Welcome to Episode 4 of The BeavChris and BArt-Head Show, a podcast for the Farcaster middle class.
Clips:
Drink every time BArt-Head says "fart" https://drakula.app/post/9cce8849-3f24-4226-b358-67515920889a?invite=Nhbkqw
Tough love or trolling https://drakula.app/post/616985e3-58a8-4678-be1f-a0aaa62b345e?invite=Nhbkqw
Ugh taxes! https://drakula.app/post/fbcc0a29-d6e4-4bc2-8d87-66b89f005438?invite=Nhbkqw
Notifications tab clean up = accidental dopamine fasting for all of us.... [dropping 4/19] https://drakula.app/post/75bc1f99-38bd-4a72-84d9-dbbd07af34aa?invite=Nhbkqw
Softer, gentler farting
https://drakula.app/post/d0eac304-c776-44ac-b4d8-29f813d1b9ac?invite=NhbkqwWeek 2, Clip 1 Scheduling Note (somebody didn’t read the show notes)
https://drakula.app/post/52c736e7-2f7d-40df-b8e6-b4eac4fa67df?invite=NhbkqwWeek 2, Clip 2 don’t clean your signers (DC Christin for tech support)
https://drakula.app/post/97daf9f2-0dda-411e-8b2b-f285effedd77?invite=NhbkqwWeek 2, Clip 3 I don’t feel special, and I don’t like it
https://drakula.app/post/9a7d8fba-e2e9-475e-ba27-1052e8f31894?invite=NhbkqwWeek 2, Clip 4 ELI5 DeSoc
https://drakula.app/post/ae82c29b-6420-47d1-9ffb-9771e4047636?invite=NhbkqwWeek 2, Clip 5 Onchain media, transaction hash
https://drakula.app/post/ecf8fb96-bd9c-4ba9-a98b-e13b1860798c?invite=Nhbkqw
Watch the episode on Zora, and Mint to collect.
Summary
Delve headfirst into the fast-paced, tech-fueled playground of BeavChris and BArt-Head in today's episode of The BeavChris and BArt-Head Show, a podcast for the Farcaster middle class.
Whether it’s tackling shadow bans with a twist of humor or exploring the ethical maze of ad-blocking, this podcast is your ticket to the offbeat side of the internet. From confrontations in the /powerless channel to the comedic chaos of the ‘Fart Actions’ enhancement, this episode offers a unique blend of cybersecurity sermons, spirited debates, and light-hearted banter.
Plus, don’t miss our exclusive "anti-ad" segment championing transparency in advertising with Proxy Studio.
Proxy Studio Anti-Advertisement
Proxy Studio joined Farcaster on February 5th to build Open Ventures from $0 and zero followers, in public. Since then they've grown their account, a channel and bootstrapped an active community around:
1: a Fabric subscription token-gated newsletter
2: an NFT-gated Telegram chat, and
3: a trading fund
We approached them to sell advertising space on our show, and they refused out of principle. Advertising can be non transparent, leading to inorganic growth. Instead, Proxy Studio sent us 0.1 ETH, because they quote, wanted to support the show. End quote. So onchain media, here's the transaction hash.
The Proxy Studio Hypersub is minted out. So there isn't anything the public can buy right now. To learn more, follow @proxystudio.eth and the /openventures channel, where you can DYOR starting with the pinned casts.
Tell them BeavChris and BArt-Head sent you.
Transcript
BeavChris
And also I feel like people don't even know who he is anymore. That is an extremely 80s and 90s reference.
BArt-Head
The people who need to, know.
BeavChris
Oh, Fufu said that Takeshi was his childhood hero.
BArt-Head
That's right.
BeavChris
Mine too.
All right, we're on the hour. Welcome, welcome everybody.
BArt-Head
Good morning, welcome everybody to The BeavChris and BArt-Head Show. We can say the name without stumbling over it ourselves.
We are streaming on Unlonely. Our episodes are available to mint on Base via Zora. We post our blogs on our Paragraph with links to the clips and an AI transcript. We share our clips on Drakula. And our online presence is managed by seemore.tv.
Thank you everybody for joining us.
We want to give a shout out to our first ever sponsored spot last week, from Ina who is @beecurious. For her business Farcastea, really appreciate her support and joining us to share her journey and share her business. Please stay tuned towards the break for a new sponsor this week in a very short while.
