Lately, Lens has been finding its footing on its own chain helping apps migrate, supporting new ones coming to life, and growing our builder cohorts. It’s been (and still is) a period of regrouping: checking in on ourselves, what worked well, and what didn’t.

On the Lens (Labs) front, we’re now hyperfocused on a few key things:

1. Improving the stack and evolving the Primitives.

2. Enhancing the developer experience (the Spring hackathon was extremely helpful for this).

3. Working on a new social experience, an older format we think deserves a comeback.

4. Helping apps launch, grow, and thrive through tech and GTM support, showcasing them, and advising on strategy. Our communications have been focused on them, because it's through apps that users experience Lens.

5. Incubating a few promising new apps within the Lens Developer Program.

6. Reaching out to new apps and platforms that want to integrate Lens as an easy and effective way to add social networking and monetization to existing spaces.

If any of the above piqued your interest,  and you’re a builder or integrator, join the Discord and get in touch! We’ll help you reach your goals.

The apps have been thriving these past weeks! Here’s what they’ve been shipping:

• Orb launched its Usernames marketplace. They’ve also ramped up sticker drops, with weekly releases by legends like Datartist and Haku.

• Lemonade, the beloved events platform, just relaunched with a very exciting proposal: Lemonade Stands, meant for creators to get closer to their audience, host drops, distribute exclusive content, and more. People already love them: read this thread from Haku that speaks for itself.

• Lemonade is also set to launch Lemonheads, a collection of soulbound avatars, a passport to Web3. Here’s the Fountain post explaining the collection. With NFTs being very back, there’s no doubt they’ll fly off the digital shelves.

• Bonsai released a powerful update to their Creators Studio featuring video generation. It’s worth noting that these Lens favorites are thriving, with 60% of all Bonsai supply now staked on the new Lens Chain.

• Lens Forum (from the builders of Lens Reputation) has launched, and I’m already spending a bunch of time there. The forum is beautiful and simple, designed for deeper discussion. Next week, we’re hosting an All Hands Lens Ecosystem livestream on X and Bloomers - a community proposal that came from the Forum!

• Fountain shipped newsletters! Now you can export your contacts from Substack and others, and use Fountain as a beautiful, onchain platform to distribute your media. Since the posts are composable and Lens-native, they come with native tipping and collecting for easier monetization, and they’re viewable across the Lens ecosystem for max distribution. Because of all that, Touch Grass is expanding to Fountain. For the foreseeable future, I’ll be posting on both Paragraph and Fountain, and eventually, likely moving over completely.

• I also heard that some of the most interesting Lens builders (Daoleno, Javi, and Kualta, to name a few) are working on a Developer DAO. We’re already supporting them however we can.

Next week, we’ll be hosting the All Hands Lens Ecosystem Call. Every builder will have 5 minutes to talk about what they’ve been working on, followed by open discussion, where we hope new collabs will emerge. The livestream will take place on Thursday, July 31st at 6pm CET / 12pm ET, on X and Lens (via BloomersTV). Save the date!

This will be a short update to explain what’s happened with your accounts and content, and what to expect moving forward.

As we shared last month, the migration required a phased, multi-team rollout. We aimed for a smooth transition with zero action from you. First, because the Lens community deserves a frictionless experience; second, to protect the integrity of your content, connections, and digital identity.

We took a snapshot of everything and migrated it to Lens Chain at launch. We coordinated with app teams to make sure they could flip the switch and just work.

During the past 36 hours, app teams went dark while we all worked behind the scenes to move every profile to Lens V3. That process wrapped just a few hours ago, and the apps started rolling out their builds, a process that will bleed well into the weekend. It takes a village!

That’s the recap. Now here’s what you can explore and enjoy today and over the next few days on the new Lens:

Ready today for everyone: 

• Get Lens Accounts for everyone free of charge.

• Experience a faster, easier Hey.xyz: with Sign-in with Family integrated, you can now onboard everyone to Hey in the easiest and safest way possible, no need to download a wallet or write down seed phrases!

• Write beautifully with Fountain: a new writing platform with built-in distribution and monetization features, Fountain is the most beautiful platform to host your new blog at.

• Explore and post on Lens with Soclly.

• Bridge your $BONSAI from any chain (Polygon, Base, zkSync) to Lens

• Bridge and trade with Li.FI and Jumper

• Connect to Lens Chain with your Zerion, Rabby and Metamask wallets
  

For builders: 

• Explore and build with the Lens Developer Dashboard 

• Apply to the Lens Developer Program v1

Coming in the next days: 

• Smart Media Protocol by Bonsai 

• Create agentic content / memecoins on Bonsai: yes, you heard that right!

• Explore the new Orb: Orb needs a few more days to finalize their migration, and once they are done (by Monday probably) there will be significant changes happening in your favorite app. and more coming very soon. For starters you can explore and interact with content, there’s a brand new reaction and real time updates, and you should be expecting more fun next week. 

• Trade, send and deploy Lens tokens on X with Leftcurve: we’re meeting people where they are. Leftcurve is an AI agent for trading and sending crypto on X, now supporting Lens Chain. 

• Learn about DeFi with Rekt: your favorite DeFi news site has come onchain with Lens. Collect their articles, sign up with your Lens account, and more coming soon.

• More wallets (Uniswap Wallet, Family, and more!)

• More of your favorite Lens apps ! Soclly, Firefly and 0xppl are coming.

• Explore your whole portfolio including Lens chain with Zapper
  

And more to come! We’re just getting started! 

Before I forget: on Tuesday April 8th at 11am ET, tune in to the Livestream on Lens' X with Stani, Alex from ZKsync, and Anurag from Avail, to learn more about the huge task of scaling Lens for a better internet.  Mark your calendars.

Thank you everyone for your support, your trust, and for growing Lens with us.

A few days ago, Solana’s unfortunate video faux pas had crypto people from all backgrounds aligning to reject its message, in favor of the idea that blockchains are—and should be—for everyone, no matter your gender, pronouns, background, or nationality. After such a long period of divisiveness, and in spite of an adverse market that has us all in a weird mood, we woke up to a different timeline: one that believes technology is audience-agnostic.

Truth be told, it’s harder to build for everyone, because getting to know that “everyone”—and their needs—is harder than understanding a specific group and solving for them. But when you’re building chains or protocols, you really do need to think of everyone. Technology should be agnostic and serve as many people as possible.

In a conversation before I sat down to write this, Pierre—an artist and builder I’ve known for a while—told me about his journey and the products he’s working on. He was calling from his studio, surrounded by these amazing, colorful paintings of charts he makes. He said crypto was the most fun place on the internet and reminded me that you really can do anything here. Just in the past few weeks, we’ve seen “vibecoding” blow up on the timeline and turn everyone into an app developer. During the NFT hype, people who had never made art before launched ambitious, meaningful projects. Take it outside our bubble, and everyone and their mother is becoming a podcaster.

Blockchains are agnostic because they were built by people who understand life isn’t linear. You should be able to change careers, go anon, go doxxed—do whatever you want, whenever you want. The tech should be there to support that.

Without further ado, here’s what everyone has been doing onchain the past two weeks.

• Been really immersed in the Louie videos lately

• Kaiotei’s latest drop killed it. Had to collect both on Solana and Lens! Here’s the Lens one.

• Jah’s back (but did he ever leave?)

• Mazin’s Valley Anomaly

• Tabasom’s Tehran incredible images

• Haku’s illustrations are becoming a fixture in Touch Grass! So good.

• Selene’s been killing it lately. Here’s her latest drop.

• Kolin’s modernist pool living rent free in my head

• Also collected this perfect artwork by guruguruhyena

• Mchx gradients for life

• Art as SaaS by PanWinyl

• Simon de la Rouviere’s early blockchain memories (he invented everything, you should read this!)

