Alex Atallah (@alexatallah) • Hey

Co-founder @opensea, @openrouter

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Hullo! Vitalik here. Proof it's me: https://vitalik.ca/files/misc_files/socials.txt
Are there any proposals for enforcing the NFT Royalty Standard (EIP-2981) on-chain?
Halloween thought: crypto is part of a broader migration towards headless Web2 now has big headless CMS (Contentful/Sanity), headless HR data (Merge), headless banking (Plaid) Crypto adds: • headless social media (Lens Protocol!) • headless games (eg Dark Forest) • NFT software licenses (Floor NFT access pass, many others) • headless operating systems (like Urbit, which was headless for a while) • many headless protocols... Open questions: - will databases ever successfully decouple too? - will headless platforms eventually acquire heads for themselves?
A hot take: working more increases the likelihood of success, but being expected to work more usually does not.
Just finished Sam Harris' mindfulness series in the Waking Up app - highly recommended. Most meditation practices seem to assume you're already motivated to practice every day, but at least for me, this isn't usually the case. Sam interleaves guided meditation sessions with 10-minute lectures that constantly reinforce the "why" behind mindfulness, along with techniques for decoupling your ego from your thoughts. For me, this is a critical step towards living in the present. One great and somewhat contrarian lecture (worth discussion) cautions you on taking too much pride in your practice and even your own humility. There's a neat product discussion at the end about why "streaks" in wellness apps are an anti-pattern: https://dynamic.wakingup.com/course/CF485A?source=content%20share&share_id=78BF2447&pack=P29170… The calming background audio that you can turn on for any lecture is a bit buggy atm but a very nice touch overall. The app also has lectures from many different teachers and conversations about life philosophies, includes one with William MacAskill about effective altruism. I haven't finished exploring it, but if you've been using the app for a while, I'm curious about your experiences and how they compare to other practices! I haven't finished exploring it, but if you've been using the app for a while, I'm curious about your experiences and how they compare to other practices.
Bird app algorithm (left) vs Lens algorithm (right):
Was discussing with @alexatallah.lens here in DevCon and we were thinking that scarcity wise it would make sense to post free collects up to 10-25 limited collects. Could be good to experiment and see how they would do on @lensport.lens later
“Gas golfing is an anti-pattern… when more people use the system, you’re back to where you started.” One of the hot takes at Devcon this year (coming from an L2)
# Early thoughts on Urbit *Also a test-drive of Lens for markdown blog posts.* How does the Urbit paradigm differ from blockchain-based decentralized apps (dapps)? Some initial thoughts after 2 days of Urbiting: 1. Urbit is much more liberal about local filesystem access, going fully-permissive at the start. (Browsers, along with macOS in general, require users to specify which folders to give an app access.) 2. Identity is tied not to your fund-holding wallet, but instead to your filesystem. This means that my private stuff is automatically tied to my identity, while dapps require special configuration for that (Merkelizing content hashes, etc.). 3. Urbit is private by default, but allows users to opt-in to paid hosting, to improve UX. Dapps are public by default, but are often centralized to improve UX, with partial ability to opt-out. 4. It seems like the developer interfaces for the 3 points above are all dependent on approval from Urbit (please comment if I'm wrong!). The dapps of today are dependent on collaboration between wallets like Metamask, browser companies like Google & Mozilla, blockchains, and off-chain storage systems. ## Freedom to exit One of the most pleasant experiences I had was setting up a simple, local-only blog using [Studio, by Tirrel](https://urbit.org/applications/~tirrel/studio). The blog is powered by a Notebook on my Urbit (created by a different developer, [Tlon](https://tlon.io/news/landscape-now)), which allows me to easily port content to another blogging platform if I wish to in the future. This freedom to exit (easy portability for user data) will be a huge principle to get right for web3, Urbit or not. Lens Protocol is starting to provide this freedom for social content. Comments and pushback welcome!
Pick a version of the future that's inevitable, and devote your career to it
What's your favorite way to blog or publish on web3, and why? (Please include a link to your site in the comments, and include candidates like Urbit + Studio.)