BeavChris
Instead of how are you, the name of this segment is called what trouble have you gotten to this week? So Art, what nonsense are you up to?
BArt-Head
Trouble, if you all noticed, somehow the word trouble turned into nonsense as it passed through Christin's mouth. But, first of all, Thanks to one of our listeners, King, I purchased a new microphone, and I hope for your listening pleasure, this is much better.
Second, I launched a bunch of new features over the weekend on the Fart Actions. And we can talk about that in a little bit I'm quite excited that started off as a really stupid action has now some stuff going on in the background where I get to play with things that I've wanted to play with for a long time, that the Warpcast features are now making much more possible.
And then third, I got into the tailwinds of a really stupid fight online. And I'll share briefly. There is a channel called the powerless. Sorry, there's a channel called the shadowban channel, and it was designed for people who feel they might be shadow banned on Warpcast to go and cast and see if they are and also to find each other because there's benefits.
There's a safety in numbers and it's nice to see that you're not alone. I definitely
BeavChris
Yeah!
I went in with Supercast and then it was so sad. You can see everyone going, am I shadow banned? And then King will be so nice to be like, Oh, you're not shadow banned. We can see you.
BArt-Head
It's full of real people. Not bots, not farm operators, just real people who somehow were determined by, I will say it by Merkle.
using a combination of human and AI judgment. Actually, the majority using human judgment that they should be shadow banned for the good of the Warpcast experience. And so there's many people in the shadowban channel. There's another channel, which is called shadowbanned with an N E D. And it was created on basically the same day by independently.
There's another shadow, shadowban channel in Japan called am I in I forget what it is, but it's called something like, am I invisible? [ED. NOTE: /invisible-ones by @yumemaboroshi] And there's a bunch of Japanese users in there.
BeavChris
Aww. Mmhmm.
BArt-Head
Then there's also another channel called powerless, which is a user who felt he was shadowbanned and he probably was, called @hatehatehate.
BeavChris
Great username!
BArt-Head
Who created, yeah He created a channel called powerless for those people who did not receive the power user badge.
And I went into those groups because I tend to jump into all of these groups. And I started trolling hate hate hate saying that, look, this is never going to work. This is a centralized place.
BeavChris
Oh, were you trolling? I thought you were very sincere in pointing out that like their strategy of whatever they're doing is not going to work.
They're just treading deeper and deeper into quicksand. It's better for them to make a new account at this point. I thought it was sincere.
BArt-Head
Yeah, I did say delete your account, make a new one and work on your personality basically. And it is a troll, but it was meant as tough love.
BeavChris
Mmhmm.
BArt-Head
And he did not like that very much. And he responded with a long cast, ending in, You are not welcome here. You are banned. And I thought that was entirely appropriate. If someone is pissing you off like, tell them to GTFO. And he banned me from his channel. And, I don't think he ever did it.
BeavChris
You're banned from the banned, what does that mean?
That's right! He banned me from the shadowban channel. And, I could choose whether to continue to cast in there using all of my technological gifts. Or knowledge of the decentralized networks, or I could choose to walk away or I could choose to do whatever.
And I choose to talk about it here, but I also continued to see what was happening in the group. And another well meaning non shadowbanned user came in there to engage with the shadowbanned users. And that was yes2crypto, who I consider a friend and a mutual follow. And we are in many of the same channels and conversations and groups.
And he started to engage with people. and I thought that was funny. And so I copy pasted my ban to him and also quote casted the original so he could see the context. .
BeavChris
Mmhmm.
BArt-Head
The words in the cast are very strong. You are not welcome here, you are banned. And so he read the words and he was like, where is this coming from?
Oh, it's coming from this this goose, PFP. Who I know and has a lot of power and a big voice and he's, shoot, I think his response was, I've been banned. It was like, what is going on? He's ... and so he apologized. I'm sorry. And I sent him a large $DEGEN tip.
And he was like, what is going on here?
And so he left and, he was like, I've been banned. I'm not welcome here. So okay. I came here. And with good intentions, and I was met with this kind of hostility. So okay, my, I'm going to go on with my life. And later wake in the /degen channel was sharing that there is this new channel called shadowban.
So you may go there and find other people who are shadowbanned and discuss and, take control of your lives. And yes2crypto told him I went there and they banned me. And wake said what, what was going on? And he says I don't know. It seems like some twisted kind of game they're playing.