• A great summary from how Bybit handled their crisis, lots to learn

• Benoit on tech that won’t die

• Haku’s reflections on the international women’s day

• My two queens, Jessy and Dayana in conversation!

• Jean Ayala’s working on the Lens App Factory, a very cool launchpad for quick apps

• Ahead of their big launch (together with the Lens mainnet launch) Bonsai is rebranding

• Lens Reputation, the fastest growing project on the ecosystem, will store their NFTs on Grove

• Soclly, is ramping up their next build ahead of the mainnet launch

• Definn’s first Grove metadata upload

• T2 is transitioning to Lens Chain!

• A great Lens explainer by Paul Burke
  

Hope you enjoyed this digest! See you in two weeks.

Welcome to a new edition of Touch Grass. Last week, we took a rain check—which, by now, you know is synonymous with “we’re heads down cooking.” We’re excited to bring you news from our tech team, Lens builders, the wider crypto community, and of course, the creators we love to follow.

On the Lens front, we successfully migrated your profiles and content from Lens v2 on Polygon to Lens v3 on Lens Chain. When mainnet launches, you’ll simply need to log in to Orb or Hey, and you’ll already be on the new chain. This week, we also announced Grove, the storage solution we developed to ensure you own your content, with the ability to edit and delete it.

As exciting as the Lens updates are, something else has been even more pressing: security and hacks. Safe, one of the pillars of the ecosystem—long known for weathering security crises unscathed—was at the center of the Bybit hack, which had just begun when the last edition of this newsletter came out. This has been a major wake-up call for everyone. It’s clear that attackers are getting more sophisticated and closely watching our every move. Security needs to be top of mind for all of us.

In recent months, I’ve seen very savvy people targeted, and I’ve noticed the shame and trauma that often come with these attacks. Our devices hold friendships, memories, and assets—essentially, our digital lives. Right now, the internet is filled with threats to that existence. Our inboxes are flooded with scammers. Fake Coinbase and Ledger calls and texts have been a daily nuisance for me and many others over the past two weeks. We need to protect ourselves as best we can.

Thankfully, there’s a community of security experts working tirelessly to help us safeguard our digital footprints. You’ve probably seen them on X—ZachXBT, Taylor, and Pablito, to name a few. Security Alliance has a Telegram channel for emergencies and has been instrumental in handling countless incidents.

For those wondering how to stay safer, here are some essential security tips:

• Get a hardware wallet! But buy it directly from the vendor. (I like Trezor, though many people prefer Ledger.) If possible, avoid sharing personal information when purchasing one—use a P.O. box, a fake phone number, and an anonymous email. I say this from experience: I was part of a Shopify hack that leaked my data, and dealing with endless spam calls wasn’t fun. (Luckily, I had used a coworking space address, so my home address stayed private.)

• Never click on random links. If you want to interact with a crypto project, go to their verified socials and get the link from there—never from Google.

• Be wary of interview requests on social media. Many are scams. If you receive one, do not click any links or join any calls. Instead, offer written responses via email and verify the sender’s domain. Check out this tweet from Pablito that exposes these scams (it’s in Spanish, but auto-translate works).

• Do not trust DMs offering you a job. Ask them to verify their identity via work email. Cross-check with the company they claim to represent. If they send a suspicious call link, don’t join—send them your own instead. Yes, attackers are using fake job offers to target people.

• Download and run Task Explorer from Objective-See. They offer excellent open-source security tools.

• Don’t trust emails from exchanges. Don’t trust random Telegram messages, and don’t respond to calls or texts claiming to be from exchanges or social media platforms warning that someone is trying to access your account.  Another thread from Pablito on this matter and the latest telegram scam (this time in English)

• Most importantly: You are not alone. If something feels off, check with friends, share your concerns, and tag security experts. If you think your accounts are at risk, reach out to your community. Write to us—we’ll help too! Everyone is in this together.

Hope you find these tips useful.

Now that we’re done with the serious stuff, let’s dive into the cool things that have been happening over the past two weeks.

Read/ Listen

• Is going AFK an option anymore? Benoit reflects on this.

• Been loving the Ethereum Observers by Joseph Schweitzer, a recap of all the cool stuff happening on Ethereum every week.

• Tiny, Chloe, Eduard, Princesstuti, Rakshita and others gathered for a fun spaces.

• Latasha’s CHAOS video is out!!! 

• Riley on Library Realism.

• Jessy’s baller Denver talk on how she changed her life with decentralized social.

• 
  

Visual: 

• Another stunning NZ photo by Kolin.

• Soju’s been making the most delightful Lens-inspired artworks, which are not collectable but I made them the centerpieces of this newsletter. Follow them!

• Haku’s also sharing more sketches which I love.

• Pierre’s chart art is amazing

• Waiting eagerly for this Kaiotei’s artwork

• The Fake Tomato fandom grows 

• Tiny’s choosing her battles
  

Builders

• Papajams is experimenting with Grove.

• Lens Agora, the Hackathon’s big winner, is ramping up.

• Big Handlefinder update: alerts and find community tokens

That’s it for now - see you in the coming weeks :)

Here’s the thing: we Argentinians are used to crisis. We get knocked down every week, only to get back up as if nothing happened, and keep building. I didn’t know this was a superpower I’d acquired just by being born and raised in chaos until I noticed that people in more stable countries dealt with crises differently. Some become paralyzed, some get sloppy, and the cracks in apparent stability begin to show.

Flexibility, adaptability, resourcefulness, resilience—these are all silver linings one acquires when things are constantly out of control. I can’t even begin to explain how useful they’ve been to me throughout my life. And they aren’t only my silver linings; crypto is an industry built by outliers who felt out of place and needed to build better systems because they understood that the ones they grew up with were broken (study Stani and Vitalik!).

Ironically, the systems we’re building are getting warped and are also bound to crises. Yesterday, less than a week after Milei and his pump-and-dump cronies made their mess, Bybit was hacked for $1.6 billion by the Lazarus Group, a collective of North Korean hackers. I know what you’re thinking: there’s something about heads of state with weird hairstyles and crypto. Jokes aside, this big crisis had us all stop whatever we were doing to check on friends, businesses, and projects—and then get back to work. Bybit managed the situation in a masterful way, and while funds were not safu, they were able to serve their customers almost without any hitches. Flexibility, adaptability, resourcefulness, and resilience show up again, this time in the form of an industry that’s ready for any challenge, no matter how devastating it feels at first.

There are new insights coming from these months of memecoins, rug pulls, and heads of state with weird hairstyle choices: the crypto community is calling for a return to tech-first approaches, clear roadmaps, and investing in and believing in things that matter.

On that front, and in the midst of yesterday’s chaos, Lens was busy publishing the proposal that marks the road toward mainnet. For context, Lens Chain needs to be voted into ZKsync’s Elastic Network, as the chain will have state applied from genesis. What does that mean? We are migrating the 645K+ profiles and 31 million publications of Lens v2 to Lens v3 on Lens Chain. This means that upon mainnet launch, you’ll already be on the Lens Chain, with all your connections and publications intact—without needing to do anything. An in-depth post on the migration will be published soon. Making an announcement on a Friday evening after a cool $1.6 billion hack, like Lens did, was interesting and risky—but it’s further testament to the resilience of the space: we’re not going to stop building, not even for a couple of hours.

/

And now, the onchain digest for this week. Interestingly, many Lens frens have been reflecting on the state of crypto. I want to highlight them all:

• Paul (post_polar)’s reflection on how memecoins affect Ethereum

• The Labyrinth of Digital Conformity (also on memecoins and nihilism) by Dotsbit

• Another Paul brilliant reflection: the economics of Bitcoin and Ethereum shape their cultures

• Chloe’s on Crypto’s direction and original mission

• I also want to give a big shoutout to ETH Daily that helps us all be on the loop even during the busiest of days, with unbiased information! 

• And for a respite, I dove into Tiny’s sculptural process

• The Queen of Lens and Fries, Jessy is heading to Denver to talk about her experience on crypto socials - if you’re around to cheer for her! 

