gm and happy uptober,
this week im hanging out at Mainnet in nyc, asking suited men why we can't just print more money, just to feel something. a man in a cloak offered me a sip of his "elixir" before telling me why i should build on Tron and a slew of network state anarchists invited me to their side events in bangkok where there will most definitely be a POAP claim and a cold plunge.
the culture is alive.
also, in case you were wondering how this newsletter is curated every week, this is how:
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enjoy a week in consumer crypto below.
xx c
Zora Network is now on DEX Screener and they released a big little update in the app. Polymarket is now the #2 ranked app within the News section in the app store. Paragraph released a Farcaster mini app for in-feed articles. Pudgy Penguins joined DRiP. Is memecoin season back? Hamster Kombat’s highly anticipated airdrop failed to live up to expectations. LISA is releasing Victor Mosquera's painting "Personas" for fractional ownership by up to 100 collectors, each receiving a limited-edition NFT and signed physical print, with a 72-hour presale for existing members and a special offer for major collectors. Since debuting at SC06 a year ago, Pods has achieved $1M+ in mint volume, onboarded 75+ pods, published 1k+ episodes onchain, completed 475k mints, and attracted 120k collectors. GG Edge City Lanna, a research community focused on governance, collective decision-making, and mechanism design, is hosting a week-long residency in Chiang Mai, Thailand, from October 28 to November 1, themed around Prediction Markets and their broader applications.
David Greenstein and his team built 2 tools for artists: Sound.xyz, a music marketplace, and Vault.fm, a platform that helps artists directly reach their fans without relying on social media algorithms or paid advertising. Here's an update on Sound and the reasoning behind Vault. Soulmates NYC, from Oct 2-8, is launching its 2nd edition, this time featuring a mini-series that captures the experience and uses data to foster serendipitous connections. Viewers can engage through audience voting on challenges via Jokerace via Forma Celestia chain, with all streams live on Unlonely. The Eigen Foundation announced the unlocking of $EIGEN, which allows it to be traded, transferred, or staked, providing greater flexibility for users. This unlock empowers devs and the community to create decentralized services using staked assets, expanding the ecosystem’s potential. Staking is encouraged for diverse execution and validation tasks, strengthening network connections. Alongside this, programmatic incentives will reward stakers and operators supporting Actively Validated Services (AVSs), adding new security layers through intersubjective slashing. EIGEN opened for trading at $4.05 with a $6.8B fully diluted valuation, while transfer restrictions lifted on Sept 30th.
˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚ As heard on Internet Explorers ˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚
Does it actually matter what chain you build on? (ft. Unlonely's move to Solana)
For those under a rock, Brian has been going off on the timeline about moving Unlonely from Base to Solana. He believes that moving chains will solve his relationships with his father.
from a practical viewpoint,the base/evm ecosystem and its users seem to view speculation or tokens as some kind of cardinal sin. at best this is wrong, at worst it’s bad for our space.
additionally, the team at @SolanaFndn has…
But the big questions that come out of this news that are relevant for a lot of founders. The core is, where the hell should I go build? Does where you build matter? Are there different cultures in these chains, and how long will that matter?
Two weeks ago, Unlonely announced a shift away from being a platform-focused app to doubling down on content creation. Despite being known mostly for the dating show they produced, many people are unaware that Unlonely had expanded into livestreaming. The team was trying to balance building a livestreaming platform with content creation, but ultimately realized that they needed to prioritize making their own shows to grow and capture attention.
Brian believes that the true innovation in livestreaming lies in integrating tokens with content, rather than just building platform features. They built several features aimed at streamers, but users struggled to adopt them. This led Unlonely to realize that they needed to focus on creating engaging content first and showcase the potential of their platform through that. If they ever return to being a platform-focused business, it will come after they've fully explored their content-driven approach.
The move to Solana came after the realization that many streamers weren’t using the platform because of its product but because of a sense of chain optimism and partnerships within the Base and Eth ecosystems. This false signal made it difficult to gauge whether they were truly building something users wanted. Brian saw Solana as a better fit for Unlonely’s token and content-focused direction. Solana has a stronger memecoin culture that aligns with Unlonely’s brand and goals and its community is more willing to engage financially and support bold content.
Unlonely is launching a content token called "Boo," which will be at the center of all their future shows. Their upcoming event on October 30th will be a 24-hour livestream set in an abandoned church in New York, where viewers can interact with contestants and unlock new rooms by pumping the Boo token. This mechanic, where content and tokens are tightly integrated, is at the core of Unlonely's strategy.
I know it might burn some bridges with the ETH ecosystem, but I have to serve a specific community. If you try to serve everyone, you end up serving no one… I think chains will continue to serve different needs, and it will matter who supports you.