And they also tipped me.
And wake was like, that's strange, but this is the internet.
And then I saw this about a week later and I went and said, okay, this was just totally stupid. I banned you with the power of copy paste. And you're not banned. I banned you. I don't have any right to ban you.
And I sent you the $degen, and so he took that you're a crazy man, and okay.
So I hope everything's okay, it was just silliness, but there was another point I wanted to make, which is that I can ban people by saying they're banned.
BeavChris
But that's banned from a channel not banned from Warpcast, or like shadow banned from Warpcast.
BArt-Head
No, it's not even banning from a channel, it's just me saying you're not welcome here.
BeavChris
Oh, so you didn't even actually use the host rights to ban someone. You were just pretending.
BArt-Head
I'm not the host.
BeavChris
Oh. Oh. So you were hoping that he would at least notice that and notice that it's a joke.
BArt-Head
Well, one of the problems of crypto is that everything is open. And so you can always see who has the permissions or the rights or the powers. But I think another truth about social is that people don't read. People don't.
BeavChris
This just reminds me of people who like reply to things in /ouliposting and don't realize you're not supposed to use the fifth glyph.
And then everyone gets all riled up and upset. This is just another variation of that, where it is like a weird social norm spontaneously sprouted. And if you don't know the improv game we're playing, then you get screwed.
BArt-Head
So /ouliposting is O U L I P O S T I N G. It's a channel where if you use the fifth glyph, and I don't even dare to say it right now in our conversation! The social norm, which is not a technological norm, although it is backed by some threats of technological power, is that if you accidentally write a cast with the fifth letter of the alphabet, you have to pay some warps.
You have to pay, I think the going rate was a hundred warps.
BeavChris
I feel like it got downgraded to only 10.
BArt-Head
Something. And
BeavChris
I think that Chuk only gives me 10.
BArt-Head
Hahaha!
And you're supposed to delete your cast too, so that space remains free. And I remember when it started, it's a test of, improv, social coordination, relative power, self governance, et cetera. And I remember
BeavChris
Yes, all that, based on a silly little game.
BArt-Head
So we need to play these silly games before we make real world consequences.
And I remember someone came in and was like, I'm not paying. Now what are you going to do? And everyone's...nothing. You're just like, it's just like you're on a playground and you don't play. We're not going to play with you then. Or on the playground, like I can stomp around and say you're banned, you're banned. You're banned.
And some of the kids actually will leave. Some of the kids will say, I don't like conflict. I don't like this place. It's not safe. And maybe some of the adults will step in and be like, Stop being a jerk. This is not good for you.
But , this is a playground on the internet. And that was one bit of trouble that I got into.
I did feel, I have to say, I did feel bad that he didn't play back with me on my joke. And that it actually seemed to, it actually did seem to provide some hurt, like some hurt feelings, which was, I will say it was not my intention. And I, so first, I acknowledge that
BeavChris
I gotta stop you before you go on an apology tour. This is really not great podcast material.
BArt-Head
Okay. Boring podcast material. I'm sorry.
BeavChris
You've got to commit to the trolling.
BArt-Head
Okay.
BeavChris
We are pointing out that these games can have accidental consequences. And also there's a whole bunch of sad shadowbanned people. So go say hi to them on these various channels.
BArt-Head
Good point. Now, BeavChris, how did you get into trouble?
So much trouble that Saturday Night Live found us.
BeavChris
Copied.
I was very much
BArt-Head
Yes, how did this happen? Please tell everyone.
BeavChris
I feel like I've pretty much been like everyone else, just like, being like, Ugh, taxes! And it'd be like, Ooh, this is such a nice NFT that matches my mood like that's pretty much the entire weekend.
I really noticed that with the changes in the market that have somehow already is it over? I don't even know people seem to be in a better mood again, maybe because of AirChat. But then it's like we are in this like social environment where something external to us that happens, affects everyone's vibes.
Yeah. And then I was like, Oh no, it seems like everyone's feeling bummed out. So I thought that was the top of my mind this weekend.
BArt-Head
We all are common bag holders as well. So it's not just external to us and it's not all of us, but a large portion of us are common bag holders or wannabe bag holders.
So even the people who sold early, they remember that they used to hold $DEGEN and they see that their friends are holding $DEGEN. So they, they're connected.
