers, like me. They look lost, confused. They stand and stare.

I wonder how the fuck #dghdk got his special character.

"What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?"

W.H Davies

I click buttons, find the settings and turn down the music. I can’t work out how to invert the x-axis and y-axis and bang my head against the diving board.

I press the space bar and jump into the vortex. The vortex is neither an escape or the meaning of life, it’s the revolving door to my holiday in the metaverse. I land in a bar, which would be a great start if I wasn’t doing Dry January. There are CryptoPunks and Ethereum symbols on the wall. Strange NFTs, animals. 

Jazz. Straight sixteenths. Swing.

The barman – who has an octopus on his head – mixes virtual cocktails. 

On the lowly rendered wall is Nyan the cat, an NFT that creator Chris Torres sold for $600,000 last year. Right-click-save-as.

I float/walk/hover outside. There is a blimp with a slogan saying “The World Is Yours” on it.

It isn’t.

And where the hell is Snoop Dogg?

“Snoop Dogg lives in the Sandbox,” my wife says. “We’re in the wrong metaverse for gin n’ juice.”

“FFS. Isn’t this interoperable? What blockchain are we on?” 

I feel like I’m on holiday in Leicester with a work colleague whilst all the cool people have gone to New York without me.

GENESIS PLAZA

When a new player enters the metaverse, they start at Genesis Plaza. I explore, as I would the side streets of Rome or Marrakesh. I run around the park, birdsong is pumped into the air. Clouds float by. There are purple and orange and pink trees. It’s peaceful.

Very peaceful.

As if I’m the only person in the world.

I run to the auditorium to catch a show. Web2 animé is projected onto a screen within a screen. There are metallic hummingbirds and a wild-west shoot-out on a train in a cartoon dessert. It is a ghost auditorium. Empty.

In the top left of the Decentraland screen is a map. I open it to see what I am missing. It’s a vast world, 90,000 parcels of land, each with infinite potential. Most are empty.

Being this early is lonely.

WAGMI.

I remember a holiday in Paris and a pilgrimage to Père Lachaise Cemetery and the grave of Jim Morrison. I was going through my Doors phase. Inebriated and, retrospectively, very uncool. But that didn’t prevent me thinking I was Ernest Hemingway.

Whilst there I also reflected on the nature of creativity at the final resting place of Frédéric Chopin, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, Colette, Geoachinno Rossini, Balzac and Marcel Proust.

I remember an article in Fortune and how it said the Metaverse is going to give us creativity and culture on a level humanity has never seen before.

Whack-a-mole at the Decentraland auditorium isn’t the Renaissance. 

Is the cemetery the best place to make friends in the metaverse? Debateable, but what the hell, I’m on holiday, my rules. I arrive at the pearly gates. There are no cultural icons buried and no living people or avatars wandering the pathways. There are some ghosts but conversation is testing.

I open the map for a second time. Decentraland University is twinkling like a beacon of optimism in a world of FUD.

Education is important in the metaverse. Not banks. We must instil values in our children that allow them to make wise decisions; embrace these new technological and cultural frontiers of the Metaverse. We must give them a blueprint that will guide them.

Fuck JP Morgan.

That’s what Satoshi Nakamoto said.

Time to go back to school.

I click.

The Decentraland university is empty. Of people, and things to learn. I’m disappointed. I thought I would at least see a TED talk.

To quell my impending social anxiety, I skip to a jazz club. No holiday is complete without some live music. The evening is lovely, the dynamic Decentraland sky awash with the sunburst colours.

Ominous, glowing green boxes litter my path. Are these parcels of metaverse land waiting for utility? Waiting for millions of dollars and investors waving gold. Gentrification in the Metaverse. It reminds me of the outer reaches of Snow Crash. On closer inspection, my computer is not equipped to deal with the graphics of the decentralized metaverse. The green vanishes, buildings are rendered in.

MUSIC IN THE DECENTRALIZED METAVERSE

The Jazz Club is at -70, 76. It looks nice. But there’s no jazz. And it is empty. So is the NFT fashion shop across the road, which I’m actually happy about. I hate shopping for real clothes, the idea of digital fashion fills me with existential dread.