• Lens Reputation launches this coming Monday

• Lenscan by Daoleno now features very cute Lens Testnet charts 

• Nothing to reveal yet, they’re heads down, but Bonsai, Hey and Orb are COOKING and I just wanted to let you know

• Dayana is also in Denver (when is she not right in the middle of Crypto) with her travel compassion Lenny, trying to beat the entirety of the Lens Running Club

• Haku’s flowing between dimensions

• Really into Grams’ new glitch works

• Mitchell Chan on art movements

  
  

That’s it for now. Hoping for a quiet rest of the weekend for all!

GV everyone! Writing to you from Paris—I just spent 24 hours here and am now heading back home. I attended NFT Paris to get a closer look at how that side of crypto is evolving. The conference was packed and full of energy, but unlike a typical tech conference, it felt more like a Comic-Con. The NFT space has clearly developed its own identity, separate from broader crypto—more playful, focused on collectibles, and driven by strong digital identities. Here, people refer to each other by their Twitter handles or the number of the CryptoPunk they own rather than their real names. This cultural shift reinforces the idea that NFTs are not just financial assets but part of a broader digital and social movement.

There was a strong presence of artists, curators, and collectors, but unfortunately, I was on a tight schedule and couldn’t explore as much as I wanted. However, I did get the chance to reconnect with key figures in the space, including Snowfro and John from SuperRare, as well as many friendly CryptoPunks and curators. These in-person moments are invaluable as they allow us to stay connected with the culture builders shaping the industry.

The energy at Avara this week has been incredible, with major announcements pushing the ecosystem forward. GHO was at the center of it all. We kicked off the week with the launch of Base GHO, made possible through Chainlink. On Tuesday, Aave went live on Linea, expanding access to liquidity. And on Wednesday, we announced that GHO will be the native gas token for Lens Chain—a major milestone for onchain usability.

Why is this important? Today, most users select a blockchain based on short-term profit potential rather than long-term utility. While this drives initial adoption, retention remains low. The reality is that many chains offer limited functionality, subpar user experiences, and unclear incentives for users to stay engaged. On top of that, many first-time users lose money quickly, which discourages further participation. While we can’t entirely prevent that, we can create an infrastructure that makes the experience smoother, more intuitive, and more reliable for both users and builders.

Using a stablecoin as the gas token is a key step in that direction. It eliminates unpredictable fluctuations in gas prices, making costs more stable and transactions more seamless. With GHO, users will always know that 1 USD = 1 GHO, simplifying the experience significantly. Unlike traditional stablecoins, GHO is backed by deposits in Aave, ensuring decentralization while maintaining stability. This means that Lens Chain will have end-to-end decentralization, from applications to transactions and payments.

As the blockchain landscape continues to consolidate, users will naturally move toward reliable, high-quality tech stacks. The Lens ecosystem is being built with that in mind—providing a stable, scalable, and user-friendly foundation for the next generation of onchain experiences.

And in case it wasn’t obvious—this announcement marks the beginning of the race to Lens Chain Mainnet.

Now, onto this week’s onchain digest…

• Dvelkukolki’s artwork (the cover art for this newsletter)

• Tinyrainboot’s new artwork collection, even the devil once had wings launches February 22nd.

• SOJU’s Lens Soup

• Mifella’s back! 

• Galantine’s from Galverse (sad it minted out before i could get one 😞)

• Aoife’s love bug

• Loving this trend started by Jessy of sharing your Lens score 🙂

• This great artwork by mooncath that both Paris and I collected

• Joana’s collage is too real for everyone

• Mazin’s glitchscape

• Whalecode’s bags

• Benoit wrote a piece on Bonsai and the Agentic Era coming to Lens

• This is a sad one, but a must read: Riley decided to leave the space, after the successful launch of EIC04. A really good essay explaining why. 

• Latasha’s unraveling, reflection era and her new creation

• Sound of Fractures making music with friends

• Cool is back, Latasha is unleashing CHAOS

See you in the soup!

In the coming weeks, you’ll learn more about Lens’ next phase—how to navigate it, what to expect when we migrate to the new chain, and the seamless experience awaiting you once we’re live. Every detail of the new Lens has been designed with our users and builders in mind, and we know you’re going to love it.

But that’s where the updates stop. I have 0 plans to spoil what’s coming, so that’s all you’re getting for now. :)

The past two weeks have been wild for crypto. From euphoria to a major liquidation event (hope you didn’t get rekt, anon!), we're now in a phase of skepticism—quite a shift from the vibes in the last Touch Grass. But no matter how frantic or devastating the mood, people keep building, posting, making great art, and having fun onchain.

Speaking of onchain fun: I recently discussed this with Flaunch, the memecoin launchpad that went live last Friday—at the same time as Uniswap v4 (they were the first to build on it!). Right now, people need fun. Stress-free fun. Positive-sum games for everyone. Memecoin launchers have to get better at delivering this. Luckily, our friends at Bonsai get it. On Monday, they shipped Bonsai Launchpad v2 (coming to the new Lens!). It’s great to see these two alternative launchers building better, staying aligned with web3 principles, and always innovating. The future looks bright.

And for more onchain fun, here’s a short digest:

• Jessie in conversation with DeFinn, the Lens Holiday Hackathon big prize winner!

• MSTRBSTRD’s existential crisis

• The LosFomos podcast just landed on Lens, new, fresh and funny. 

• The Blockchain Socialist in conversation with Sarah Friend 

• Blake comments on Chappell Roan’s Gautier dress

• Blake again, with Addie Wagenknecht who’s funny and so interesting

• Benjamin Alistairs new video - mint it!

• Spaces by SitioCaos, always a wholesome experience (in Spanish)/

• Kaiotei’s artwork is too cool

• Kudzu is one of my favorite NFT artworks ever. It’s an NFT virus that never leaves your wallet but that you can pass on to others by transferring them. Now one of the artists behind it, designed a mechanism to burn them, and unleashed chaos by creating a burnathon. 

• Guard’s post-apocalyptic cityscape

• Egor’s photograph 

• Kay on online visibility, and how to fix it.

• Benoit on the onchain collecting social apps

• Nemesis’ Ethereum brand analysis

• Lens Reputation is causing a stir! The project graduated from the hackathon and the Lens community loves it. Can’t wait to learn more about it! 

• Handlefinder is getting better and better - I love catching up with crypto news and seeing what my friends are doing for fun onchain through the platform. Give it a shot, it changes everything!
  

Oh before I let you go and enjoy the weekend, the Ethereum Investors Club magazine is out! Featuring articles by Lens frens Post Polar, The Blockchain Socialist & Beth, Kevin Owocki, Benoit and William Peaster to name a few, all wonderfully put together by the editor in chief, Riley :).  I contributed an article on Resilient Social Networks. You can read it for free, mint a digital copy, and buy a physical one!

And for those heading to NFT Paris: while we’re deep in heads down mode, I managed to get a hall pass to visit and speak next week. If you’re there and want to talk about building on Lens—or just meet up—let me know!

Speak soon!

It’s the 190th of January, and we’ve already experienced more than we did in all of 2022. The memecoin meta continues its consolidation into a new byproduct of the attention economy, and it’s only a matter of time—hours, maybe—until Mr. Beast, Joe Rogan, and Alex Cooper from Call Her Daddy launch their own tokens. Just in case they do, you heard it here first.

In all seriousness, Joe Rogan’s Spotify deal was worth $250 million, Alex Cooper’s came in at $125 million, and meanwhile, $TRUMP’s market cap hit $8 billion yesterday, with the team holding 80% of the supply. Even the founder of Vine launched a token that, in less than a day, raised more money than he made selling Vine to Twitter for $30 million back in 2012.