And when $Degen, when ETH, when Bitcoin, when the stock markets, when everything falls or drops, then it's not just a common vibe, I think there, there are economics and there are changes in... yeah, hopefully people get back to building.
So I built a lot more with $DEGEN below three cents than I did with $DEGEN above six cents.
BeavChris
I was thinking, is that what everyone's busy doing? Because I was like, oh, Art just popped out with a whole new build. And I feel like all my friends just quietly building because we're all too sad to look at the numbers.
Suddenly that was me as well. I was like sending like Sam and Rileybeans and Cam, like, we shall build things that will work independent of the market.
But I do feel like like happy that I joined when it was a little bit bearish so that I feel like I'm not like, this is like almost like resetting back to the original vibe of Farcaster.
BArt-Head
There is a feeling of reset. Where all of a sudden the videos are gone, or all the photos are gone.
BeavChris
Yeah, all the photos are gone, the notifs are gone, the dopamine hits are gone. Like we're in barren land.
BArt-Head
Notifications!
I personally hate that. I want to see everybody who interacts with me. And it's because I don't get that many.
I still want to see
BeavChris
I know this is the middle class problem of you're not
BArt-Head
Right, don't , we're middle class. Don't give me the upper class rules that don't allow me to aspire or experience vicariously what it's like to be a big account on X or a big account on IG. I am a relatively big account on Farcaster, and I can feel like I'm like a TikTok influencer
BeavChris
I feel so important every time I get a little red dot.
BArt-Head
And then like sometimes the dots are lying to you, and you go, oh, like fake dopamine.
BeavChris
Exactly. The chat, the nounishprof said, you can still see them, they're just categorized. And Fufu says, wife tells me every day, who are you with such a big following? I know, you got to keep your head still tethered to the ground.
BArt-Head
Do you remember the roast frames? Oh, look at you with your big followers.
BeavChris
Oh yeah, that was really well done.
BArt-Head
And all your NFTs. Are you an art collector or something?
BeavChris
Exactly.
Speaking of keeping people on the ground.
BArt-Head
I think it was a good point to drop our surprise sponsor.
BeavChris
Oh yes.
BArt-Head
This week, we are really excited to have another advertiser. This is actually a little bit different. This is an anti ad.
This episode of The BeavChris and BArt-Head Show is sponsored by an anti ad. Proxy Studio joined Farcaster on February 5th to build Open Ventures from $0 and zero followers, in public. Since then they've grown their account, a channel and bootstrapped an active community around:
1: a Fabric subscription token-gated newsletter
2: an NFT-gated Telegram chat, and
3: a trading fund
We approached them to sell advertising space on our show, and they refused out of principle. Advertising can be non transparent, leading to inorganic growth. Instead, Proxy Studio sent us 0. 1 ETH, because they quote, wanted to support the show. End quote. So onchain media, here's the transaction hash.
If you don't believe us, it's basescan.com/tx/ oh x five B five A two A FC five B2C two fff, E eight a EB 2 43 E 8 8 3 B five three C. There's more 1C 8 2 7 CDDA, eight D nine C five B nine. E, EF oh six six C zero. Almost there, five B five AA 5 35. And I think we still owe him approximately 60 seconds. So here's the transaction hash again.
Oh, X, just kidding.
The Proxy Studio Hypersub is minted out. So there isn't anything the public can buy right now. To learn more, follow @proxystudio.eth and the /openventures channel, where you can D Y O R starting with the pinned casts. Tell them BeavChris and BArt-Head sent you.
Thank you very much, Proxy. We appreciate the support very much.
BeavChris
Exactly. And I find that his channel, which is his public notebook, it's actually really neat. He's organizing all of the historical factoids of things that are happening on Farcaster. So it's almost like a little mini Wikipedia. So it's fun to check out and it's all free and available.
BArt-Head
Yeah, this guy just started, he jumped in, learned stuff in public, and is building in public.
I want to mention to our listeners, we like real ads too. Please reach out to us if you have a project that you'd like to promote. It could even be a personal account. You could promote your own account. You could promote someone else's account on behalf of them.
And we can be creative with the format, we've done an ad plus interview, we've done an anti ad, and we can try different things.
BeavChris
Exactly, oh wizard, it's like those like billboards you see where it says advertise here with a phone number!
BArt-Head
That's our faces.
