Welcome to Season 2, Episode 4 of The BeavChris and BArt-Head Show, a podcast for the Farcaster middle class.
Clips:
Kenny is right https://drakula.app/post/3054e499-0509-400f-9e19-8704d8594b28?invite=Nhbkqw&mintReferral=0x8D46349D6c41098b5f2a84E82250041E83731a51
Northern Chinese and their strange delicacies https://drakula.app/post/61c4d627-6931-43ae-82e1-8f16dd8e071e?invite=Nhbkqw&mintReferral=0x8D46349D6c41098b5f2a84E82250041E83731a51
BArt-Head copes https://drakula.app/post/01d54bf0-0efb-4044-84f4-715a46d9a763?invite=Nhbkqw&mintReferral=0x8D46349D6c41098b5f2a84E82250041E83731a51
Fancy pants wooden wick https://drakula.app/post/02048938-840a-4565-b905-9a0490b8d2a7?invite=Nhbkqw&mintReferral=0x8D46349D6c41098b5f2a84E82250041E83731a51
Smelly wife slander https://drakula.app/post/991f03f2-fb8b-445c-9470-ddd520a9d4bd?invite=Nhbkqw&mintReferral=0x8D46349D6c41098b5f2a84E82250041E83731a51
Watch the episode on Zora, and Mint to collect.
Summary
Farcaster: NYC or Palo Alto? The BCBH Show debates the platform's future, from reverse chron feeds to drag queens. Art mulls leaving, Christin stays optimistic. They dive into reverse chron feeds, DEGEN locking, and why interesting content creators dodge the platform. Plus, a whiff of Humankind's candle empire and FOSS dreams.
This episode was sponsored by humankind.place.
Sponsor this spot for 0.1 ETH (90 seconds for 0.05 ETH).
Transcript
BArt-Head
Welcome to this Season Two, Episode Four of The BeavChris and BArt Head Show. We're streaming on Unlonely. Our episodes are mintable on Base via Zora. We post our blogs on Paragraph. We share clips on Drakula.
And our presence is managed by Seemore.tv. We are moving our notifications to events.xyz as well as the /unlonely frame, which gives you notifications via Unlonely.
BeavChris
Yeah, I nagged @matthew when we were playing Dominion to hurry it up with the channel notifications, but as he just launched the I think the cast, casting, composing embed. So he's been busy working on the other parts as well.
BArt-Head
So welcome to the show. We do have a special sponsor today.
Which is the Humankind candle subscription from our friend @samantha. We will hit that somewhere in the middle of the show. Yes.
BeavChris
Alright. What trouble have you gotten into this week? We're so low key today. We actually just finished talking about political stuff, it was very riled up, and every time we hit go live, we're like, oh, we gotta stop. So yeah, so it's a non farcaster topic, but yeah Art, what, you wrote here, /new-york, again, as an example. What is the trouble?
BArt-Head
You always think there's trouble, but New York City is a pretty big place and I saw it coming through as a common thread in many conversations on Farcaster this week, particularly how diverse and messy New York City is and yet successful. It's also pretty awful in many ways, and yet people like to be in New York City, and there are lots of opinions about it from, first, from people who don't live here, so that New York City is very polarizing. It's to some people, it's an aspiration. And to some people, it's an example of how not to live. For people who live here, there is a huge love hate relationship with it. We bear some common suffering of things ranging from just dog poop on the streets, everywhere you walk.
BeavChris
Man, there's plenty of that in San Francisco.
BArt-Head
Right.
BeavChris
Dog and human poop.
BArt-Head
I think there's more human poop in San Francisco, you can go to other great cities in the world where people love their dogs and they live in cities. And there's not poop all over the road. But on top of that
BeavChris
Is this an analogy for Farcaster?
BArt-Head
Yes. I didn't make the analogy, but one of our friends or one of our common mutuals said that for Farcaster to succeed, it should strive to be like New York City, which has a real competition of ideas. It's a chance for the highest performers of the world to come and reach an audience and practice their craft at the highest levels.