Seeing these numbers—and watching our reality tokenize and re-tokenize itself constantly—can’t be healthy. Here in 2025, we all know that for every person making a fortune, there are thousands losing money—mostly newcomers, who are jumping into crypto faster than ever before. Nobody could have predicted exactly what mass adoption would look like, but now that it’s here, we have to figure out how we want to present the ecosystems we’ve been building to the people who are new to this space. We need to tell them they have a chance to reclaim the internet, build a better financial system, and that now is the best time to do so. Never before have we had this much attention—or a regulatory environment this favorable—but we need to use it for good.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to write a sermon today, but I wanted to share this perspective in case you’re feeling overwhelmed, skeptical, or just plain confused.

Luckily here on Lens everything feels calmer - so here’s what caught my eye this week from your posts:

• Carsten shared this Blockworks article making sense of what’s going on in crypto. 

• RM’s reflections on AI

• Benoit on why he’s excited about Lens

• PanWinyl also on AI from the creators perspective

• Rc_basilisk on the TL is always awesome

• GRLKRSH killing it as always with a new video

• Kawaii Skull goodness!

• Kikillo’s excellent new artwork

• Alex’s striking works

• Asami + Imaginary Friend continue their story

• Aoife’s digital fashion debut

Until next week :)

It seems that the AI agent meta is finally settling down a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe this new vertical is here to stay, but we’ve been inundated with too much, too fast and it’s good to settle down, observe, learn and pick some winners. Bonsai, for example, has been making strides with their agents and their launchpad with a tight integration with Orb, and soon they’ll be present on the upcoming Lens network. 

To understand the launchpad better - please listen to their Spaces. Carlos also gave a great interview to Blake Finucane, so if you haven’t listened to it, or you’d like to get into AI coins without putting up with painful takes on X, then Carlos is your source of truth, and this interview is the perfect starting point.

We’re delighted to already have Bonsai ready to deploy their powerful tools on the Lens chain, but we’re also extremely excited about the builders that will integrate with them, that will leverage agents for public good and to allow users to earn, connect and explore. On that note, the Lens Holiday Hackathon ended this week. 50+ projects were submitted and judged thoughtfully by Lens super users and the team. This was a one-of-a-kind experience for everyone: a hackathon where builders got early validation on their ideas by the people that will use them, through their onchain votes (facilitated by Jokerace). Why did we take this approach? Because Lens is different. Yes, it's a chain + protocol + decentralized storage, but it’s also a movement formed by many people that have withstood the test of trends and metas and contribute by investing their time and effort into an internet that’s new and belongs to everyone. We take the Lens community seriously, so we invited them to have a stake in the future of Lens by contributing to the hackathon as judges. While the experiment wasn’t perfect, it was really productive and successful. 

The projects that won were ambitious, solved problems that these Judges/ Power Users experience, and introduced them to interesting mechanisms, audience-building opportunities, engaging economic models, and important tools to fight challenges in decentralized ecosystems like Lens. Here’s the thread with all the winning projects - they’d love your support!

This week as well, Makers Place, the legendary NFT marketplace announced it’s ceasing its operations. MakersPlace helped kickstart the careers of many Lens creators and it will be missed. In the startup world, it’s relatively normal to see start-ups sunset, but this does not make these sad events easier. This was also the case with Buttrfly a much-loved Lens client, this past December. Phaver, another Lens-Farcaster client, did not shut down, but it’s transitioning into a DAO. Shutting down a product that empowers creators and that makes people feel seen and joined in the community is really hard both for the builders and their communities. The best one can do in situations like this, is support the builders while they go through difficult times, and most importantly, keep creating, connecting, exploring and not be discouraged.

And now, to the onchain digest.

• Emily’s stunning portraits

• Kyushime’s art is always an amazing sight

• Ruthless’ Ruthlessino always makes my day. Follow it and explore what it’s saying. 

• Cam’s new video directed by Jamee Cornelia

• Trustmebro’s hackathon recap

• Addie’s latest artworks for Verse

• FrankieStyle’s JellyRush doc

• Patrician’s Vehicle Whammin’

• Kaiotei launched the Covenant on Orb - go join it.

• An image of the Cuban sky view with Starship fragments by Thoy Brown

• Benoit on memecoins

• Viktor Bunin on launching a chain 

• Tinyrainboot philosophizing 

• (lots of Benoit to catch up on) - I loved his tale of living in Shibuya

That's it for now. Have a nice weekend. More next week!

Due to the insurmountable reality that there are limited Batman movies and this year, UNFORTUNATELY, they only released The Penguin spin-off which is tragic, it's looking like we'll need to figure out something else to do. On top of that, I believe we have all drunk enough in the conference season, so we won't be doing that either. It is looking dire for us Grinches out there.

And since it's seeming as if ICOs are back (if you don't believe me, just ask Cobie), it seems that you'll be needing to come up with a good product idea to seize the comeback of the much feared (yet remembered fondly by those of us that were there during those days) funding mechanism.

Well, Lens has just the thing for you: a holiday hackathon. We have built some seriously powerful tech, and we're offering you the chance to take it for a spin. Here's the deal:

• Generous prizes for winners

• Direct support from our team

• Real-time validation from actual users

And here's the best part: We're having verified Lens power users vote through Jokerace to judge the submissions. No bots, no nonsense – just real community feedback on your project.

So this holiday season, while others are hanging stockings, you could be:

1. Building something awesome

2. Getting validated by a real, engaged community

3. Potentially winning significant prizes

No tinsel required. No forced cheer. Just pure building opportunity. Ready to turn your holiday cynicism into something productive?.

This package is so good it doesn't even need a bow, anon.
Come build with us.

World Computer Sculpture Garden debuted on November 5th, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the idea that 0xfff once pitched during an informal chat, had become a reality: a smart contract that’s an exhibition of smart contract-based artworks.

If you have been reading Touch Grass for a while, you know already that I love smart contracts as a medium. I discovered the genre around 2018 by coincidence, and since then, I haven’t stopped collecting, writing, working with and admiring artworks that are born out of the constraints and programmability of our beloved smart contracts, like Terra0, a collective that has been covered on one of the Touch Grass installments.

Smart contract art, as I mentioned before, is not only interesting because it’s the most purist and native form of art we can create with the technologies we build. I’ll indulge in quoting myself so you don’t have to reread an old post: “Solidity (the coding language on which smart contracts are written) takes, through this art form, a completely different dimension of what an “expressive programming language” entails. For context, an expressive programming language should allow programmers to write code that is easy to read and understand, and make it easier to write code that accomplishes the intended task with fewer lines of code. Solidity, the language underpinning Ethereum, is almost completely human readable and allows for limitless expressive possibilities.” The initiator of the show, 0xfff, chose the name World Computer Sculpture Garden in reference to 113, one of the creators of Terraforms, another wonderful onchain garden. 113 refers to Ethereum as a sculpture garden in the same way I describe Solidity and smart contracts as expressive. In Ethereum we’re limitless to create, but work understanding that the constraints of onchainness are catalysts for inventiveness. Constraints, as smart contracts, become part of the medium. 0xfff understands this all too well. They’ve been working onchain for a while, and imagining World Computer Sculpture Garden for a while. 

It’s interesting to show this exhibition to people that are new to this world. They might just think: “well, this is just glorified ascii” or “gosh the Onchain Conceptual Art people are at it again”, which are valid takes of course, as we are now used to the TikTok algorithm, to colorful memecoins and an electric atmosphere. I find the World Computer Sculpture Garden particularly special because of this moment we’re currently navigating. By choosing the same technology that creates the electric and most times frantic environment, 0xfff and artists 0xhaiku, hehehehehehe, Loucas Braconnier (Figure31), Sarah Friend, Material Protocol Arts, Rhea Myers et al. and Paul Seidler have created a space of observation and of immutable technological respite. 