There’s no life in the enchanted woods (-33, -44). 

I need to go where the prices are higher. Land parcel 4247 was bought for a million dollars by a virtual real-estate investment firm. It’s in a part of Decentraland near Dragon City. “We can’t wait to announce our big plans for this estate,” Republic Realm, the new owners, said. “Our commitment to building and developing the metaverse is stronger than ever.”

Yeah? We’ll see.

I check it out and get excited when I see what could be life.

On closer inspection, it’s a bush. 

Standing (all alone) at coordinates: -12,-2 - available for 8 million MANA ($725k) or $708 per square foot.

When I was eighteen I went to Palma Menorca with a friend. On the second day my bank blocked my credit card.

THE JP MORGAN ONYX LOUNGE

The Decentraland coordinates for the JP Morgan Onyx lounge are 94,21.

This is a holiday. The idea of going to a virtual lounge owned by a bank sounds as exciting as drinking water in a brewery, but it is the reason I came to Decentraland in the first place. 

And besides, this is no ordinary virtual lounge owned by a bank. It added 10% to the value of Decentraland. That’s $500 million. This is a $500 million virtual lounge. Owned by a bank whose CEO threatened to sack employees who traded in Bitcoin, who called cryptocurrency a fraud. But we forgave them for 2008, so we can forgive them for this.

The most important thing is, WAGMI. 

I wish I could tell you the ONYX lounge is incredible, that the virtual tiger and the off-oyster white walls are a marvel you have to see for yourself. I wish I could tell you there is all manner of interesting and exciting people milling around the reception, asking questions, speaking about the Metaverse and the financial freedom it will offer to the swaths of humanity who don’t have access to a bank account. But I can’t. It’s shit.

Even the tiger looks bored, pacing around like some kind of broken zoo animal. The whole thing is a dreadful mistake, and no way to spend a holiday.

And, yes, it is empty.

That 10% increase in price makes me feel dirty. 

$500 million?

SATOSHI PALACE

Debauched gambling will clear my head. I go to Satoshi Palace. It is not empty. There are green frog men. Croupiers waiting for punters. Waiting for life to populate the decentralized metaverse. Even the frog people have been sold a dream, a future they neither wanted nor needed.  They look sad. I open a New York Times article on the Metaverse, to remind myself why I am doing this. It’s behind a paywall, I sneak peeks of ‘the future’, ‘our digital lives’ and ‘hype’ before the pay wall slams shut.

I’ve read all manner of bunk, baloney, opinion and sense on the metaverse, I’ve never read about how damn empty it is.

THE ATARI CASINO

Once the domain of nostalgic t-shirts and the halcyon days of game consoles, Atari has been re-born in the Metaverse. The jewel in its crown is The Atari Casino – a crypto casino offering roulette and poker and blackjack, an open, expansive entertainment centre powered by the ATRI token. I’m excited, this is where all the people are, the degens, the gamblers, the chancers, three days into a million dollar poker game where the stakes are life itself.

I’m on foot. A lone train rattles by. It’s dark. It’s foreboding. I arrive at the gates and it’s empty. No doubt because everyone is at the tables, placing bets, chatting with the croupiers and drinking Singapore Slings on the velvet carpets of the casino. I rush inside, open-armed, ready to embrace the future.

But there is nobody here.

There are some fruit machines, they have ‘Ready Player One’ on the screen. I speak to them.

With money to burn, I crawl to another casino. Gamble, gamble, gamble.

THE TOMINOYA CASINO

Not my casino, but one of the most popular places in Decentraland, in the wider decentralized Metaverse. I arrive and a person spawns before my eyes. The world stops, angelic fanfares cry from the ramparts. I’ve found my people, some people. A person. I want to take them in my arms and waltz across the Metaverse.

A flash of light.

And my computer crashes.

I have to reload.

