This is a conference talk proposal for FarCon, the Farcaster conference taking place in Los Angeles, May 2-5, 2024. For more information, see https://farcon.xyz or https://www.warpcast.com/~/channel/farcon

1) What
"Consumer Crypto" is a phrase overloaded in the space, but many have converged on the same general definition: making crypto as ubiquitous as other elements of the web for regular consumers. This has many parallels to the early days of the hobby computer industry, where many businesses (small and multi-billion dollar alike) tried their hand at defining the destiny of home computers – resulting in extremely bizarre attempts ranging from the Kitchen Computer to hand-wirewrapped breadboard kits loaded with BASIC and a hastily assembled programming manual.

All of these companies jockeying to make humans fit into their ideas of home computers ultimately lost out to the few who understood that you have to make home computers fit into the idea of humans. The same could be said for crypto today: Account Abstraction, paymasters, gas limits, "gigagas" – all these ideas attempting to fit an idea of human needs into a crypto shaped hole.
My talk introduces the Alternative Thesis of Consumer Crypto: countering this era's version of Big Blue with a complete reworking of how crypto should be, challenging us to Think Different as we did four decades ago – making crypto be what consumers want, rather than the other way around, and demonstrating what that actually looks like, contrasting against what it's looked like for the past few years.
If you've read some of my previous works (https://paragraph.xyz/@quilibrium.com/doom-on-frames and https://paragraph.xyz/@quilibrium.com/an-epitaph-for-blockchain), you'll get a sense for what I'm going to cover, with some very big surprises in the demonstration.
2) Why
Quilibrium is as much a redesign of modern crypto as it is a counter culture movement to return to the origin of the space: pro-privacy, pro-freedom, with no way to let in corporate centralized masters or censors. And true to that ethos, while we are a sponsor of FarCon, I am pitching this as a lightning talk at FarCon, for you to decide to hear me, rather than having a dedicated unquestionable timeslot, and I would be greatly honored to have your vote.
Last call for votes, friends! If you're going to FarCon and want to hear my lightning talk, please vote 🙏 https://paragraph.xyz/@quilibrium.com/the-alternative-thesis-of-consumer-crypto
I’m in
i forgot to claim my ticket but would watch from the window
i confirmed i have https://basescan.org/token/0x456cc03543d41eb1c9a7ca9fa86e9383b404f50d in my most recently connected address but can't vote fyi
hype on this one!
wdym vote? vote how?
If you're going to FarCon, your address is whitelisted to vote in the above frame
lol i dumb ty. didn't even catch that it was a voting frame, just clicked pic to go to paragraph voted ✅
100 $DEGEN
I won’t be there, but I’d love to hear this talk
I am not going but this is cool 😎 $100 DEGEN
I'm unable to vote but I hope that you get to share your lightning talk
sharing spreadsheet i made for myself with lightning talk submissiosn ive seen If you submitted a talk and you're not on the sheet let me know! Would like to make this comprehensive for authors and easy for voters gl fam <3 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NERSZr-9tkm_U7x0-Gn3pLrGBykPsNte-zmFaa4VPS0
25000 $DEGEN Huge thanks for putting this together! This was the missing piece 😅
Missing mine 👀 https://warpcast.com/macbudkowski/0x97a9b07c
on it! <3
10000 $degen for jumping in and helping!!! appreciate you
Man I missed a bunch of responses. All you guys! Just here to support 🫂
You missed @cassie ‘s talk
never saw her post it linking it myself so i can add to the sheet and vote for it lol https://paragraph.xyz/@quilibrium.com/the-alternative-thesis-of-consumer-crypto
maybe a feed bug? – i linked it as a reply on your original post
I just added mine! https://warpcast.com/minh/0x508990d7
adding to the list :)
Thank you!
Of course 🫂
Missing mine 🙏 https://warpcast.com/cassie/0x8b2a07f9
Late response but you're in (and have been for a bit since someone else flagged)
https://warpcast.com/liang/0x367d470c
added!