BeavChris
Exactly. Alright, okay moving on, what else do you want to touch on, Art?
BArt-Head
Yeah one piece that I think is really important. Interesting and has been highlighted this week in the Farcaster community is the importance of signers. When you sign up for a Warpcast account, you get a custody address, which is a private key and a public address that custodies your Warpcast account.
You can also connect your address, your wallet, and you do that by signing onchain using your Warpcast mobile app, and you also get a signer key that is tied between your custody address and your Warpcast account, and a signer public private key pair that signs every message.
So unlike web two, where there are centralized authorities that provide sources of truth or sources of verification for your messages, like on X.
In Warpcast, every message is decentralized. So you can have the Warpcast client, you can have Supercast, you can have nook, you can have different apps sending casts on your behalf. And each message has to be signed by a valid signer. And people might've noticed when they connect an app, they have to pay some warps.
That's to pay gas fees to register a new signer on chain. So that the network knows these messages are valid. Does that make sense so far?
BeavChris
The thing is you even need to pay to disconnect. I think some people were a little alarmed to find that out.
But this topic came up, right? Because I saw even on my feed that Martin was like, What the heck? Someone has been posting as me and tipping this bot $degen. And the only, like, first bot or person that could do that was MemeCaster.
And it turns out that there's this almost misunderstanding slash dark pattern situation where the default of using that MemeCaster bot is that you would donate the rest of your $degen of the day back to the bot to pay the developers.
And it was a toggle that was on by default. So some people were confused and I think Martin was even separately notified. But again, I can see how it's really easy to miss that and be like, what the heck, why is this auto tipping situation happening?
BArt-Head
Right, and so technically what happened was when you signed up for memecaster, there was a signer that was created on your behalf and kept by the memecaster app.
So this is exactly the same thing that happens with nook, with flink, with Supercast, with far.quest Pro, all of these accounts create a signer for you. They send you to Warpcast to pay for it. And then they hold on to that signer for you and use it to sign messages on your behalf. And so memecaster created signers and held on to them.
And also the dark pattern part is where they said, We will cast on your behalf by default to tip ourselves. There's layers of patterns that are going on there that are new. And dark. On the other side, it was done with disclosure. . And it was done consistent with the design of the protocol. The design of how apps should work, and with full agency for people not to sign up to that portion.
And the proof is that there are large accounts who have used memecaster who opted out. Like that was possible. So it's not like they built the opt out later after tricking a lot of people. The opt out was always there.
BeavChris
Yes, and I feel like the judgment of whether a pattern is dark or not cannot be made until the pattern occurs. So I think this is one of those we don't know until we've gotten to this point and people get upset.
BArt-Head
The levels of upsetness take various forms. The first one is, Oh, I'm so stupid.
I got tricked. That's one thing where, Oh, I fell for a phishing link, bad on me.
There's another level, which is, Oh, this is doing something, which is harming other users. We should stop it. And I would argue that this is a strange kind of harm to other users,
but I would definitely say that this is a selfish advantage to the memecaster team to quietly send their users' unknown quantities of $degen or variable quantities of $degen, sometimes very large, sometimes very small.
And so it's more a matter of permission than a matter of harm.
BeavChris
Right.
BArt-Head
And then there's another layer of response, which is, hey, let's use central authority to shut this thing that I don't like down.
This thing that was done following all the rules of "code is law" or "crypto is the Wild West", "your keys your crypto", but let's shut it down because, we are operating in this safe space, the space that has been made safe for us. So continue to make it safe for us.
And I sensed all of these responses all together, and
there's some that I disagree with, obviously, that other people should come and solve our problems. And I wanted to take this time to say also that when you delete a signer, it's not like logging out of Gmail. It is more like deleting your Gmail account.
BeavChris
Yeah, exactly.
Because there are all the casts that were casted using that tool with the signer will also disappear. So don't go too trigger happy with the deleting.
BArt-Head
Unless you may, if you know what you're doing.
BeavChris
Yes. But don't disconnect.
BArt-Head
Like, I think if it's necessary and that app has gone rogue, or it's been hacked, or the developer has sold it.
The trustworthy developer has sold it to an untrusted developer. Absolutely. Let your casts go and protect your wallet.
But if not, I don't think it's a good advice to just say, Oh, delete any old signers that are lying around because then that trickles through to different actions that you've done on the network and just wipes them out.