So let's say you're a musician and you want to perform on the street. You probably go to LA or New York to perform on the street. And it probably maybe depends slightly on your job or your goals. You might go to Nashville. You might go to Austin, Texas. But you want to go somewhere where there's an audience of people who are supportive. There's other musicians who can challenge you and you can find collaborators. And there's an audience that's discerning.
So you probably wouldn't go to Branson, Missouri, unless you were paid to go, to enhance your craft, or you wouldn't go to a cruise ship to enhance your craft. You do that to get paid. But you come to New York City and you live in a walkup, get three roommates and you improve your craft. And that applies to standup comedy too. You might not go straight to L. A. or New York.
BeavChris
No, you gotta cut your, you gotta suffer in the Comedy Cellar or whatever it is. That famous New York club.
BArt-Head
No, so you gotta, at some point, I think you have to come to New York. Bill Burr started off in Boston. And if he had stayed in Boston, he would have become a Boston comic. But Bill Burr now is a, just, he is a comic, he's not a Boston comic. And he came to New York and he performed in black rooms. He would go up to Harlem, then go down to the Village, then go somewhere else, all in one night, and eat total shit in the black rooms, but he would get better. And I think yeah, that's
BeavChris
That's true. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to inform you that the Farcaster experience is Palo Alto, California, and not New York City.
BArt-Head
I've been to Palo Alto. My sister lives near there, so we have family there.
BeavChris
Oh yeah.
BArt-Head
And my parents were just there last week. It is a very different experience. And like you say, you ask yourself is Farcaster like X place or Y place, and you compare it with different things.
And I think it's aspirational for our little decentralized social network to become a great city. And New York is just one example. There are other great cities that have become that way in very particular patterns. Yeah, that's been on my mind pretty heavily, just looking at the experience that we have and comparing it with /new-york.
Successful cases of humans combining to create untold value as well as to add to the world.
BeavChris
So is this related to you being annoyed at the fact that the, there's still spam labeling, unfortunately experienced by someone in the Japanese community and you can almost check it.
BArt-Head
Yeah, this morning there was a post half in English, half in /japanese saying you can have a power badge and have a spam label. So, um, you know, there was a lot of push from the grassroots community. To say, please spread the power badge more broadly. This would be good for Farcaster. This would be good for Warpcast. This would be good for the community. And there was a lot of cheering that different people were getting power badges and there was,
BeavChris
@pichi runs that Power Hour. There's powerhouse,
BArt-Head
There's Power Hour, there's /powermonday, there's /powerless. There's, what's the Japanese group? The /invisible-ones. There's lots of groups of people who have taken it on themselves to help others. This is 100 percent a positive thing. This is self empowerment, self-sovereignty to say, I have a power badge. I've been delegated some power to endow and share this power to people that I want to have it. And they're discovering that they were able to give the power and then
BeavChris
was thinking this is because they are phasing, they are actually secretly phasing out, or not so secretly phasing out the power badge thing. And then moving to this AI spam filtering thing. And as usual, people are caught in the crosshairs when they are, the AI doesn't know any better.
BArt-Head
Not everyone, not just anyone, some people are a hundred percent not caught in the crosshairs.
BeavChris
Yeah, like people who are speaking English and behaving like a Palo Alto person, this is not.
BArt-Head
Yeah, if you are working at a VC firm and you open a Warpcast account or a Farcaster account, you will most likely not get caught in the crosshairs, and that's a sign of what is really going on. The power badge was pitched as a way of a community emergent way of establishing social status and hierarchy and value and freedom of reach or the right of reach and distribution and to see that somebody can get a power badge and be labeled as a spammer.
It's partly a kind of an orthogonality engineering problem, but it's also a signal of the thinking behind it, which is that the team is quite accepting of stepping on people's necks or kicking people in the nuts because they are pursuing a particular form of discourse, community environment.