And when I get back to the Tominoya, that magical person has gone and I’m all alone again. I wonder if it happened or whether my mind, desperate for connection, was playing tricks. A frog person appears, only now it’s dancing and I am stuck inside a blackjack table. The floor starts to merge with the surroundings, the frog has teeth and its clawing at me, drinking long island ice teas through the descending digital exo-plasm drowning my avatar.

RTFKT

Am I doing something wrong? I check the settings. Look for the ‘Make People Appear’ button. It isn’t there.

I go next door to the RTFKT building, recently acquired by Nike for an undisclosed sum. Their NTFS are selling on OpenSea of for the price of Gabon. There must be someone in there, I think. This is the home of Clone-X.

The RTFKT building is empty. Not even the frog people are here.

People could be in bed, I guess.

But surely the metaverse doesn’t sleep?

I go to OpenSea. There is a parcel of land for sale, a snip at $15,000. If I sell half my possessions I could buy this. I use the /goto option in the chat box and spawn to this parcel of land. It’s under construction. There is nothing going on. It looks like the future only the future is the past and has bad graphics and is empty.

My attention is grabbed by flashing lights far in the distance. Like a moth to the possibility of human interaction, I drop any ideas of investment, and run. There’s life. The decentralized metaverse I’m looking for.

SHONBEBE

It’s Shonbebe, a new way to express music in the metaverse.

I run into Shonbebe. As the graphics catch up with my ambition, drum and bass hijacks my audio senses. Neon lights and flashing bolts of yellow and orange and blue render in. The music builds, crescendos. Guitars come in, distorted, out of tune. My avatar raises his arms in the air. The music breaks down to snares and hi hats; rhythm at its most simplistic, in tune with the neurons of human existence.

There is nobody here, but the music builds again, ripping down the peace and rebuilding the musical landscape with raucous drums and guitars. And then I’m trapped behind the walls, a glitch causing my avatar to spasm uncontrollably.

Fighting virtual gravity is not easy. Eventually I escape. A free man, on holiday, having a great time. I run outside, my lungs working as they should. I breath deeply from the micro-particle-free air. One thing about the  metaverse, there’s pollution, no microparticles. It’s like being in the Swiss Alps. Only it’s emptier than the Swiss Alps. There are more people on the fucking Matterhorn.

THE DOGE HEAD

The oxygen is so pure my eyesight momentarily falters. I stumble into a giant Doge head. It’s looking at me. At least it’s a connection. A connection with a giant dog head. But connection. I speak to it.

I ask what happened to the one dollar Doge.

“Wen one dollar Doge?” I say, harking back to the glory days of early 2021 and the Saturday Night Live Elon Musk sketch which was going to change the crypto world. Yet didn’t.

Doge doesn’t respond.

The sun is high in the sky, the early morning warmth ramping up to a midday heatwave.

Maybe it’s the heat speaking, but give me a dystopian hell scape with lava for roads if you must. Just give me people.

Seeking shade, I levitate and glide gracefully to NFT marketplace Niftys, home to eco-friendly NFTs, Space Jam and the Matrix avatars, 100,000 NFTs launched last year to give fans of the franchise access to a dystopian world of story and intrigue. Using Epic Games’ photorealistic MetaHuman creator, Nifty’s Matrix NFTs are said to be almost life-like. There is no sign of life here, life-like or otherwise.

What there is is an amateurish billboard offering me advertising opportunities. I’m not sure who I could advertise to. It reminds me of a holiday I took to Blackpool when I was twelve.

CULTURE FOR EVERYONE

Culture, education, art for everyone. Access to the great museums and art galleries of the world, a Metaverse of cultural enlightenment and refined artistic opportunities. Remove the background hum of the mighty dollar and define the metaverse as something deeper, more human. And what is more human than culture? And what says ‘holiday’ more than a visit to Tate Modern, MOMA or the National Portrait Gallery?

THE MUSEUM DISTRICT

Excited, I go to the Soho art gallery. Nobody there.