I wanted to add, if anybody has questions about the technical details, please reach out to Christin on Warpcast.
BeavChris
Yes, surely. I'm the best person to ask.
BArt-Head
We're happy to direct you in the right direction.
BeavChris
I do love getting direct casts so I will take that. But as for you building your new fart action, speaking of disrespectful to users, tell us more about these new options you've added.
BArt-Head
Fart action was the world's most complicated rock, paper, scissors game before. It allows you to fart on any other user. It allows those users to have shields, so if you try to fart on them, it farts back on you. And it allows you to have candles, where if you fart on yourself, you actually clean up your farts.
BeavChris
Wha?
BArt-Head
And there's a leaderboard.
Yeah, if you fart on yourself, instead of farting on yourself, it lights a candle and removes one fart from your count. And there is a public leaderboard, where we keep track of who's been farted on the most. And it's a net result, so if someone goes and cleans themselves up, it shows that they've been cleaned up.
BeavChris
Yeah, go check the leaderboard because y'all might have already been farted on and didn't even know.
BArt-Head
Yes, yes, it is possible. [ED NOTE: BArt-Head admits to farting on all known fans] So over the weekend I added two layers of opt-ins and opt-outs. So on V1, I promised I would never track who is farting on who. In V2, there is a default opt out. Where we will not track, but if you opt in, we will track that you are farting on people and you can go and toggle this before you fart or after your fart if you want to make a specific public fart on someone.
So this will be logged. It's currently not logged, but it will be logged as part of the Deploy on $DEGEN week. We're planning to log everything on the $DEGEN L3.
BeavChris
Oh,
BArt-Head
because the transactions are on chain, visible, public, provable, it's a blockchain and the transactions are super cheap and super fast.
BeavChris
So if I fart on you now, you will soon know it was me.
BArt-Head
No, by default, if you do nothing, I will not know. If you go into the control panel and turn on logging of farts, then it will be written to the blockchain and everyone will know.
BeavChris
So it is almost like you know how in LinkedIn you can turn on or off whether people can see like you've clicked on their profile.
Oh god.
So what about the "be kind" and the ad network thing that somehow is incorporated into this?
BArt-Head
There's another switch, which allows you to say, look farting on people is not my vibe. So you may flip a switch, which says I choose to be kind. And once you choose to be kind, the fart messages change to be softer, gentler farts.
If you are no longer in that mood.
BeavChris
Wait, are these still farts? What is a softer, gentler fart?
BArt-Head
Yeah, they are softer, gentler farts. And if you're tired of that, you can go back in the control panel and say, look, be direct. And you can choose to be direct.
The ads work the same way as the logging.
So there's another switch where you opt in or opt out, by default it's opted out, to receive advertising as a result of your fart action. I've turned it on, and when I fart on someone, I get a randomly served advertisement in the fart action.
So instead of me hearing that, I am a bot or not, or that I farted on someone or I've lit a candle. I get to receive some information that somebody paid to want me to see. And as well, they know that I have seen that little blurb of text, that little toast pop up.
BeavChris
Oh, was it asked when $stink? There is actually already a $fart.
BArt-Head
Yes, there is a $fart.
Sorry, let me go through the most exciting part. There are shields. And I originally for the V1, I said, if you send me a hundred warps, I'll give you a shield. And now I've seeded the population with more shields. So more people have shields. So if you fart on people randomly, it may bounce back on you.
And I am building this as something that can live without me being the centralized authority. So I'm decentralizing in phases. And so this decentralization is that there is a special cabal Of 25 people who have the power to move shields around and these
BeavChris
Isn't this exactly the ethos that you're preaching against a secret, or is this the meta trolling here?
BArt-Head
So it is not a secret cabal. It's a special group of people who are unorganized and each one is an actor. So actually, this is exactly the opposite in my mind. Each one is an actor on his own who can move shields.
So out of these 25, number one can take your shield and give it to himself. And number two can take that shield and give it back to you. They are 25 equivalent to each other.
Since my name is Arthur, I am inspired by King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. They sit around a round table. They are equal. And, by being equal, they can choose to coordinate for the greater good of a just distribution of shields, or they can choose to fight against each other.
BeavChris
Okay.
