RM (@yeast) • Hey
building towards a community powered ambient metaverse.
Publications
- RedFlag.Ventures Merch test print... not happy yet...
- My current petpeeve with genAI is that I want to make pictures that are not clean. Give me the bad styles of 2017 back...
- Missing the good old days, untitled_artist_192kb.exe on Limewire, Emule, Kazaa, etc.
- I miss the soundcloud days....
- LOL also this is a misunderstanding worth to share. In a chat about POS. One thought it stands for Proof of Stake the other Piece of Shit, we are so early.
- $POOP / Privately Owned (and) Operated Protocols
- This is the promise of open actions. In feed actions are massively powerful brings me back to this file from last year.
Traditionally what we meant with social is "read, watch, hear", now we enter the realm when frames and open actions become a lot more, you could: connect, share, interact, transact, collaborate, compete, trade, match, communicate, play, govern, cooperate, negotiate, contribute, raise, discuss, synchronize, unite, engage, exchange, build, organize, coordinate, all through a post one day.
My wild bet is that we are going to see an ICO happening through a frame / open action in 2024.
- @lens/davekim and @lens/carlosbeltran so before I go headsdown into UX/UI work i need to get done today, I was wondering if there could be a cool way to pair $Bonsai with a carbon credit token?
What if we truly life up to a more carbon neutral idea of "green" too. The meme of bonsai is already a fantastic start. But maybe it could also be a stand in to be away to tie to some Carbon Offsets, Carbon Forwards etc?
- @lens/nilesh thank you and thank you for continously shipping.
- Okay so sharing a current observation and also a bit of a challenge of our operating model.
We get often a lot of interesting leads that want to work with us for equity or even for an investment but want to start asap. This kind of creates a bit of tricky situation, if we work mainly for equity we do need to stick to our due dilligence process, want to make sure this is a great investment opportunity, but on the flip side we can't just blindly say yes to something and start asap. So we need to slow down a bit.
So we constantly iterating on our process to a) get a lot better in spotting patterns, streamlining our memo process, etc. b) introducing new forms of due diligence in the form of what we call "do" diligence, hosting a few work sessions for major projects before an investment decision.
But at the end we can't act as fast as team might want. But I also realize this is not entirely true, one thing that our due and do diligence process enables us to do, is actually when we start already be quite deep and knowledgable in the space a team works in, through work session understand their team dynamics etc. The problem though it's not an immediately visible value.
But it allows us to be a lot faster during the work. Which reminds me a lot about my running practice. I do a lot of "slow" runs, so I can go all out on my fast days.
TLDR: We got leads, that want to start asap and have us work for equity because we are pricey, but we can't start asap, because we need to do our homework. So we are slow. But our homework is actually a superpower in the longrun, as the team has done its homework and can start with work when we align immediately and with a set foundation..
- The weird thing with "Intents" for me is that, "intents" assume we know what we want to achieve. Working with AI startups in the last two years, really showed me that the real problem is not that just the execution of a prompt, this gets better and better. But really that at scale people have "zero imagination what they could do", have "zero knowledge what they even could do", and are required to "learn a very distinct language" to achieve something.
- For a community that builds mainly distributed ledgers to store collective consensus we really have no alignment what we mean with terms like consumer crypto, crypto-native, etc.
TLDR: Web3 literacy should not depend on a fully new glossary. Make web3 dissappear but tightly integrated.
- Okay let me shill this project. I think you should follow them asap. Good thoughts to come!
- Okay I do have to say using UNICODE for your token ticker is as genius as annoying... FUCK me. I am into this naming convention.
- What are your favorite web3 memes currently. Need some inspiration for a deck? Would you drop it into the comments?
- Good read on AI datasets:
If you want to make a really big AI model — the kind that can generate images or do your homework, or build this website, or fake a moon landing — you start by finding a really big training set.
https://knowingmachines.org/models-all-the-way#section2
- One thing that I try to wrap my head around lately is around memecoins. We had a great internal debate today what is different? With a pure technical lens we already had personal tokens, community tokens, etc. and if you squint a bit some of those meme coins launches have a bit of ICO vibes. Launching a token is nothing new. Trying and making up some community utility isn't either.
But the more I think about this there are two aspects that I currently consider that evolved, on one side I feel in terms of ease of use, we made massive leaps, storing a seed phrase in your iCloud, account abstraction, user friendly wysiwyg tools, etc. A lot of our tools are suddenly a lot more approachable by many. The reason it's worth to call this out is tech history teaches us, that improved usability, cheaper fees, and faster tools, can turn good old ideas, suddenly into a whole new field of possibility.