Art is the common ground which connects humanity. From the Palaeolithic cave paintings of Lascaux and the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt, to the renaissance art of the enlightenment and the decadence of modern art, the human condition has been painted, etched, sketched and drawn. Being a visual medium, the Metaverse will open this culture to everyone on Earth, from the Himalayan foothills to the backstreets of Leeds, the barriers of location and access will be eviscerated by the metaverse. 

I’m not saying the art isn’t wonderful and transcendental and explosive, because some of it is. Some is raucous and challenging, opaque and bold, other pieces are childlike. The whole gamete of human artistic expression is hanging from the virtual walls.

NFT HALLWAY

NFT Hallway has links to OpenSea where I can buy the NFTs hanging on the wall. Oh right. But it’s empty.

The ‘Make People Appear’ button still isn’t there.

In the Monster Hall I find flying sheep and atmospheric music of violins and harps. I also find beauty, the intricacy and the creativity washing over me. But it’s empty, lifeless.

I start to panic.

A drink. I need a drink. Some amber nectar to still my beating heart. Is this what the end of the world feels like?

DRINKING IN THE DECENTRALIZED METAVERSE

I find a bar. It has pool tables and game machines and a robot bar man who stares at me, then tells me which beer I should drink. I really don’t care. I drink it all. It tastes like metal.

My foot taps manically against the wooden bar stool. In real life I get a message from Samsung saying I am due a phone upgrade. I text Samsung back and say I’ll meet them in the metaverse.

Times are getting desperate, the idea of a holiday long since eviscerated. There was a story about an NFT and owning a part of Decentraland and Bugsy Siegel and Vegas in the 1950s and the celebration of the future of mankind. Bugsy Siegel was shot dead outside his casino a year after opening. He never got to see the Vegas dream he craved. I’m never going to have the metaverse holiday I craved.

THE SAMSUNG 837X EXPERIENCE

The Samsung 837X experience isn’t going to save me. And I don’t tell my wife we swapped hammocks in the Maldives for a visit to the Samsung shop in Decentraland. The Samsung website says, “Samsung 837X is a fully immersive experience, featuring quests, NFT prizes, product reveal events and live performances. You can buy and sell exclusive digital assets, like land and wearables.”

I don’t want a fucking wearable. I want human connection.

I teleport out. Back to 0.0. There were people there when I arrived. Staring into the abyss. I arrive at the beginning and the place is deserted. I fall head-first back into the vortex, returning to the Plaza. I see someone. In the distance. Walking slowly. My heart skips a beat.

It’s an old man with a sack on his shoulder. This must be the Metaverse Buddha. He has been here a long time, maybe since the beginning. Since 2017. He seems decrepit, uninterested, aimlessly walking around the Metaverse looking for something he can’t imagine.

Or someone.

I turn on my microphone and shout at the decentralized metaverse Buddha.

He ignores me.

I say hello in the chat box.

He ignores me.

I jump in front of him, tell him about my visit to the cemetery.

He ignores me.

I give up, sit down in a deckchair and watch a virtual ferris-wheel go around and around and around.

I check CoinMarketCap.

And wonder.

THE CENTRALIZED METAVERSE

I am worried. Worried about the future of the  decentralized metaverse, worried about the volume of media coverage of something which, if you just take some time to explore, is empty. I’m worried that six billion valuation is always hovering, impossible to ignore, impossible to ignore, impossible to ignore.

With the world spending its way into impending ruin, should it be ignored? 

I’m worried about the disconnect between what I have been reading and what I’m experiencing.

Echo chambers.

I’m worried the Metaverse is a smoke screen, a beautiful and elaborate ruse, a story to keep us distracted as the real story is created behind our backs, to be laced upon our eyes later on. I’m worried the metaverse is a vehicle for the mass introduction of VR glasses, augmented realities layered upon what we see around us. A screen replacement. No more televisions, computer screens or laptops. Just whatever replaces them.

But that seems fanciful. Elon Musk cast doubt on the assertion we would walk around with headsets and glasses on. My wife said as much, and she doesn’t want to go to Mars.

“People don’t wear glasses to help them see,” she says. “Why would they wear glasses to help them see something which isn’t there?”

