The Vertex Thesis

This is what clicked for me.

Jack Butcher has tons of published insight on the natural law of compounding. In the digital realm it’s harder to pin down, but the externalities are less inhibited.

Now we have a substrate by which hyperlocal activities can be noted, verified, and upgraded perpetually. Blockchains allow personal, and highly anecdotal experiences, to become much more than ever before.

Obsessing over ordinance principles has left me with fun as the fundamental.

Friend tech, Basepaint, Storybase, and Based Management are all uniquely fun.

• a social liquidity game

• an evolving mural art ‘dao’

• onchain forum/message board

• L2 headless brand experiment

Who they attract points at what Dee articulated as hyperlocal. Broadly speaking, they exist within the same neighborhood:

1. EVM

2. Base Chain L2

3. Crypto Twitter

4. NFT marketplaces

Within each individual project we see their hyperlocalities.

Friend Tech

• Crypto Degens

Basepaint

• Pixel Artists

Storybase

• Crypto Writers

Based Management

• Crypto Consumers

Imagine these localities as vertices existing in an expansive temporal-spectrum. An increase in interactiveness engages neighboring vertices, eventually resulting in uniquely animated cognitive-surface-area → leading to tangible market influence.

Part of the subtext has been covered in my Hypercultures and Onchain Summer essays. The tldr being:

• onchain context leads to onchain culture

• memetic proliferation happens at the chain level

• we have turned a corner in terms of tech usability

  • this leads to divergent-expansion

Cryptography is relevant due to its timeless technical nature. To mint something is to ensure, to the best of our current capacity, that it endures. This allows digital assets to capture value over longer time horizons.

To me, this is what “global maximum potential” signifies. The ability to turn hyperlocal concepts, content, and context, into endless possibilities.

Important to note this does not guarantee top 1% performance of those interests, activities, etc. It guarantees opportunity to reach top 1% performance.

H/t @uncledavo for the term.

On a recent ForeFront chat we came to the understanding that our industry is still within the first percent of growth. This means more experiments are needed.

With all of this texture added in, the vertex thesis boils down to:

1. be courageous onchain

2. plant hyperlocal vertices in the collective mind-space

3. nurture them toward their global maximum potential