And I come back to New York City. If somebody walks around New York and tells people to be quiet or to give them personal space. I've done this. I've said, give me my personal space. And I immediately get five people shouting me down saying, come on, man, you're in New York City. Get a grip. You're a, you're an adult, right?
Like I've done this. I said, Hey, like you shoved me and you get five people like, come on we're all just, we're all in this together. There's no need to make a big fuss. Like it was innocent. Don't get all worked up. So like it is, it's a part of rubbing shoulders with people of different backgrounds and habits, which at some point you find valuable.
And at some point. Maybe you don't find value. Yeah, that's heavy on my mind. Let me think
BeavChris
okay. So in the past now I count down maybe till the end of the month, Art has been looking for a reason to not leave Farcaster and I feel like, Oh this chart is not looking good. I can only say it going down right now.
BArt-Head
Yeah, it's going down. Somebody mentioned, I think yesterday that Donald Trump should come to Farcaster. He should build TruthSocial on top of Farcaster, and I think that's a reasonable, real question to grapple with. How close are we or how possible is it that this happens? And the real honest answer is that Truth Social has a something like a 10x valuation to Warpcast. It also has somewhere between 5x and 20x of daily average users. And it probably has fewer outages. TruthSocial is an uncensorable platform by the way that they advertise themselves. And in reality,
BeavChris
yeah,
BArt-Head
who knows, like with everything that comes from Trump, it's there's aspiration and then there's reality. And
BeavChris
@jrf Jacob in the chat asks, Is Art going to move over to Truth Social? Is this, where is this going?
BArt-Head
So that is a possibility, because if I want to be in the arena, where should I go? Should I go to my little friends, five, 500.
BeavChris
In a sense, like how Biden has an account on Truth Social.
BArt-Head
Yeah. Yeah. It's if I want to be actually testing my my views with skin in the game and being in the arena, what does it do for me to have 500 fawning friends? Making little in jokes. Now, this is a, I was also a little salty about these, these parody accounts, one of them is simping the other,
BeavChris
yeah, one of them is simping the other,
BArt-Head
it's a horrible beta energy.
BeavChris
Because they are coordinating?
BArt-Head
No, it's a one way coordination, it's, yeah, so it's what's the governor of Florida chasing Trump's approval. [editor: DeSantis]
BeavChris
Oh,
BArt-Head
one of them is not, I don't even remember his name, but
BeavChris
Okay, so a @randomerror.eth Ran Domero is the new popular kid. And then the @dwp Dana Pumpelo and the other one are less, they are earlier attempts, but less popular now. They're trying to ride the wave of popularity, right?
BArt-Head
Yeah. Whatever it is, it's a bit of circle jerk humor. I don't see the point. I think it's, it's playing to the crowd. It's, they're definitely playing to the OGs.
BeavChris
Okay. I guess this proves that Art is not one of these accounts due to his extreme, terrible rating.
BArt-Head
Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna /poop on all of the parody accounts.
BeavChris
Yeah.
BArt-Head
Especially the beta one. It was, uh, who's simping after the other saying, Hey man, come be my friend. Let's work together. The other one's just ignoring him. He's got a little bit of Trump energy.
BeavChris
Okay. Like the, people are, as usual, discriminated. We have these,
BArt-Head
by the way, I love, I loved one cast, which came from @king. Who is an anon, who shared his trolling energy of DWR where it's like this Cholo making a, mugging the camera and then this big guy walking over, the cholo running away, like trying to play all tough.
And I think that's a human energy, but hiding behind a parody account, not your own account, like that's fine. As long as you make it, you're using that anonymity for some positive change and real energy. It's early, but I don't see it. And in fact, Dana Pumpelo was asking for ideas. Hey, what should I do next? I've got this account. What should I do? And I thought, dude, it's you've had your account for one month and you're out of ideas. And then five minutes later, he's launching a shit coin.