It’s a valid point. “But the geeks are going to inherit the Earth,” I say.

What comes after glasses? Eye implants? As soon as you start mentioning eye implants people get all scared and call you a dystopian peddler of broken nightmares, forgetting how far and how quickly technology has progressed from their own childhood. 

DECENTRALIZED GROWTH

Yes, it will grow. Yes, it will grow. Yes it will grow. We still early. I get it. There are plans afoot for fashion shows and fight nights. The Metaverse Festival, four days of music, culture and creativity in October 2021 brought exposure and real musicians to town. And there is always gaming.

Web3 and the decentralized internet upon which it sits will uncouple finance from government, data from the data-gathering vampires, and creativity from the gate-keepers. It will allow us all to be the best versions of ourselves. But life isn’t made up of grandiose one-offs, it’s the day-to-day where life is made. The routine and habit, of the little things. And right now, it’s a pipe dream.

DECENTRALIZED HOPE

But all hope is not lost. As Metaverse Buddha hobbles off, something hits me, a realisation that I have been missing the whole holiday, something so powerful, so mesmerising I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. I know where the people are. I know where the connection and the community is; where the like minded are congregated, laughing, joking and telling stories. Living and breathing the metaverse.

I’ve been looking at it the wrong way. There is no doubt in my mind, the metaverse dream is down by the river.

The record breaker, the trend setter, the biggest status symbol and raucous joyous party in the history of degenerate apes. $542 million in sales, a token dropping in days. The front of Rolling Stone, every news outlet fawning over them or knocking them down. Something special is happening, something transformative.

I want to hold hands with Neymar and dance around the metaverse with Stephen Curry, Serena Williams, Shaquille O’Neal, Justin Bieber and Eminem and Jimmy Fallon and Kevin Hart and Paris Hilton and Logan Paul and Snoop Dogg, the catalysts to the mainstream adoption, the energy pulsating at the heart of the NFT world, and by association, the Metaverse.

I pick up my pace, certain I’m falling into the beating engine at the centre of the metaverse, the billion dollar justification for it all.

Finally.

THE BORED APE YACHT CLUB

The BAYC Riverboat casino: Decentraland coordinates, -111, 120.

Half delirious, half crazy, half maniacal, I run like a gazelle fleeing the jaws of death towards the beating heart of Decentraland. I fling myself across the wooden gangplank and into the bowels of the 18th century paddle steamer.

And stop.

I’ve missed the boat.

I’m too late.

Just the remnants remain.

An empty bar, banana skins scattered across the floor like empty gun cartridge casings. Wine glasses and beer bottles. Someone has painted FOMO in giant letters on the underside of the staircase which leads to the upstairs dance floor.

I sink to my knees.

And I’m reminded of a quote.

“Will the last person out of the decentralized metaverse please turn off the lights.”

Oh, is that me?

"I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark, Rome is the light." - Marcus Aurelius, speaking at Rome Blockchain Week.

Web3 burnout is real.

Pressure points and tipping points are everywhere, raining down on our fragile minds like Layer 2 scaling solutions.

When clicking on a link can rob you of your life savings, obliterate everything you’ve worked for, you know it's bad.

But do you know what makes it worse?

You can see it. Forever.

Immutability has no empathy. No compassion.

It doesn't give a fuck about your feelings.

Add to the stress and emotional ruin of scam-bots the slow torture of Twitter, LinkedIn, personal brand building and the 24/7 culture that demands your presence, your input, your content and your storytelling.

Page views. Post views.

Analytics is an evil word.

Yes, web3 burnout is very real.

I’ve seen it break friends and gobble connections up.

I’ve smelt its rampant breath on my own neck.

Few are immune.

Stoicism can't save you. It isn't a magical panacea. But it is a philosophy you can use to give you perspective, to step back, to see web3 through the eyes of two thousands years of history.

These quotes won’t take away the pain of a badly programmed smart contract rampaging through your NFT collection and sending your Doodles to North Korea; they won’t make the anguish and anxiety the multitude of thought leaders impose on your imposter syndrome any less visceral; hell, they won’t even help you go viral.