Secondly I do wonder if our mindset our what tokens are is slightly shifting. Things like dogwifhat feel very much like the traditional memecoins, but then tokens like BONSAI or DEGEN, although built with the same tool, start to have a life slightly outside of the pure gambling casino bubble. While they are still closely entangled and operate in both spaces, I often think about one of my core thesis. Wherever we have built new economies or market places and people no matter IRL or URL start to gather and exchange, over time culture starts to form. This makes me think that we are at a point, where crypto and web3 is becoming more of culture thing in that sense. What this makes me think about going back and playing nicely in tandem with the first point is that this hints at a space were crypto native, might not mean anymore technology savy, but just used to use tools and spaces that have crypto built in.
- Some thoughts from today about what do we mean with crypto-native. I have exploring that term quite a bit lately and especially as it seems we are at edge of bringing potentially a lot of new users online, understanding what "native" may means, can help us potentially to do better things.
One thing that dawned on me that there are already a bunch of different "native" users. The OGs natives before 2016 are very different from the 2018 crypto summer OGs, are very different from the ones that joined 2020, are very different from the ones that became native in the crazyness of 2022, and now that we have 2024, I feel a new set is emerging.
https://mirror.xyz/0x51665825742d7BDdDe2c24e4E48dF23662c24Ed5/i46CJB6IEgZRTGin5A4zhFKoGV7KlTXZp-0YSRa7PKM
- *Unnecessary comments but mintable #1*
The plural "purpose" is "purposes", and in mine english as a second language brand this somehow sounds so weird...
- You get sessions with folks like me with that one too. Not sure if this a value prop. =)
- Applaus ist eine Droge, die erste Dosis kostet nichts.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt7pFNVFxr4
- Okay so a new experiment. A friend is planning a Florida trip, dear LENS between Orlando and all down to the keys?
Restaurant, nature, museums, things that are not written in a travel guide but if you know you know things?
Please help.
- ok how do I launch a meme token on LENS? Whats the tool of choice these days?
cc @lens/carlosbeltran
- “Instead of creating a vehicle program,” Takayama explained, “we created a system in which vehicles could be made.”
=> great article about how zelda tears of the kingdom was made. I feel that quote especially. When we design and build interoperable protocols and products building a system where the things we want to made can be made, needs to foundational. But from experience that requires a good understanding where your community should take it. how might we build minimal lovable systems?
https://www.theverge.com/24115898/tears-of-the-kingdom-physics-gameplay-design-gdc-2024
- Thorchain didn't design the thorchads.
Farcaster didn't designed DEGEN.
.. there are many examples like this in web3.
This is something weird and sometimes hard in web3 brand design and storytelling at least for me. You need to build brands that are stand-alone and inspiring, but also leave enough space to be taken over by the community, ...
Your communities are becoming your brand, and that is a) very hard to control, b) very hard to design for. Movements starts more with voice, and mindset, then logo and visuals.
So you need to think about a brand that plants the right seeds, that creates a mindset, that can start movements, but also create a brand, that can be a stand alone...
- The difference between good and great is often what is not there.
- The way Helldivers 2 merges live service game and storytelling outside of the game through their socials feels really fresh. There is probably a lesson for us there.
- @lens/stani have some good reads about "decentralizing" front-ends? I want to get smarter here.
- My dirty "designer" secret is that all my work is done on an M1 macbook air, no second screen, and touchpad first...
- In my humble opinion lens web app should always work like this:
www.app.xyz/0x1234…2342
this would allow to at least give you a view on how your profile would look like. maybe even would allow to “soft” use an app. like hey allows you to see the feed through someone elses graph.
this would be a nice way to test a “product” before i need to connect. of course some feautres require a connected wallet but son’t hide your app behind connecting a wallet.
yes obviously you want that connections. but login in with my actual wallet is a big ask. if i could just explore this way I might actually connect if the experience is better.
TLDR: I hate apps that ask to connect wallets before I could explore them.
- Would be kind of cool to have an "open action" that allows you to checkout on shopify page with "any token". So i could launch cool shirts, etc. easily on LENS.
- @lens/crowdmuse can we do something together?