BeavChris
Oh that was a shitcoin. Oh
BArt-Head
no, it's not launched yet. He's launching it. It's nihilist in the same way that certain other of these meme coins have been nihilist.
BeavChris
And yeah, like I, I always try to say Parody account to shitcoin pipeline. I do have to agree. We have such pipelines here.
BArt-Head
Yeah. So if this is what
BeavChris
By the way, there's no shitcoin for The BCBH Show. I want to say out of some like /higher idealistic or ideological reason, but it's because someone's an accredited trader. I cannot even make any of these jokes.
BArt-Head
Hey, "someone". Let me jump straight to your question. How can we improve the feed? I have two pieces, a short term and a long term, and they're related. And there's a question in the chat. Are the viewers also supposed to wear wigs? And the answer is 100 percent yes.
This is tied into my, to my proposal. A decent proposal. So the first point about how to improve the feed is, @kenny is right. Now, maybe people don't know this, but, or they don't know this yet, but Kenny is right. Kenny is basically always right.
BeavChris
Yes, I do agree Kenny is more, more right than, most people, most of the time.
BArt-Head
Kenny is right. period.
BeavChris
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know whether you all follow Kenny, if not, like he's a founder of Pics Or It Didn't Happen. And he's been posting very consistently about the need for chronological feed. However, that's a sad part. I'll
BArt-Head
You keep calling it chronological feed. It's a reverse chron feed.
BeavChris
Oh, reverse chron feed. Correct. But I think the sad part is that he's probably muted by the Merkle team.
BArt-Head
Whatever it is, Kenny is right. A reverse chron feed solves this, and he has very good reasons for why he says this. His conclusion, and I agree with it, is that there is not enough good content for an AI to find, discriminate, and highlight things. Because the AI is highlighting mid and outdated stuff because there's not stuff to highlight.
So until you have enough, it's too early. So a reverse chron feed at least gives you timely takes, even if they're like disposable, but there's no point in highlighting evergreen content because like, where are the, where are the Memes, videos, medium term content that actually survive the test of time and can be appreciated for their deep insight or production value or entertainment value.
There's maybe in the history of Farcaster, a hundred of them. Is the AI going to just keep recycling them, or is it going to try to recycle two day old mid takes that on other social networks would be considered, like, absolutely forgettable. So that's the short term is a reverse chron feed would solve some of the kind of unappealing nature of the feed by way of just being real time in the way that watching a live opera is fascinating.
Watching live sporting events, chatting about live sporting events is really entertaining, even if the sport is not good or the performance is not world class. Now, that's the short term. In the long term, this is something that I realized more than a year and a half ago. And I had a very short conversation with Brendan, our friend, jianbing.eth.
BeavChris
Oh yes, used to be bc-zip.eth.
BArt-Head
He still is bc-zip.eth, but he, he identifies as a jianbing.
BeavChris
Which is a piece of fried, fried dough for those who don't speak Chinese.
BArt-Head
It's a delicious piece, and classic, of dough. Yeah. Oh, I asked him, where are all the drag queens? And he was good enough to point me to a channel.
There's a, I think by the way, Christin, I think you're confusing youtiao with jian bing.
BeavChris
I know. The moment I typed on it, I was like, yes, I know that the Chinese donut usually refers to youtiao. Okay. I know.
BArt-Head
The youtiao is a cruller, which is like a, it comes from the Germans that came to China, and the jianbing predates that. It's a piece of wheat that gets either pan fried or baked. [Ed. note: BArt-Head's culinary etymology is suspect. In Cantonese, the name of the dish is actually a protest against a traitorous Song Dynasty official and his wife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtiao] Anyway,
BeavChris
Yes, I know I'm very familiar with northern Chinese and I'm aware of their strange delicacies.
BArt-Head
Yeah, oh, you mean like noodles and dumplings?
BeavChris
Yeah, they freaking love noodles and they don't like the rice. It is so strange to me as a southern Chinese person.