But they might give you thinking space; a moment of clarity before you click that Discord link. They may give you a saucerful of compassion for the shillers and the thieves, courage to weather bear markets and the ancient wisdom to not chase the emptiness of vanity metrics.

So without further ado.

Let’s visit Ancient Rome.

The full spectrum of the human condition laid bare across the Colosseum floor.

Siamo in anticipo.

Marcus Aurelius Stoic Quotes To Survive… Uncertainty

Cryptocurrency is a riptide only the strongest can swim against. Most end-up out beyond the horizon in a bright yellow inflatable dinghy.

You can read every white paper and Reddit channel, decipher GitHub and play squash with Vitalik Buterin. You'll still going to drown in a sea of descending crosses.

Scams and rugs happen. Stablecoins tumble, NFT collections shrink, apes and animé don't always lead to five figures and a château in the Spanish sun.

You have power over your own mind, not outside events.

Marcus Aurelius Stoic Quotes To Survive… The Metaverse

The metaverse is the merging of the physical and the digital; a place of exuberance and freedom and content and gaming and community and culture and all of your soul mates running around temples of like-minded connection as Snoop Dogg waltzes endlessly around The Sandbox

But, Stoic web3 friends, not a replacement for real life, merely an addition.

To keep a semblance of balance and chase the wolves of burnout away, dwell on the beauty of life, take solace in nature.

Only don't dwell. Because it isn’t 1850. Who fucking dwells?

Instead, take your shoes off and run outside and hug a deer.

Climb a rock, swim under water, smell a flower, dance barefoot across burning the coals of an exploding volcano if you need such a thrill to feel alive.

Dance with the stars.

Then go back to Decentraland.

Marcus Aurelius Stoic Quotes To Survive… Crypto Twitter

The never ending conveyor belt of voices screaming about ascending triangles and descending oblongs, triple tops and death crosses. The rising wedge of complete uncertainty masquerading as a dead cert will cloud your judgement, confuse your otherwise analytical mind.

Remember more data means more information, but it also means more false information, more guess work, fiction, more opinion.

You miss 100% of the shit you don’t listen to.

Marcus Aurelius Stoic Quotes To Survive… Smart Contracts

Let’s get into the weeds of surviving the mental anguish of badly coded smart contracts. Stoicism is a mirror, it exposes rack and ruin and places it on the shoulders of personal interpretation.

I’ve lost thousands.

And it hurt.

Goddamn punk ass contract.

This Stoic quote didn't erase the feeling at the pit of my stomach.

However, It did take the edge off the sting.

And give perspective.

Marcus Aurelius Stoic Quotes To Survive… Education

Social media-shaped echo chambers.

Algorithms will imprison you within walls of total agreement.

They’ll never question you.

Or ask you to question yourself.

You need a multi-coloured soul, a rainbow of flavours.

Echo chambers are the preserve of the passive.

Be careful where you seek your knowledge.

Marcus Aurelius Stoic Quotes To Survive… Bear Markets

There is always a bear market racing towards you.

The future is volatile. I hope it will always be so, otherwise we we're all just playing a drab game of pin the tail on the donkey.

Strengthen your reason now, so you are ready when the future comes.

Stoic Quotes To Survive… Terrible NFTS

The anger mounts.

Who are these clowns prancing behind the promise of a DAO and a metaverse game?

Where is that airdrop the roadmap promised?

Did you really buy a blockchain based health tracker because you can't push yourself to run up a hill?

Here Marcus Aurelius is speaking about immutability on the blockchain. It is wise to remember when you click mint.

Stoic Quotes To Survive… FOMO

FOMO is nothing new. It’s part of the human condition. In ancient Rome FOMO was omnipresent.

Stoic Quotes To Survive… Not Taking Profits

Take the profits.

I’ll end as I started.

Web3 burnout is real.

If you’re suffering, or think you might be about to, reach out to someone.

If you suspect someone is suffering, speak to them.