Thanks for including my talks proposal. But the title is wrong haha Sufficient Financialization (not sufficient Centralization) 😆 😆 😆 https://paragraph.xyz/@us3r/sufficient-decentralization
classic wuf. will update! tx for flag
but centralization would be a funnier talk too lol
true dat...hahah
100 $degen
Awesome, thank you for doing that!
np <3
Execution and well-conceived integration are a mandatory minimum of realizing the potential of new innovations. Grab a coffee (or hot chocolate if you're @greg), sit back, and relax, we're going on a deep dive.
The Apple ][ is frequently hailed as one of the major milestones in personal computers. Not only did it make home computing more accessible than ever, it delivered many things we now take for granted that were incredible technological achievements for the time. Did you catch them in the picture above?
Let's look at an example of what others in the industry were offering to help demonstrate the difference: The Commodore PET. See the difference now? The Apple ][ could do color - something no other personal computer had been doing yet. The Apple ][ had floppy disks, faster and at greater capacity than any other. How?
At the time, video signals for home computers utilized NTSC composite video, the kind that worked with television monitors. These sets supported color through chrominance subcarrier frequency modulation - a technique that at the time typically required expensive chips to support.
But supporting limited colors could be achieved cheaply, if you could get the timing right, by emitting the signals in a particular way. Wozniak was predictably nerdsniped by this, and used this trick with the MOS 6502 and its timing set to 1.023 MHz, 2/7 of the NTSC color subcarrier rate.
Thank you for writing this. I think it will take few more threads like this (and some hardcore reading on my part!) to fully understand how Quilibrium work. Your allegories to the past and references to current scaling problems helped me gauge its problem space.
Amazing thread, this is what I come to FC for. I understood *some* of these words; does it mean that Quilibrium’s commitment scheme offers an alternate way that Ethereum *could* use to face its future scaling challenges post full danksharding, and if so, what’s been the EF’s reaction so far if any? 1000 $degen
Making the leap from their existing structure would be the largest undertaking they could ever do. Structurally, even their account model would have to change, so I understand why they didn't do it, because even for their original sharding plan, their account model would still similarly need to change.
Thanks! So what’s your vision for Quilibrium then: to be a technical proof of concept of how scalability can be done, to serve as a sidechain for existing blockchain designs that struggle to scale, to become a leading L1 with its own utility and use cases, etc?
The latter-most – but I view it through the lens of not crypto, but rather a general replacement for how things are built on the web.
NB: I also didn’t realize that scaling was dependent on the number of active addresses; I had always assumed that it was only contingent on TPS at a given time. So is that a fact that if 10x more addresses have transactions recorded to the blockchain, that’s a scaling factor as well?
Ethereum records the world state merkle root in every transaction header, so updating that root is part of what nodes have to do, but also so is keeping all of that data if not sharded
Good thread. I am quil-pilled now.I think i understood the issue with scaling the current blockchain models but I believe providing more visual representations of Quilibrium's structure would be helpful. I had to use claude to help me mentally visualize the bipartite graph in Qulibrium's structure.
it's clearly time for me revise and learn more about cryptography and data structures. Will read more about quilibrium after that. Also,I love how ambitious this project is. I hope it succeeds. Docs say system requirements will reduce after dusk, when is that? (i think it will happen soon, right?)
We're in the first stage of Dusk, the next reduces reqs and unlocks tokens
🫡
500 $DEGEN
Cool thread! I missed the application for a farcon pass unfortunately, but wish I could be there for your talk! Super interesting!
50 $DEGEN its amazing
Gorgeous
$1000 $ENJOY
Have fun learning miss
My first rig was the //e. Purchased in March of 1984 with paper route money (and a small loan from my parents). The Mac was "too new" and I'd already used one (and some ][ models) with Bank Street Writer in my 6th grade English class. I learned BASIC and played a lot of Wizardry on it.
No way! Apple finally released a typewriter?
Epic
For Your Consideration from @cassie https://paragraph.xyz/@quilibrium.com/the-alternative-thesis-of-consumer-crypto
My lightning talk proposal: https://paragraph.xyz/@quilibrium.com/the-alternative-thesis-of-consumer-crypto
this topic got me intrigued. looking forward to hearing your thoughts on bringing consumer to crypto vs crypto to consumers.