BArt-Head
Southern Chinese people must have rice at every meal. Or else.
BeavChris
Yeah, they don't do that. And all they eat is cabbage and pork and lamb. There's not a lot of variety in the Northern cusine. I don't have enough viewers from there for me to create a little bit of hate.
BArt-Head
So where are the drag queens? And when I entered Web3, one of my best friends was my age, is a very good looking man who likes to wear dresses and makeup and perform in drag shows and he's a superb developer and he shares his, he shares his code and he shares his drag shows on Twitter. And I invited him to Farcaster.
I said, look, this is better than Twitter. It's much greater. He politely declined. He's not interested in, as a drag queen, he does not want to perform to an audience of Christian rap enthusiasts. I think I've mulled over it for more than a year. I think I've mulled over it for more than a year. Why don't drag queens want to be here?
And it's not that I am a drag queen expert, but I know where there are drag queens, there are also things that I enjoy.
BeavChris
There are issues that we don't have good video support, but the thing is, according to the latest Dan request for how to fix video, which I totally jumped on, that might change.
And then that might make it a more, friendly format for more visual type of performance.
BArt-Head
Do you think that a drag queen has ever been held back by grainy video or poor UX? That's not a problem. A drag queen is not gonna say, I'm not going to be myself because, it's, there's two clicks to get to my video, not just one.
BeavChris
Okay. This is an issue for all performers here, right?
BArt-Head
It's a stand in for performance. It's a stand in for content creation. It's a stand in for art. Yeah, of all kinds of performance art. There are definitely real cool stuff.
BeavChris
You know what does really well here is takes. I think takes have an outsized attention engagement sort of thing. People like words with edgy takes.
BArt-Head
Maybe, yeah, it's a wordcel place, which is a little bit strange. It's a wordcel place
BeavChris
yeah, exactly.
BArt-Head
It's a little bit strange for a place full of devs, because devs tend to be shape rotators and not wordcels. But I don't think takes play better here than on Reddit or Twitter.
BeavChris
Oh yeah, for sure. In terms of everything you can possibly do on this platform, if you are new, the way to get people's attention is with a take.
And I think @dawufi recently released his report based on talking to 70 people, the top 9 things you can do on Farcaster to grow, which I think most of it is like, standard and like Twitter growth hack type stuff.
BArt-Head
I read that. I thought it was great.
BeavChris
So I think when I
BArt-Head
it's always been a retort about people who are not getting distribution, that it's a skill issue, right? But, and yes, you can cast better.
BeavChris
So don't you think your wanting to leave Farcaster is a skill issue?
BArt-Head
No! Like a hundred percent no. I have pretty strong confidence in my skills. I don't need more enforcement to let me know that my skill is high level. So it is not a skill issue. It is a, it's an extrapolation of
BeavChris
The chat says you're coping.
BArt-Head
Yeah. And coping as well. Yes. Fine. But the only way to differentiate between cope and reality is to test it. It's not to hide in a comfortable, cozy space.
BeavChris
So isn't literally leaving hiding in a comfortable cozy space like, I'm generally asking this not even as an attempt to tag my burn, but be like how is leaving going to help?
BArt-Head
Yeah I think you underestimate how comfortable I am casting on Farcaster and wearing a wig on camera. You underestimate my comfort level with this particular place in time. Oh,
BeavChris
I know. If you don't have the disease that I have where you're really trying to make it there's no reason to be on Farcaster at all. Just live a happy life elsewhere.
BArt-Head
Speaking of trying to make it and and also, being happy on Farcaster, we should mention someone who I admire for trying to make it and trying to to live a happy life on Farcaster, on Unlonely as well, on many different platforms, building in public. often sharing insights.
And that's our sponsor for this week, our friend @samantha Sam Chai.
BeavChris
Yes. What a transition. I wasn't expecting that. Our sponsor today is Sam's Humankind Candles. So she was very kind to send me some by mail and they were so carefully packaged which is a little necessary because they are very delicately made, as you can see here.