BArt-Head
And I also thought of this slightly like the function of a notary public in our society. So the government doesn't have desks open for you to bring your documents to be certified. They have licensed notary publics out in the population who can notarize things and you can counter notarize a document, differently with another notary, but they're all licensed and they can all set their own rates. They can say, look, I will notarize your document for $25 or someone else will say, I can notarize your document for $2 and they're all valid.
Whether you pay 2 or 25, I think that's something I want to play with. Whether you pay $2 or $25, it's still valid.
BeavChris
So it's like a very miniature version of the crypto game thing that people are part of right now with like among us, like mechanics.
BArt-Head
I'd say it's different. It's meant to be an exercise of self governance or distributed governance.
BeavChris
Surely that's what everyone wants to do. Ah, yes. I shall engage in an exercise of self governance.
BArt-Head
And these 25 people, they don't even know what's going on. So they have to discover that they have some powers. These 25 people are the people who like, I guess a year ago, minted the series of NFTs called the wise keys.
I don't know if you remember there was a hack on Twitter where someone had hacked DWR's account and said, if you join Farcaster, you will be a wise king. And so two jokers in our community created wise key NFTs.
One on zora one on base, and 25 or so jokers decided to mint them to hold them.
And these are the people in charge of the Fart Shield.
BeavChris
That means I'm not one of them. I don't like this game.
BArt-Head
You're not.
BeavChris
I don't feel special, and I don't like it.
BArt-Head
That's right. Now, currently, Christin does hold a shield, so you cannot fart on her. If you try
BeavChris
I paid a whole whopping hundred warps for it!
BArt-Head
Yes, and Christin paid, and that was to rent it for one week.
And now you will hold it until you don't hold it, and you will not hold it until someone gives it to you. You may pay any wise king, whatever they charge, to give you back a shield.
BeavChris
Okay I don't like this at all, but I think you need to put up an ExcaliDraw picture diagram thing, because this mechanism is complicated.
And we need to see it more clearly laid out. The ad network is really interesting, though. Why would I want to see ads? The whole point of coming here is to not be served ads, say I, as I shill things.
BArt-Head
That's right. So there are parts of the population that do not want to pay and would be happy to see ads in return for having someone else sponsor them.
And there are also people in the population who want to pay to not see ads. The ad network is designed so that by default you will not see ads. And if you want to, you opt in.
BeavChris
Oh, okay. I have to admit, I do like to see ads, but I'm the person who would show up early in the movie theater to see the ads and watch Super Bowl for the ads because I have a marketer problem, disease.
BArt-Head
There's also, you can passively see ads, but this also allows you to actively see ads. So you can imagine that somebody, who has gone through all this trouble to opt in, might be someone like you who goes early to the movie theater to see those.
And if I'm an advertiser, maybe I would pay more just to reach that part of the population.
I don't want to pay to see the people who won't care about it, but I would pay more to reach those people who would pay attention, who want to see value added advertising. Thank you.
BeavChris
Yeah.
BArt-Head
On the other side, I have some mechanism design to try to ensure high quality advertising or that advertising remains, and I haven't rolled that out yet.
There's also the idea that projects like ourselves, who are bootstrapped, self funded, would benefit from easy technology to serve respectful ads to our viewers, where we can have a drip of $degen
for providing value add to the viewers and the advertisers. And the parts of our audience that don't want to see ads don't have to bear with the cringe of seeing these particular ads.
BeavChris
Okay more knobs and buttons and stupidity is always good for the ecosystem. So yeah definitely cast more about it. I want to play with it myself.
But yeah, I think it's time for us to wrap up or else Art will complain that this episode is too long to edit.
So scheduling note Bart-Head is away for spring break next week. Turns out he's a responsible family head and BeavChris will entertain you.
No, I will not! There's no episode. I'm reading this for the first time.
There is no episode next week, but we'll be back the week after.
And so the best way to support us is onchain. So by minting our episodes on Zora and to watch our Drakula clips. So we're really trying our best to get into the Drakula creator rewards and all of that.
So definitely check out our little clips there. And if you would like tip us $DEGEN and $enjoy. We're happy recipients. Oh, and hams. King has been giving us hams. So I don't know what they're for.
BArt-Head
Thank you for the hams. Thank you for the $DEGEN. Thank you for the $enjoy.
BeavChris
Yeah. All right. Thank you so much for joining us live. And we will see you around.
BArt-Head
Thank you. Bye bye.