“Open to surprise. Open to delight. Purposefully non-standard.” greets the website, which is created by the contract. This show has no end, and as users interact with it and artists activate their pieces, it programmatically evolves. The tension between smart contract immutability and programmatic evolution of the show is one of its best features - by now, we understand that immutability is not directly linked to upgradeability (only if you want to), a thread discussed ad nauseam in the earlier days of the battles between Bitcoiners vs. Ethereans. 

0xhaiku has been embedding poetic schemes (as his name implies) into smart contracts for a few years. His work echoes is nostalgic and beautiful - a collaborative poem that people can interact with through the interface, with delightful sound bytes. Echoes opens the exhibition and sets the tone of it: contribute with compassion. Followed by hehehehehehe that swiftly injects coyness and playfulness into the exhibition space (addendum - I could not figure this one out, so i was elegant on the review, but i know now, you know who you are).

Loucas Braconnier has been working with alternative ways of perception, by using photographic techniques early on in his career, and shifting towards exploring time as a medium, always experimenting across smart contracts. In Travelers, Loucas continues to explore his signature subject matter of block time, on this occasion, laying a visually simple endless road that grows as the machine is joined by travelers that discover new lands, by going backwards or forwards.

Sarah Friend’s Yes Bot builds on the 2014/2015 artwork by Rhea Myers, Is Art, where sending some ETH to Rhea’s contract verifies that the work is indeed art. Sarah takes this further, creating a bot that reassures Rhea’s contract confirmation of the “artness” of the work. 

Rhea (et. al.) is of course an integral part of the exhibition, and the catalyst for me personally to write this review. In her artwork Critique of This Show, the proposal is to become an art critic. Given that during 2021-23 everyone with a pair of eyes became an NFT art critic, and that most of the critiques were positive (aka they would be written for the sake of pumping bags), the piece is an interesting memento of that era, as the possible critiques that Rhea’s contract allows for, are all positive. Interacting with the artwork, in the era of highly manicured blockchain user experiences, also got me reflecting about the importance of always inspecting what’s under the hood, a practice that’s almost lost nowadays.

In Modulation Studies, Material Protocol Arts invites us to the world of musical production and records the process onchain, on a durational performance merging production and documentation, verified on a zero knowledge rollup.

Finally, in Real Abstraction, Paul Seidler works with zk-proofs verified onchain that create a line connecting two digital plains - maybe creating a brand new genre I will totally obsess about and make no money at all from: zk-proof art. Jokes aside, the artwork follows after Smol Dollar, a charming project about cryptoeconomics, and the absurdity of monetary policy, and Straylight Protocol, a multi-player game constrained by the Ethereum runtime. 

At the end of the exhibition, the spectator is invited to plant a flower on the Guestbook by sending 0.01 ETH to the show’s contract address. 

This is a space to spend some time exploring - play with the artworks and look up the contracts on Etherscan. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. An invitation to step away from the current thing and make sense of what’s under the hood through art, is always really welcomed. 

I’ll be back next week, thanks for reading and letting me indulge by exploring this exhibition for you - this time with my usual onchain digest programming.

Bye for now.

We had two Devcon booths, both of them full of people eager to share their story with us, ask questions, and of course, get some of our hyper comfortable and gorgeous merch. We worked hard, very hard, so at the end of the week, we ventured out to the Rajadamnern Muay Thai Stadium as a treat, and had a blast.

No worries, anon, I was joking with the title of this newsletter installment. The only thing I learned from the Muay Thai eve is that I love it and I’m pilled.

Now we were all hoping for a quiet week after Bangkok, but of course that did not happen, not in crypto, not ever. Bitcoin’s flirting with 100k, Gary Gensler is about to leave the building, a 12 year old rugged some people and got doxxed, Chillguy the memecoin is now the hottest thing, Aave markets are filling up like a shopping mall on Black Friday, and His Excellency Justin Sun bought the Maurizio Catellan duct taped banana, continuing his outstanding streak at being the best performance artist of our time.

Anyhow, below is the onchain digest for the week, but before I forget, Stani wants you to use Family to DM him.

Read / Watch

• Brands after Vibes, the future of branding in the age of AI by Nemesis

• Benoit and Vienna dive into onchain preservation or lackthereof

• AccidentallyDeFI’s critic on SocialFi (my response is that we’re still too early)

• Blake’s Satoshi shirt unboxing

• Dayana rolled with the Avara team and has written a better recap than i ever could

Culture: 

• This street photography by SitioCaos

• GRLKRSH explores Supermario

• Glitch Residency kicked off! 50+ creatives live together for three weeks, for the 3rd consecutive year. Follow their journey on Lens.

• Tomato’s Daily Doodle

• Cooking indeed b0gie, i’m locked in

• 0xZerebro living rent free in my head
  

Big special mention to Daoleno, who not only created a gorgeous Lens testnet explorer, but also a $GRASS faucet for devs to be able to use it. 

And of course - so excited to welcome our Lens AI overlords via Bons(ai)!

Bye for now, and remember:

So, for this one time, instead of an onchain digest, which will be back soon alongside our travel diaries, I’m doing a roundup of events you should not miss if you want to hang out with us, get some socks, score a r**ve ticket, or of course, listen to what we have to say.

For SheFi summit, we’ll have tables for Aave, Family and Lens, we’ll hand out r**ve bracelets to all girls, and I’ll be giving a keynote “Applied Resistance Strategies for the Contemporary Girl/Gigachad” on becoming more resilient, and joining the Anon Anthropology 404 panel with Liz Yang, Roisin Kavanagh and my fellow Latina Bunny. Stani will be taking the stage at Dunecon and Uniday, among others. 

Come hang out with us at Devcon! Lens will have a booth and we’ve designed and produced very cute merch. We’d love to tell you more about what we’ve been up to (as I mentioned before, we’ve been quite heads down), and get to know builders looking to build onchain social products. 

We’ll be at Devcon during the morning with Lens, and in the afternoon, Aave and friends are doing a takeover of Soho House Bangkok for DeFi Renaissance Day. We should be revealing the speakers soon, we’re really excited as we’ve managed to put together a really compelling set of speakers. Sign up fast, as soon as you read this, because once we announce, it’ll fill up in seconds. 

Again, we’ll be at Devcon but this time with Aave instead of Lens! Stani will be presenting Ethereum as a Force for Good on the mainstage as well, which we’re all very excited about. And of course, when the night falls, it’s rAAVE time! This time Ronnie has decided the theme will be cosmic noir - so dress accordingly, black, silver, gold, maybe hints of deep blue. 

We’re almost there! Friday will be the last day of Devcon - we’ll be present with the Aave booth again, and for our Lens & Family frens, we’ll also be hosting a fun, laid-back and delicious brunch. 

Wow. You read until the end. I’m impressed. You get a cookie, or better said, a rAAVE ticket (first come, first served). 

Here’s a secret code: TouchGr@ssGoesR@ave

If you read this and you got the ticket - bring Ronnie something glittery as a thank you! 

Like everyone else in crypto, I’ve been following the Truth Terminal saga. This experiment is incredibly relevant for anyone building open social protocols. Naively, I thought the age of AI influencers was still a few months away, but it turns out it’s happening right now.

I’ve also been fascinated by viral tweets and their replies—more and more, I notice flurries of AI bots adding comments, providing summaries of the original posts, and more. They’re everywhere: on X, Lens, Warpcast, and beyond. Stani posted an insightful take on this phenomenon a few months ago.

On one hand, no one wants botnets—it’s annoying and even discouraging when swarms of bots thwart genuine discovery. On the other hand, we find ourselves celebrating them, proclaiming on social media that it’s the best thing to happen to the internet. (I vehemently disagree; the best thing to happen to the internet in the past three years is clearly the HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu merch shop).

These last two weeks have been eventful in the AI realm. Truth Terminal launched Goatseus Maximus, a Solana memecoin leading a wave of tech-mysticism crypto that I think is just plain fun. But there’s also a darker side to AI mismanagement: recently, a CharacterAI companion was the sole friend of a teenager who, heartbreakingly, ended his life.