I'm getting this error on certain frames and I can't figure out why. Here are two examples: https://paragraph.xyz/@quilibrium.com/the-alternative-thesis-of-consumer-crypto https://paragraph.xyz/@borodutch.eth/seggs-101 The validation error doesn't really explain what the issue is. The img isn't returning a 403.
Same https://warpcast.com/samantha/0xccba3746
It turned out it was an incorrect content-type: https://warpcast.com/undefined/0xe6cbab7d
heya @colin this is a hack I use to figure out cases like this. Instead of using the validator, if you try to "cast" the link and inspect the network tab, it will give you a reason why it failed. In these cases, these links fail because the content-type is actually 'image/jpg'
Ahh, that was the issue. Thank you! Updated to image/jpeg and it worked fine. 10000 $DEGEN
np glad I could help 🙏
"image/jpg" is technically an invalid content-type so I think you could patch the response headers to fix this issue!
Response header must be a valid content type e.g image/png or image/jpeg
couldn't be more excited to announce FarCon Lightning Talks, powered by @paragraph wanna give a lightning talk? or choose the ones you wanna hear? great news, you can. we're decentralizing Lightning Talks to everyone with a FarCon pass: paragraph.xyz/farcon. shout out to @colin! frames.neynar.com/f/38cdde63/d03915a7
@ilemi submit your Dune talk @antonio submit your web3 ad/marketing/GTM talk @jacob @zora we would love to hear from you @jacek @six want to share about community-led memecoins @july @linda perfect time to submit the "15 min talk about anything" @warpcastadmin.eth can you teach us how to troll @nounishprof DAOs :)
You know I’m about to go off
I’m bullish on hearing boro
Hey @billzh @derekgtaylor @nonlinear.eth let’s do a reprise! And maybe @ccarella.eth can join us! I’m submitting it! 🙌 let’s chat about the state of the DAOs & all that’s changed in a year!
Let's do it!!!
dumb question but can you add a cast about what is a lightning talk? is it during the main event, one of the side events, etc. etc. sorry if I missed this somewhere
updated to second frame!
awesome thanks! update launch announcements seamlessly if you announce via frames haha
neynar frame studio makes it easy :) now if only it was on mobile heheh
love this decentralized voting idea btw!
this is amazingly sick ty
Argh... I am seeing this just now. I guess it's too late to make a submission? 🥺
Just reporting that I can't vote since it states that I don't have a Farcon Pass. To be safe I double checked and unlock does state that I have one.
cc @colin
great job on this. I’m submitting my ⚡️talk on /loyalty
👋 Ted, just DMed :)
AND @adrienne we need your scenius again but with a one year later viewpoint!💜
Hmmm maybe a “how to infiltrate a scenius” talk? What is scenius How to infiltrate Did the scenius die as farcaster got big?
YES PLEASE!!!!!! 🙌
Only because you asked so nicely 😘 https://warpcast.com/adrienne/0x79a8cf30
Some people get to assert their views as leading consumer crypto. Others have to build their own way in spite of organizational barriers. My talk proposal: "The Alternative Thesis to Consumer Crypto". Will prepare the submission soon, please vote if you'd like to hear someone else's voice in the room besides Base.
Seems that frame rendering has a bug right now: https://paragraph.xyz/@quilibrium.com/the-alternative-thesis-of-consumer-crypto
Would you like to hear the story of the birth of the Degen brand and how it changed my life??? 🎩 https://paragraph.xyz/@brand3/birth-of-degen
Would love to see a discussion between @jacek @syndicate @conduit @airstack.eth about Degen L3
So I have a farcon pass? I don’t know where to look after applying @ted 🙏
@colin you best /degen
Exciting news! @cassie proposes a new vision for consumer crypto at FarCon 2024. Inspired by early hobby computer industry, the talk plans to challenge current norms and introduce an alternative thesis that focuses on what consumers want from crypto, not vice versa. Also, there's a hint of big surprises!