For him, the multi-chain thesis is flawed—each chain has its own distinct culture, and you need highly opinionated builders to ship quickly. He is more aligned with Solana’s direct, fast-moving environment and prefers it over the endless optimism of Ethereum.
We're very much at a local maxima in crypto right now that is almost defined by these L1 driven maxi conversations. All of it is incredibly unhelpful in the long run but it's the game that we have to play in the short term. Ultimately, Brian thinks that playing into today’s crypto tribalism is necessary for growth, even if it may seem limiting. While a chain-abstracted future could offer broader opportunities, his focus is on building Unlonely’s brand and user base now, rather than waiting for the industry to evolve.
this meeting could have been a correspondence between our ai agents
There’s this narrative bubbling up that the real crypto opportunity is going to be AI agents playing with other agents and autonomously creating value. This aligns with the vision of "Agentic Protocols," where decentralized systems generate revenue independently, with no human employees but many human stakeholders. The opportunity is uniquely enabled by AI primitives moving onchain, and the numerous cultural tailwinds that will allow them to overtake traditional companies. These agents can interact with decentralized networks, performing tasks like trading, creating digital assets, or otherwise interacting with decentralized apps. The focus is on maximizing the "intelligence margin," which refers to the gap between the cost of computation and the economic value produced by these AI agents. While this might take longer than some expect, the potential aligns with the original vision of crypto: automated systems that generate revenue independently, like self-sustaining machines.
The vision is insanely bullish for crypto, and for developers who are able to harness these new tools to outcompete incumbents at providing software and services to humans (and eventually other agents).
It’s actually going to a beautiful place. Where the vocabulary of outlook meetings. Corporate Politics. Bullshit fundraising announcements. Hype cycles. Scams. Exit Liquidity. Becomes archaic and obsolete. Replaced by a new era of real value creation. Where users own and participate in the upside of Artificial Intelligence. Where founders write code, and build something bigger than themselves. Before stepping away to let intelligence self replicate.
The concept of "software as a business tool, not a business model" also encapsulates this shift. While SaaS might be dead as a business model, software itself is still a powerful business weapon. Rather than selling software, companies should use it to gain a competitive edge, increase efficiency in traditional businesses, and then buy those businesses or assets. Similarly crypto protocols might create onchain mechanisms that build up large treasuries, and then shift to focus on treasury management. If you raise capital off an L2, you can build a large treasury—potentially hundreds of millions of dollars—and suddenly your business shifts managing those assets effectively and building a brand that attracts more liquidity to that treasury.
So there's this recognition that long-term sustainable value is going to come from being able to generate revenue and that maybe the purest form of that will be these agents that are out there playing around. Yet as AI accelerates, winners in the long-term will be differentiated in that they'll move away from commoditized software toward creating deeper human connections, communities, and brands. Tokens and ownership in ecosystems foster loyalty and tribalism, allowing people to engage more deeply with platforms. This brand affinity, combined with mechanisms that generate and distribute value, will likely be more important than software itself in the long run.
AI is driving the marginal cost of humanness to zero.
It’s the same pattern that has caused major economic dislocations in the past. In the 1990s, chips drove the marginal cost of computing to zero and we got IBM. The internet drove the marginal cost of distribution down to zero, and gave us Google, Facebook, and Netflix.
Software with a Soul is, for the first time, allowing us to scale up the “softer” more social parts of human interactions. It’s suddenly possible to program, price and distribute “humanness” like bits, rather than atoms.
Shifts like this often open new markets. We expect Software with a Soul to resonate with customers anywhere the supply of humanness is scarce.
So while agentic protocols might power the economic backbone, creating value without human intervention, the real opportunity lies in blending this automation with purpose-driven, human connection. In a world saturated with AI-driven efficiency, brands and communities rooted in human experiences will become increasingly valuable, fostering deeper emotional ties and a sense of belonging that AI cannot replicate. The intersection of tech and humanity, rather than pure financialization, will define the next era of innovation, where emotional resonance drives real value creation.
Build something people want to be a part of.
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internet explorers every friday, live n online.
The Onchain Speakeasy by Cyber x Chipped at the Flower Shop in LES on October 2nd. RSVP.
Come hang with Decent, Privy, and Rally on October 3rd for drinks and snacks on the Hudson River while everyone's in NYC for Mainnet.
Base, Titles, Refraction, Hug, and AAWH Art Collective are throwing an event on October 3rd in Brooklyn to teach you how to train AI models on your artwork and earn on Base. RSVP here.
The first ten years of smart contract blockchains were born of bitcoin’s original cypherpunk values: censorship resistance, open source, permissionlessness, and a new glimmer of building a democratic/equitable internet on top of a…
If Layer3 were an L1, it would have the 7th highest YTD revenue according to @tokenterminal
And you are fading apps?
i’ll be over here helping build things that people will actually use and can be deployed on any of it