In times like these, it’s crucial to value our own capabilities—to read, learn, and educate ourselves. As we navigate life with new types of agents, finding networks of belonging (friends, Lens buddies, crypto communities) will help us stay grounded, optimistic, and ready for whatever comes next.

The latest Orb update introduced stickers as the only way to “Like” posts. To get these stickers, you need to buy packs created by users. This whole setup is a clever approach to tackling bots in social networks—so far, bots can’t buy Jessy’s or Mazemari’s stickers. They don’t know we use Asami’s stickers to send diabolic plushie reactions to each other. Orb is now a sticker-first world, and bots have no place in it.

In crypto, we can truly have it all: I purchased as many stickers as I could and eagerly waited for more. I enjoyed the kickbacks trickling into my wallet (when you buy a sticker pack, its revenue after you join as a holder gets distributed to other holders). Last weekend, we were all locked in the Club, jamming, small-talking, and shitposting. And, of course, on the more degen-y side, some of us indulged in AI memecoins, following the discourse and trying to figure out if any of this is real. Unsurprisingly, I am down bad—and not on the sticker front.

Before I leave you with the on-chain digest, I want to thank everyone who shared their favorite things of the week through Jams + tags!

• IDriss launched - send money to Lens users like you would use ENS

• Lenspet by Wagami Studios, the creators of Galverse, has just been announced! I am really excited to get back into Tamagotchis. It’s been three decades since I last killed one.

• Jessy’s cooking: she’s chatting with Chloee for the new series “the baddie in me”

• Aleatorik launched a new club, chefs onchain and shared a delicious frittata recipe

• Dayana on the new Orb update and the good stuff it reminds her of

• Alexandre Tissot’s groove (thank you Helfetica for sharing with me!)

• Burak’s Argentinian diaries

• Aoife’s latest artwork

• Guruguru and Princesstuti keep killing it

• Selene’s Animus (by way of Pedro Villela and This Week on Lens)

• New York City’s aura by goodkrak

• This interview of net artist Chia that Benoit shared

• Eduard’s artwork + essay (thanks Jessy for sharing it with me!)

• Sitio’s stickers by Mooncha are coming to Orb

• Papa has some fresh music out

• Sarahwords on chasing numbers

• Cartesse

• Carlos Santos 

• Lenspet of course

• Javier Ibarra

• Stipinpixel

• La Tere

• Jay Rae

• Collema

• Angela Marie

• Kyoka

That’s it for now! Till next time!

GM and welcome to my LA diaries! 🌴 I’m spending the next 2 weeks in the land of Erewhon, Barry’s Bootcamp, and Baywatch. I’m in town for work, diving into all things crypto PR, but to be honest, I’m driving around creating content in my Lens socks as if that was my full-time job (manifesting!).

It’s been 10 years since I lived in the United States and 5 since I last visited. The more things have changed, the more they’ve stayed the same.

Passing joggers on the Redondo Beach boardwalk at the crack of dawn 🏃🏼‍♀️, the sense of wanting to do, be, and have more is palpable. To me, California has always represented the finest of American ambition and striving for excellence. 

Everything here is BIGGER. Cheery waiters serve me tacos 🌮the size of my head, monster trucks roar by 🛻, and baby pink-colored Stanley Cups grace the shelves of Ace Hardware.

Every morning, after my run, I head over to The Boy and the Bear - a dark, moody, and cozy coffee shop☕ that doubles as a roastery. I posted a GM from there earlier this week and to my shock and delight, a friend of a friend from the Ethereum writing world commented that she lives just down the street so I invited her for a cuppa.

Here, I feel free to get my freak on - waking up at 5am ☀, finishing work by noon-ish and driving around in a roofless red Audi taking photos for my friends on Orb. I feel like I tap into the ethos pretty well too - I’m always happy to strike up a conversation with a stranger 🙋🏼‍♀️ and rock a Billabong cap. But would I live in California? Maybe. Perhaps one day when my morning coffee order isn’t $26.

Next week I’ll be taking off to the Palm Springs desert to celebrate my birthday so stay tuned 🌵. Until then - keep sharing your own diaries, you beautiful Lens-plorers!

And now, the digest: 

• Shavonne’s Eva, an emotional piece with a special story

• We’re not biased, she keeps posting incredible stuff. Nadezdha’s queen of hearts

• MCHX using the pixelsorting algorithm <3

• Esra’s knocking it out 

• Melanie’s new antics :)

• Galverse collabs with Levi’s!

• Sergeant Sl8termelon and pfeffeunit kill it again - i blacked out and minted a few. Amazing.

• Nana’s moment

• Infinati’s glitch

• Ronen's London installation

  

• Benoit on shitposting - again, i might be biased, because I love shitposting, but this is some of his best work.

• Cecilia reconnects with her creativity (in Spanish)

• Billy on the new score mechanics of the new Trifle game, anybody.gg

• Joana on looking at digital art

• Yordis on creating web3 content (in Spanish)

• Blake in conversation with Shavonne, Sarah Phillips and Afrochicks
  

Orb has just now shipped a really big update with exciting features: Orb Jams, essentially group chats in your clubs (can’t wait to talk to you all day about /butter). Orb Jams includes WITA - that allows you to peep into message previews, and reactions and stickers inside and outside of Jams . It shipped yesterday when I was at the movies watching The Apprentice (don't ask, it's bad) and I got to fully immerse on it this morning - it's electric. It's fun. It leverages a stack of tech (ZKsync, Lens, Story Protocol, Bonsai) and it's just really, really good. We're so excited.

To celebrate, they’ll be shipping a new sticker pack every 2 hours for 28 - so I guess nobody is doing any sleeping this weekend.

Don’t forget to update your Orb app to enjoy the latest build with us :)

• Carlos Santos 

• Karel

• Esra

• Gabriela

• Yunique

• Teresa

• (not new but needs some visibility because she’s a fantastic builder!) Tere from Handlefinder!

• And give a follow and use Handlefinder - we’re big fans!

• Nobuko Hori

• Habu

That's it for this week! see you next time :)

Hi again, it’s been a while since I last wrote here. The last time Touch Grass came out, I was on a plane to Singapore with 95% crypto people as passengers. In contrast with what was seen on social media, Singapore week was extremely wholesome for our team. We have been experiencing the most amazing momentum on the Aave front, after years of building no matter what. While I joined the company just 6 months ago, I have been using Aave since day 1, and been close to the team since the ETHLend times. While I am sure my excitement and pride cannot match that of the team that has been in it for longer, it’s still incredibly exhilarating. And it’s not because we’re on the “winning side”. It just feels good to know that DeFi is winning, because DeFi is indeed the better finance, it’s fairer and it’s accessible to more people, and it does democratize opportunities. 

A few weeks ago, I heard a friend tell me he also used Aave to take out a loan for a house down payment. It obviously takes a lot of work and time to save enough crypto for this, but the fact that you can do this is just incredible. DeFi changes lives, period. And it’s also a force growing in reach - big financial institutions use DeFi now. Stablecoins are crucial to stay afloat in emerging economies. There is no going back from crypto to fiat. Everything has changed. 

This great success did not come overnight - building blockchain-based financial products and infrastructure took about a decade to consolidate, become as robust as it is, and to reach the institutions. You might now be wondering - why is she writing all this about DeFI when she’s supposed to tell us about what creative pursuits are popping on Lens? Because one thing leads to another, anon. Lens would not be here without DeFi, I would also not be here without it. And none of that would be possible without cypherpunks, either. 

So, in the spirit of one thing leading to another - if you’re reading this and are still skeptical of Lens because you haven’t found your niche, or your friends are not there, take a moment, give it time. It’s okay to feel all those things, and still keep going, and keep betting for better technology. We still have a very long way to go. Aave wasn’t built on hype, and look at it now. 