With the iridescent, opulent. I forgot what's the word, Sam, that you used to describe this glass. But you can see here, it's just not an ordinary transparent sort of glass. Iridescent, that's the word. And you can see here, yeah over here, this beautiful marble pattern with the fancy pants wooden wick.
So I think this is definitely something that you can purchase for yourself or for loved ones on Humankind website. Which is humankind.place or you can check the /humankind channel. So that's slash humankind. And I also want to show you it's a little bit easier to see in this other edition that is, has the iridescent but more transparent glass that they are dual layered.
So you get two different kinds of candle scent and color in one candle, like getting two different scoops of ice cream on the same ice cream cone. And this one comes in a lid as well, so you can store it really nicely. And what I love about these candles is that Sam did not cheap out on the amount of fragrance in here.
So oftentimes I can even just leave it open in a place when I don't, in, in summer it's a little bit tougher to burn candles, but even without burning it, you get the benefits of a scented candle to make a place smell nice, which is really necessary for my home because my wife is often dragging in dirt and like smelling from fishing. So I need this in order to survive in my environment.
Thank you so much to our sponsor. And also I need to mention that there is a /hypersub for this candle. So that's where you can get a subscription for these candles and you can have delightful surprises throughout the year.
And until August 3rd if you sign up for the /hypersub, you will get discounts on other creators, Hypersubs on here, including @yb, @priyanka, and @loriann as shared discounts. So this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to hit up all the creators on Farcaster. See, we are like /new-york. We have all these creators who are selling their wares.
BArt-Head
It is incredible to see her attempts to build a business which is infused with Sam's authenticity and personality with the thoughtful touches, including the quality, the craftsmanship, the thoughtfulness about the packaging, the two different kinds so that you actually can see the colors. it's yeah, this is one of the great things about the Farcaster Community is that there is ingenuity, innovation, working with crypto to build real value in this world.
BeavChris
And the best thing I like about the /hypersub is you get to subscribe, you get to be in the /humankind group chat. And Sam is constantly posting building in public type of posts. So it's if you want to learn how to build a business, like Sam's already a masterclass in doing that within the crypto rails.
So that is also worth the subscription alone.
BArt-Head
Yeah, thank you so much to our sponsor, Humankind.
BeavChris
So I feel as usual, by the end of your segment, I end up with, okay Art has complained. He's hit the complain button. And so far, it seems like nothing has changed in the direction that he wants. And he's still gonna vote with his feet and leave us and maybe return as an Anon or not.
BArt-Head
Yeah, most likely not. I will stay for the the rest of the show. So season two, six episodes. This is a little bit of a prolonged diva farewell tour. Thank you all for, for listening.
BeavChris
I'm still okay. I, as I'm like naively optimistic about this. I still think that you will change your mind.
BArt-Head
Yeah.
BeavChris
But sadly, it's gonna be based on the Dune DAU dashboard, which I cannot, I have no influence over. But if something happens suddenly we get a massive influx of new people that new change mind.
BArt-Head
I'm pretty sure that if there, if that does happen, @geoffgolberg will send me so many messages.
BeavChris
About what?
BArt-Head
I don't need a DAU dashboard.
BeavChris
Oh, you just get the direct messages of real, yeah, real DAU.
The chat's pretty sad. I love Jacob's comment. What other kinds of Excel spreadsheets are you going to talk about when you leave Farcaster?
BArt-Head
Yeah, that's one of my pain points. I don't have a good way to share spreadsheets across Anon social media.
So I don't want to share a Google sheet tied to my Google account. And yeah, we tried sharing some like a private encrypted, but. Not tied to your personal account, online shared spreadsheets, and it didn't work super well. We should talk briefly about
BeavChris
I think he means the content, not the actual method of sharing. Though this is interesting, like a Web3 Google Docs is needed. Oh, @naomiii says, isn't Fileverse doing that? I didn't know about Fileverse, I'm going to check it out.
