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i was sitting with a zk proofs children's book in one hand, my dior lip oil in the other, oscillating between refreshing polymarket tabs and watching crypto twitter's collective psychosis unfold in real-time. the gummy edible was taking over, and the sleep siren was mixing hypnotic house music to my rapidly surrendering synapses. the markets pulsed with predictions, each trade a small voice in an impossibly large conversation about our future. some call it gambling; I see it as humanity's oldest ritual: trying to make sense of tomorrow.
in that sweet spot between lucidity and surrender, something crystallized. there's a raw beauty in collective awakening, even (especially) in its messiest moments.
so let's look at the news. not just the surface ripples, but the deeper currents beneath – those axiomatic truths that different observers might describe in different words, but which move us all in the same direction.
xx c
so Trump um won the election...and 281+ pro-crypto candidates and counting have now been elected to the House & Senate. Polymarket activity skyrocketed, processing $355M in volume in just five days – more than their entire 2023 volume. The platform's popular vote markets turned into pure chaos as Trump took an early lead. Political memecoin trading experienced several god candles and Bitcoin hit ATH, topping $75k, pushing the crypto market to $2.62T total. All of this because Trump's campaign promised to make crypto great again™️ – pledging to support Bitcoin mining, protect self-custody, add regulatory clarity and drop a bunch of lawsuits, and fire Gary Gensler.
EIC03 Magazine: The Fall '24 issue just dropped and I wrote about consumer crypto in it, just saying. Grab the digital version for free or cop a physical copy. wow.xyz just dropped and its like the pump dot fun on Base, automatic Uniswap listing at a $69K market cap, and $12K of liquidity burned; creators earn 0.5% of every trade on the bonding curve. And coinciding with the launch is dreamcoins, a token launcher built on Zora's WOW protocol. Fees from dreamcoins are used to buy and burn $DREAM, the genesis dreamcoin. Its fun go launch a token.
Metawin got exploited faster than my bank account at Whole Foods ($4M gone, rip). Meanwhile, Rooch Network's co-founder had a whole Netflix episode moment in Bangkok (knife robbery, not the fun kind). And Mt. Gox is out here moving $2.2B in BTC like it's playing hot potato. Base chain's Aerodrome DEX hit $1.3B in TVL Crypto PACs funding: Fairshake and others raised over $200M for pro-crypto candidates. Michigan's pension fund is going full chad with their BTC + ETH ETF holdings. Paxos launches USDG stablecoin: Backed by Kraken, Robinhood, and Galaxy Digital. Meanwhile, Curve DAO is voting on directing crvUSD fees to a stablecoin savings vault, and Citi & Fidelity are jumping on the onchain fund bandwagon
Last week's Internet Explorers featured Mat Dryhurst of Spawning, who's been quietly building the infra for a more equitable AI future while the rest of us were busy watching agents get rugged.
The key insights:
The Public Commons Matter
While everyone else is chasing the next big model, Spawning has been hard at work on public AI infrastructure. By releasing terabytes of Creative Commons content for model training, they're democratizing AI and taking direct action against the monopolization of AI resources.
Data is the Moat
It turns out you don’t need to be a Big Tech behemoth to build competitive AI models; the real advantage isn’t in proprietary tech but in data access. Spawning’s focus is on ethical, transparent data collection, betting that by solving the “data moat” problem, they can enable a thousand AI projects to flourish.
Beyond Consumer AI
While CT is fixated on agent speculation and flashy consumer apps, Mat argues that AI’s real potential lies in building new economic and governance models around ownership and data rights. Essentially, public AI could shift the playing field, making way for a decentralized, community-driven AI economy where creatives and individuals own their models and control their futures.
Pragmatic Optimism
Mat’s grounded approach to AI development is a breath of fresh air. Instead of racing to push boundaries on hypothetical future tech, he advocates focusing on incremental improvements that can make public, ethical AI a reality today. Spawning’s work offers a direct answer to the looming question of whether AI’s future will belong to the public or be monopolized by a handful of players.
A Refreshing Dose of Realism
Mat’s not here to hype agents or spin the next big narrative; his vision is that AI's impact should go beyond consumer conveniences and into building a sustainable, ethical AI infrastructure. And in classic Mat fashion, he doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, saying, "We have no fucking idea," when asked about AI's ultimate future. The takeaway? The future is wide open—but only if we’re willing to build the right rails now.
In short, if you're tired of watching Claude master-prompt its way into twitter threads and want to know what’s really happening beneath the surface, Spawning’s work is worth a look. Catch up on Mat's debates with AI doomers, explore Spawning’s initiatives, and join the vision for a more decentralized, community-led AI future.
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