We’ve been heads down because we’re building for you, and for everyone. While we want to keep Touch Grass going on a weekly basis, there might be times like this that we’ll be a bit silent, but not because we are not paying attention to the community or creators, but because it’s crunch time - building a better internet is paramount. Discord just got banned in Turkey anon, another platform falling prey to the whims of governments, a lifeline for many being cut just like that. 

Anyways, without further ado, here’s what I’ve been curating in the past weeks - and a note: whenever Touch Grass takes a pause, remember that something’s cooking. And if you are bored, if I may dare to suggest something: take some time to learn about DeFi, and manifest growing Lens together to be even bigger than it.

• Melanie goes to an album listening party in NYC

• Benjamin and Rae’s new album

• Tabassom’s AI emojis get me on a good mood, see for yourself

• Leo Pastel, Jamee Cornelia and GRLKRSH started a pod from their awesome Spaces (I wrote about it here) - live on Tape, first episode here.

• Yoshiro x NENX WIP 

• Happy 3 years of Foofees, Aoife!

• KarmaVioletta’s late night studio

• Been really into Tinysoulgame

• Yeche Lange’s Staking Your Life on a Prank with Mifella is a really good show, and an even better vibe. If you’re in NYC just GO!

• Nessy’s homage to us, the Bonsai Girls

• Nadezha killing it, again. Nothing shocking of course, but SHE IS SO GOOD

• Asami’s new shoot. Spot her favorite things :)

• Chloe is back on Lens <3 we missed you!

• The Beauty in Ugly Feelings by Camille

• Simon de la Rouviere’s Scaling your Blockchain with Lessons from Urbanism

• Gabriela joined Metamask and is THRIVING

• Is Ethereum experiencing an existential crisis? Asks Ahoura.

• PostPolar finally recognizes consumer crypto - however he shamed me for watching Selling Sunset so I am not sure if he is fully ready for what consumer means.

• Tinyrainboot takes a stance on the free mint meta - must read article for all creators

• Yuri delivering truths: the opposite of taste

• The mother of Gals, Ayaka, in conversation with Katie

• Benoit on the allure of polaroids and mochicam
  

• Melanie (she is not really new, but she just got her account unlocked so give her some love!)

• Cecilia jess

• Felps Miera

• Glitchresidency

• Cryptochic56

• Stevii

• Osirene

• Depatchedmode’s comeback

• Kolin

And before I forget, as we start planning devcon, please DO NOT DO THIS: 

See you soon, 

MP

Every week, this newsletter tries to capture and curate what’s happening and what’s fun and great - however, it has its limitations. Starting by the fact that it’s written and curated by a single person. So, this week, we wanted to try something new. We invited Dayana, a freelance creator, writer, MC extraordinaire and Lens Girl to co-write, and select creators she loves, so we can inject some fresh air into this space. 

Ciao from Napoli. I slit my middle finger while slicing some Bresaola for my sandwich. The drip is scarlet-red and it matches my new nail polish refreshed for the crypto event I’m speaking at tomorrow. 

I’m quite faint-hearted when it comes to blood, but I stand in the kitchen watching it flow with fascination. I feel alive. I am alive. Roaming through the narrow streets of the city, phone in hand, snapping photos for Orb Club has breathed new life into me. I used to be a perfectionist about my art… the light had to be golden. The outfit - color coded. The street - empty. The truth is, that pursuing perfectionism made me feel empty. 

I urge you to let go of expectations - yours and those of others. Simply use your lens (literal and digital). Capture the moment. Feel alive. You have creativity coursing through your veins. All you need to do is let it flow through you.  

• Stevii is out with Instagram, in with Lens

• Same, Winny, same

• Writers block

• Reka’s right

• Superluminal prepares for their race

• Tips by Xohaku for emerging artists and beginner web3 explorers

• Raven’s prompt

• How to turkey, and everything else

• Camille f*cks around and finds out

Read:

• Dr. Nick on the current state of crypto

• Another perspective from the same topic - Crypto: stop apologizing

• Riley on crypto quests from the perspective of a gamer 

Culture:

• MSTRBSTRD - eclectic

• Efdot’s just finished his ALLSHIPS residency

• Emily’s obsession 

• A stunning image by Demoad

• New Travess Smalley release coming tomorrow (Sept 16) - thanks Misha for surfacing it!

• Interesting billboard designs by Alex

• Ogun’s amazing illustrations

• Double Emily - Hyperretina collects (Hyperretina is Emilyoffline’s very doxxed alt)

• This Faketomato daily doodle made me smile

• Cynthia’s midnight bloom

• Didop’s released several artworks for free, my favorite here

Winner(s) of the week:

• We’re excited to welcome Moshicam to Lens! Connect with Lens to Moshicam and take snapshots of your memories, slap a cute border on it, put it onchain, share on Orb and let your friends mint it! Jessy, TinyRainboot and Kay have made borders to celebrate this new Lens fren. Guruguruhyena contributed with stickers…  - then our team got really excited about the news and decided to contribute with more!

  If you want to know how to use Moshi + Lens, the mvp Jessy created a tutorial <3

• Carla sold her tortilla recipe on Bonsai. My retirement plan right there.
  

• Rune

• Sky

• CafferataMusic

• Kaito

• Lydia

• Karel

• Teresa

• Lexie

• Renee

To wrap up this edition of Touch Grass, and to make sure you read this till the very end, we want to propose something. We’re officially past Brat Summer. We want to get Fallsome. Fall (or Autumn as Europoooors call it) feels more chill, but also feels like a time to get intentional and build with determination. It feels wholesome. We want you to show us how you’re welcoming this new season - so as a further effort to diversify perspective, will you take our prompt and share something (an image, a poem, an artwork, a screenshot, a meme, etc) that shows what you’re thinking about - you can share those on the /touchgrass Orb club and next week they’ll be included in the newsletter! 

See you on the other side (of the world)!

Every week, I open the Notes app on my phone, and I add the links I discover every day that I think would be good for the fine readers of Touch Grass. Then something strong enough suddenly pops up, and I find the topic for my introduction. This week’s not different, but I think I have something to share that’s slightly new. 

Today thanks to Bunny shitposting at the intersection between Milady and latinas (as per usual), I stumbled upon Emilio, a collection of Argentinian Milady Derivatives. I was so surprised to see a lot of the “memes” of my childhood and teenage years pop up in a Remilia-like aesthetic, worldbuilding with joy and melancholy, igniting the trauma and the lightheartedness of having grown up in a very difficult, visceral, raw, passionate yet always joyful place in the 90s and 2000s. Then, I downloaded Phantom, bought some SOL and bought a few Emilios, joined Telegram and for the first time in my blockchain years, I experienced worldbuilding in my language, and in the jargon I speak in every day with my friends and family. 

I had no idea this was possible. As a person that’s bound by the official language and vernacular of crypto, I have trouble speaking in Spanish when I do business. I mentioned this in a conversation yesterday as well - a few years ago, when you had to talk about blockchain with a fellow Latin American, you’d switch to English or alternate with Spanish, because the terminology wasn’t still properly translated. I know these are a lot of words, feelings and conclusions to come from a Milady derivative that came out two days ago - but memes are powerful like that. They get into your head in the most friendly way and end up exposing you to new things - this is also how crypto works. 

In the past year or so, I’ve been noticing a lot of Spanish content and Spanish speaking people that are killing in this industry. When you speak to them, you realize that the terminology they use is no longer as anglicized as it used to be. We’re really experiencing true globality in adoption and language. Anyways, just some things to keep in mind when it comes to thinking about true access and adoption. 

I got too serious, sorry. Let’s better review what happened onchain this week.

• Motherbase poster their first video - a CD scratcher interface

• In Amsterdam this September? Check out this exhibition that Misha is suggesting

• Evan Mann x Grams x StudioSuper mega collab

• We launched LCC (Lens Creators Club) a place to find opportunities (residencies, contests, grants, open calls, free courses) in Lens and beyond. LCC will have iterative PFPs and banners, showcasing different artists in the community - the first one is TinyRainboot! And thanks to Grams, zkJew and Ruthless for volunteering to moderate this exciting new space.