BArt-Head
I had never seen such a thing.
BeavChris
Okay. The other topic we had in mind was about Degen tipping slash locking. And you called me Missy No Lock in the notes. I was like, what the heck?
BArt-Head
Yeah. So I locked, Christin did not lock and
BeavChris
Yeah, you locked a lot too.
BArt-Head
I locked 420,000 for the culture. And I now have a very, a relatively small, but still large DEGEN daily tip allocation. And other people have more and many people have less.
So I'm happy. I'm, I locked enough to maintain my middle class status.
BeavChris
I've fallen out of the middle class.
BArt-Head
And yeah, you are opting out of tip giving via the tip allocations.
BeavChris
And it's not just me. There's quite a lot of people in my feed who have done the same thing.
BArt-Head
And so have a lot. Yeah, I agree. And I've tried to engage with many of the people. That I was interested to find out why. And I think I have a recent a decent understanding of the thoughts. But why did you choose not to lock?
BeavChris
This is based on D Y O R slash N F A thoughts. Which is that if I have to lock so much in order to get a pittance of tipping allowance.
I think it's a psychological thing too. Of course, I was one of the people who really benefited from last season where I was able to give a lot and maybe some of you have noticed that I do tend to give it all to one person in one day. Cause I, I feel like if I'm going to do it, it should feel a little bit substantial.
BArt-Head
I agree with that. I totally agree with that.
BeavChris
Yeah.
BArt-Head
You get much more bang for the DEGEN buck. For getting big tips than small tips.
BeavChris
Exactly. And so the, it's the difference that really hurts, right? So for me, I feel like I, and I also don't even have enough. I'm not holding enough $DEGEN to, to give a substantial allowance.
So with that, I thought, okay, you and I have done this before where we had rained actual $DEGEN, not $DEGEN tips on like followers of our channel, hint, hint. So therefore I thought maybe I should just hold on to the, little bag I got from last season and just directly give it away to, those that who may need that.
And. I think that the tricky part, which I've hinted one of my casts, is that it does feel like what I'm giving away is a scratcher ticket. Because, okay, for example I could have converted all of my degen into like USDC or something and tip people with USDC directly with the pay button. But then, I feel like then I took, I made the decision to like, convert at a certain time.
And now you are stuck with USDC. And if I don't convert, then I keep the hope for you, and then you can decide whether it's worth converting or not. So then I'm, like, not making an additional choice on top, but I don't know, maybe that's just me trying to be all high and mighty and pretending like I'm such a good person or something.
But I think like the thing with $DEGEN, the value is in the speculation and not in its actual value, so I wanted to keep that part for whoever receives it.
BArt-Head
Yeah, that makes total sense. And of course, Anybody can swap at any point in time. And of course it has a cost, but that cost is so low relative to how it used to be. And there are ways to even lower it. And we're happy to discuss that.
BeavChris
Yeah, I am overthinking it. And that was too much intellect for crypto token tipping.
BArt-Head
Yeah, I was thinking and hoping Skin in the game would make a substantial difference to the outcomes of degen tipping. And to me in the medium term, this is true of any any startup that is burning money in order to grow. At some point, that money that is being given out and distributed, for hyper growth has to turn into stickiness, retention and monetization.
Monetization in the form of a DEGEN project is a, an L3 with a lively app ecosystem that is justifying people to pay the very low fees on the L3. So for projects to emerge. It's also for a culture of tips to be accepted, which I think has set.
BeavChris
Yes, I do really appreciate them.
BArt-Head
Yep, projects to purchase DEGEN in order to use it to give out these scratcher tickets. And that's, I think that's not quite yet cemented, even though it is being done. Like these things to generate ongoing demand for DEGEN are really important. And the, to me, every tip given should be, it's just a transfer of future DEGEN to the present. And so it should be thought of like an investment.
