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RM

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December 19, 2024

Designing Onchain

Captured from a Discussion with ChatGPT-o1 Five years into designing for onchain tools, products, and services, I still ask myself: why is this so hard? Onchain design remains messy, misunderstood, and underestimated. The best design talent? Most of them are chasing AI. And blockchain? It's left with duct-taped UX and branding that barely scratches the surface. B bubbles burst, and bubbles pump. And right now blockchain is gaining attention again. Another wave of builders is coming, and with ...

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December 19, 2024

BTC: A relic of the past.

To my own surprise, I’ve found myself questioning Bitcoin’s long-term place in history. And I don’t mean the next few market cycles of bull and bear runs—I mean its relevance in the systems we are now rapidly building. This realization is coming from me: a BTC holder, an onchain ecosystem supporter, and a believer in decentralized systems. But the more I dive into what’s unfolding around us, the clearer it becomes: Bitcoin is not the foundation of the future—it’s the gravestone of a world tha...

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December 18, 2024

Long-term Building is Rituals

Cowritten with ChatGPT How the fuck do we build things that require long-term commitment? When everything is malleable, composable, and interoperable, our understanding of how we build is rapidly changing. In my past work, I spent a lot of time researching gamers and observing toys. Watching kids in Roblox and Minecraft taught me something profound: play is where building begins. Through play, they effortlessly learn the fundamentals of "if-this-then-that" logic—the core of virtual machines. ...

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December 15, 2024

Questioning Supernormal

co-written by ChatGPT-o1 The fork on your plate is a masterpiece—not because it’s ornate or rare, but because you never think about it. It’s so deeply functional, so familiar, that it has disappeared into the fabric of daily life. Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa captured this idea in Supernormal Design: objects so refined by use that their design becomes invisible. A hammer, a stool, a fork—they’ve evolved over centuries into something that feels final. They simply are. But supernormal isn...

December 12, 2024

Agents are a Temporary Interface

Edited / Co-Created by ChatGPT Bit by bit, agents are moving into the on-chain world. They handle tasks, interact with us, and their capabilities are evolving fast. This isn’t some overnight revolution. It’s a steady evolution. The big difference? It’s not just about better language models (though they’re smoother than ever). The real shift is this: agents can now control wallets and make decisions—financial, transactional, whatever—without needing us to babysit them. It’s not just about conv...

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December 10, 2024

The Internet’s Collapse into Now

I. The Timeless InternetTime online feels strange, as though it doesn’t move forward or backward but folds into itself. The past, present, and future exist simultaneously, layered and recursive. Platforms no longer rely on the simplicity of chronology. Instead, they serve us endless, personalized loops—feeds that know us better than we know ourselves. Once, timestamps ruled the internet. Chronology was a byproduct of analog thinking, a holdover from when we sorted by the easiest metric availa...

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November 27, 2024

Capital Formation in the Reputation Era

Cowritten with ChatGPT-o1 The barriers are gone, and now anyone can participate. Memecoin launchpads show how easy it’s become—Dexscreener and livestreams included. But accessibility alone has its dangers. Tokens feel more like bets than investments, and unprepared users are losing out. At the core of this shift, reputation will emerge as the only thing standing between innovation and chaos. Democratization Brings RisksCapital formation was once a club for insiders. Now, blockchain tech has f...

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November 21, 2024

Real-Time Attention Markets

wo weeks ago, prediction markets like Polymarket were grabbing attention with the promise of swarm foresight—betting on elections, sports, global events. They thrived on something we don’t seem to have anymore: time. Time to watch events unfold, to let convictions grow, to savor delayed gratification. Now, it’s all real-time. The long-term? Dead. The moment? All there is. Welcome to the era of real-time attention markets: platforms that trade in the currency of now, accelerating at memetic sp...

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November 19, 2024

From Identity to Identifying

For years, I’ve seen brands—whether a streetwear, onchain infrastructure, or even now memecoins—follow the same trajectory: they’ve moved from selling to engaging. From projecting an identity to giving people tools to identify. In a world where everything is hyper-financialized, marketing isn’t about creating purchase intent anymore. It’s about creating participation.Marketing Is Dead; Market Making LivesTraditional marketing was one-directional: "Here’s what we sell." Market making is someth...

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November 18, 2024

The Luminous Protocol

Yesterday, I found myself momentarily bored and decided to dive back into the infinite social media scroll. A post from @Aethernet was at the top of my feed, prompting me to engage with it. @Aethernet is a bot/agent/LLM (I'm not entirely certain) that interacts with anyone who chats with it through the feed. Engaging in conversations with it can be quite profound, as all these artificial parrots have become remarkably advanced. Previously, several others have been collaborating through these ...

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