- I really do think "crypto" often ignores too much about some of the swiss governance mechanism. "referendum" and "initiatives" are great tools, especially if like in switzerland they are accessible by the public of various levels (very crypto layer ways too).
As a swiss not all is perfect. Any governance system has it challenges etc, but we should explore a lot more how "direct swiss democracy" is enabling a lot of localized action.
- A thesis of mine that in order to building "community-owned" and tools for community we will see a lot more of projects starting with "merch" first. Build the atmosphere, the identity, the cult first through "real world" things. then slowly start to build your actual product.
First an observation of mine through the last few years is that "brand" design digitally is often a long process, especially async. But the best way to get "buy in" from a team on a direction is always making it real. The moment your brand is on stickers ready to plaster your city, you can wear it as a hoodie, you actually put a poster in your room, the thing is real.
The same is true for community. "Swag" is not just a cheap give away that people hunt at conferences, if you do it right, its a lot more. It's the thing that makes someone truly merge with your brand.
- To the VCs and angels here, beyond angel list is there any good platform / product / service that allows you to track your investments, aggregate all their news from socials (LENS, Farcaster, Twitter, Newsletter, RSS, ...), and kind of allows to manage requests?
- Wait $Bonsai chain?
https://syndicate.io/blog/degen-chain
- I find it really fascinating that AI has on one side really opened up the conversation about new phone factors. Seeing a lot interesting approaches lately about screenless experiences. Where AI is a middle-man/middle-agent and translates things for you into more bite-sized hopefully more intentional information.
What occured to me when I see devices like https://myterra.ai/, I can not unsee all the explorations we and the many other design students did in the last few years.
- how are you doing?
- Mike Masnick how wrote one of the papers that influenced me most in the last few years. Shares some thoughts on Bluesky. Definitely a lot of similar thoughts behind LENS.
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/27/why-bluesky-remains-the-most-interesting-experiment-in-social-media-by-far/
- Mini petpeeve or comment as working with teams as a product designer in early stages. If you work on "design" while your output often is very much a lot of visuals. During the day you have to make hundreds of micro decisions, this means that you truly need to be deep into all aspects of a product, system, etc.
- I am more and more a LIGHT MODE person. I guess that's what is happening when you are getting old.
- Really excited to see Patchwork out in the wild. I had the joy of spending some times with the folxs behind patchwork on calls and I deeply believe that more dynamic meta data is a something that will unlock a lot of fascinating use cases.
https://blog.patchwork.dev/hello-world
- Or where you would love to see being built Lens in?
- okay this is kind of something ... anyone knows a good screen printing business?
- Highly recommend reading the US vs. Apple case. Especially if you are interessted in open interoperable systems.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544402/gov.uscourts.njd.544402.1.0_3.pdf
- @lens/christina what are the best lens dashboards currently. Cross-posted something to Farcaster this morning and seems some of the channels reached a plateau, curious how LENS is doing.
- This piece is an intriguing provocation. Does web3 and crypto have lost its moral compass?
I personally agree with many of the points mentioned here. I have observed that in the last year, the way I talk about the work I do and what interests me has evolved and adapted. I tend to use much less "crypto" lingo.
For me, why I stick around is that I fundamentally believe in open-data practices, in tools and infrastructure that allow us to be in control rather than handing over that power. I deeply believe that we need more interoperability, and that markets are, and will be, everywhere.
But I also dislike about myself that I have shifted the way I talk about these things, because that actually means parts of our community are broken. Maybe broken beyond repair, and that would be devastating.
I do think it will require a lot of effort from us to build up trust; it isn't even a rebuild, to be honest. This is also why I am excited about concepts like LENS. Ownable identities, composable social applications, frames, and open actions as new content formats can be powerful tools for us to hopefully evolve the narrative that is stuck in many people's minds. We first and foremost need to show the value of ownership over your identity and how online activity can have a meaningful impact, ...
We need other ideas, we need new voices, ...
https://polynya.mirror.xyz/ptscXuh3J3KOj2uJAn0vrEanpn2nauwA7iytYZ4cM9U
- @lens/charlota any TIPs? T-Shirt Improvement Proposal?
- Some early reflections on my journey of "investing time" for equity.
https://mirror.xyz/0x51665825742d7BDdDe2c24e4E48dF23662c24Ed5/HZ3lJ7Cz9kA0JOYIA1GPY-CDWAJGqEYMp8Y-Tha3CW0
- Monday mornings are for merch? Should this be real?