• Cyril Darest’s breathtaking image

• Football is culture - Debbie launched a club for the American Football fans!

• New Gremiana artwork - as hot as ever

• Jah’s absolutely crushing it with his work as well

• Brat summer might have ended, but Mifella summer is still alive and well

• In /aurabonding: new Katherine Frazer and new Cezar. Obvious instant collects. I am so impressed with Stina and the club, they really turned the format into something new, a space for worldbuilding.

• The much anticipated Spectres album by Supersigil is about to launch, and they are celebrating with a free mint

• Mazemari’s wip…. If that’s the wip imagine the final product

• This mint ended, but follow Sunshinevendetta because they are GOOD

• P1xelfool returning to Lens with a BANG

• This is an announcement on the DL because I’m scared it will stir the pot, but an ending and a beginning. The /butter warpcast channel is dead, long live the /butter orb club! Thank you Ruthless for your meme, and thank you to everyone that has been posting the most buttery content in celebration of the launch.

• Jan Robert’s new Folia release will empty my pockets
  

• Kay narrates on the Oasis reunion from her fashion lens

• Hyperretina interviews Gabrielle Koi and Estelle Flores

• Dayana on her web2 to Lens successful migration, and finding meaning back in social

• Benoit meditates on true virality and onchain virality vs. regular internet virality

• Julia on our favorite topic: girls
  

• Robin again. He’s been testing a secret thing and it seems that his shitposting acumen is getting more serious? 

• The Minnesotan butter sculptures that someone told me about yesterday at the Allships Ladies that Lens event 

• Sarahwords

• Stellabelle

• Peg Moore

• Stevii

• Welcome back Ivy!

• Paulacomesfirst

• Moranicol

Qué locura, gato. Bye for now.

This week has been another eventful year in crypto. This past Saturday, Pavel Durov, the Founder of Telegram got arrested in France (here’s Mikko’s thread on the event). Brazil is finally blocking access to X in the country because Elon Musk forgot to pay a bill, or something like that. Meta announced the shutdown of Spark AR, and 600k creators are feeling left behind, and concerned, as for many many years they gave Meta a lot of data hence money, and while of course, they are all free, talented people that totally save files on their computers, their social capital will be staying very much with Meta and only Meta, because that’s simply how it works. What an excellent week to explore web3 social, and an even more excellent week to understand what level of ownership, decentralization and openness you should be looking for when it comes to safeguarding your social capital. The Fed also decided that moneyprinter will once again go brrrrr so it’s also an excellent week to crypto, even if the market doesn’t really agree with it. Hoard without limits, anon, time is of the essence.

But not all is rosy on the crypto side of life - exhaustion is also creeping up, especially on the creators’ front. Last night GRLKRASH, Leo Pastel and Jamee Cornelia got together for their regular Twitter spaces and DRAGGED. They asked us to make crypto make sense for creators, beyond the narratives. As someone working on DeFi and decentralized social, I felt humbled. As someone that has been working with creators and trying to explain technologies that creators know we’re using them, i felt validated. They are using us back, no worries about creators. They’re sharp. It’s a bit of a dysfunctional theater at the moment.

This week Stina, Cezar and Katherine,  launched their Orb Club /aurabonding  with a release that questions the lifeless nature of artificially generated nature. As artificial as the “creators initiatives” that populate the many blockspaces around us. In /aurabonding we search for more, we enquire, and we have fun well, aurabonding because most things in this space are just auratic manifestations of our digitalness translated through transaction histories. /aurabonding also happens to have fantastic art of two very favorite artists of mine, Katherine and Cezar, so please check it out, comment, mint, and bond.

Now, how can it be our time, and at the same time, so not our time? How can we be so connected and simultaneously disconnected? How can we do better? Open questions to the fine readers of Touch Grass, would love to read you so don’t be shy and share your thoughts! 

Before I forget, some of these questions can be folded nicely into an essay for the Kiwinews x Lens x t2 new writing initiative - where we ask you to reflect on the pluralistic future of L2s. The contest concept is so good that even Vitalik prompted a new question. 

• Blondetourage’s drop… I’m just a girl.

• The Paul G. Allen auction of technology artifacts and space race memorabilia living rent free in my head

• Power Couple Jah and Latashá’s vintage but aging like fine wine video

• Chloee has been creating some amazing art lately. Here’s one I liked, but just visit her profile, she has so much to say.

• Nadezhda again. I love her. 

• Vanezuva’s stunning piece

• Yoshiro’s absolute grail

• Efdot just joined ahead of the /allships residency! 

• Speaking about /allships, Roya just started hers! Follow her process

• Have we shared this STTM already? If so, that’s all good, it’s amazing, so listen to it twice.

• In case you need this - we all need this, to be honest - some deliciously good deep house from Sonny

• Agoria’s new release
  

• This time I had to choose one and only one, because it really hit the spot: Robin shatposted and won

• Stani on network resiliency

• Tim also commented on resiliency

• 50mmcollective’s CULTURE SHIFT

• Puja Ohlaver at ETHBerlin on proof of personhood

(note - I usually share Hey or Orb links because of personal preference but you can follow and welcome people from the Lens client of your choice)

• Sonny

• Trish

• Sartocrates

• Debbie

• HUG

• Efdot

• Roya

• Katherine

• Awkwarian (is back)

• Proof of Vibes

• Cartesse
  

Thank you for reading, or scrolling through - see you next week!

I keep trying to write this newsletter and find a topic for my intro, but unfortunately, during one of our team brainstorming sessions, someone wrote:

“The Lens Network will make web2 apps feel like they are running on a potato” 

And honestly, I have not been able to get it off my head, causing a major writer’s block. 

I start writing about my Catskills work and holiday week and suddenly…. “The Lens Network will make web2 apps feel like they are running on a potato” 

I listen to Alex Cooper’s insane story on how she got catfished (and then some) in Paris and my thoughts go…. “The Lens Network will make web2 apps feel like they are running on a potato” 

I try to answer an e-mail, work on strategy, do laundry, make a salad but my mind keeps coming back to “The Lens Network will make web2 apps feel like they are running on a potato” 

So I have decided to let “The Lens Network will make web2 apps feel like they are running on a potato” get all of my attention, I have stopped fighting it, and so should you, if you happen to get “The Lens Network will make web2 apps feel like they are running on a potato” phrase to move rent-free to your head. 

I did manage to find the good stuff going around Lens this week, though. So enough of “The Lens Network will make web2 apps feel like they are running on a potato” and let’s dig into some content.

• Mazemari’s Entrylevel artwork

• Guruguruhyena’s new track 

• Darkshadow’s fantastic pixelated anime artwork

• Valentina!! So good! 

• Quad x Unicorn

• My favorite Didop thus far

• Joseangel’s cooking

• Patrician x Eamzfella - follow them all if you haven’t this is so freaking good.

• Shann’s stunning polaroid

• SSTM’s latest tune

• This artwork by Jah really does it for me - check the rest of his series tho

• Sirsu's new club might be one of my favs

• Ampliying here because I also want to know

• Thinks to think about

• The first onchain beer auction

• Leave a voicemail - an epic project by Chamaquito

• Same Nadezhda, same.

• Rae Isla’s amazing 1/1 song

• Post-real on Dazed via Pierre Pauze 

• Wonder how to create a club on Orb? Zenshortz shared his experience here! (also join the club, its awesome)

• Benoit introduces our Man of Crypto and his noble, noble quest

• Benoit again, this time in conversation with the adorable, iconic Latashá

• Kugusha

• Token (dot) com

• 50mmcollective

• Dayana

• Camilla 

• Pierre Pauze 

• Ogun Kizmaz