And to me personally, I thought having skin in the game was a perfect way to raise the threshold of giving out tips without heavy judgment over someone's value or worth to receive it is, did you happen to keep enough around to stake? And did you happen to,or did you happen to buy some in order to stake?
Both of those are exactly the same in this setup. So I thought it was a good experiment to try and we can see that @jacek is open to feedback, receptive to things.
I will voice the one feedback that I thought was really powerful. It came from @stellabelle. She said when you log in every day and you see your tip allocation has fallen, that's a horrible feeling. It's meant to be counteracted by seeing that the vault has grown and maybe indirectly or directly that the degen price has grown.
BeavChris
Yeah, I don't think that's happening.
BArt-Head
But when $DEGEN is pumping that's a very powerful mental flywheel. So to me, it's not just that the allocations are falling, even though the the mechanical fall is very different from the market rise. And that's tough. That's very tough.
BeavChris
Yeah. So I feel like that I do appreciate the cultural, like tipping preservation. Oh, and then like Jacob says here, he heard the LP fees that $DEGEN recently generated a pretty high, like 500,000. And that competition is good. No
BArt-Head
Yeah, another point about competition is that there are other tokens. So $DEGEN has opened the door to a healthy competition of ideas and methods for other tokens to establish a foothold, because some people are opting out of tipping $DEGEN, or maybe you will find it easier to tip other tokens that arrive to you more easily than tipping the $DEGEN that you earned in the past. There's all these possible outcomes and that's quite interesting to see and think about it, anticipate or predict. Speculate.
BeavChris
Yeah. So to end on a more optimistic note so I recently posted this Celia's Mexican restaurant as an example of like decentralization of course from many years ago, where the founder, this grandmother had taught lots and lots of people how to run Celia's restaurants all the way from finances to like how to, run the house, that kind of thing.
And that's why there's so many of these like Celias in around the Bay Area, but then they're not actually affiliate with each other. They all like independently run. And I was thinking, Oh, okay theoretically, this is Art's utopia. What theoretically, there's a world of clients that can all benefit from having same like information and I guess that's why you're into the FOSS stuff.
So theoretically FOSS is Art as a grandmother teaching you how to lay out the tables, etc. And so is that what you want? As the outcome? Is this a good enough analogy? Of course the grandma was not under VC pressure or anything.
BArt-Head
Yeah @vitalik.eth had a interesting reply to @sohey.eth, today, which was a very strong statement that infrastructure funding for the crypto ecosystem should be free and open source.
It should not be VC backed. That was a very strong shot over the bow. And he sent it whizzing by Sohey, so I think Sohey is like Donald Trump. You get a bullet from Vitalik going by you and
BeavChris
I don't know whether she's in the chat today, but taken out of context, that sounds super wrong. Is this related to Gitpaid?
BArt-Head
Yes.
BeavChris
Okay. Oh, I think 2E. Okay, so I recognize that wallet address. I think she’s in the chat. So is it because Gitpaid is considered more privatized?
BArt-Head
Sorry no, Gitpaid is for open source projects. Gitpaid is for open source projects.
BeavChris
Okay so isn't that good? Why is that? Why is Sohey Trump in this situation?
BArt-Head
Oh, Trump is good. What do you mean?
BeavChris
This is the, I'm going to cut us off right here.
All right. Yeah. So much of clip that I, no, no comment. This is onchain. This is going to be onchain in Zora. But yeah, like definitely I really appreciate all of you for joining us in the chat today. I will leave that our last topic is unresolved topic.
BArt-Head
We have many things to talk about. Next week, same time, same place on Unlonely 11 a. m. Eastern. Please join us again for, thank you for listening, everybody. We appreciate your support and your positive vibes in the chat.
BeavChris
Thank you so much. And those who join in the last minute get nothing. That's, I see @dawufi in the chat. All right. Take care, everyone. All right.
BArt-Head
Bye bye.
BeavChris
Bye.
