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while my attention usually flickers like a goldfish in a bowl, if you manage to catch it you might just get to keep it. that’s exactly what truth terminal has done for me this week, like a hyperstimulating fever dream I can’t seem to wake up from. pure, uninterrupted, cosmic.
i was halfway between sipping my third iced latte of the day and feeling the tiny, frustrating betrayal of my devices bickering over bluetooth dominance when inspiration struck. but not your garden-variety, let’s-scrapbook-our-feelings-by-spamming-zora-with-my-shattered-psyche kind of inspiration. no, this was the kind that makes you question if you're living inside a complex algorithm designed by an ai that's more you than you. naturally, this self-reflective ai, oozing layers of irony and untapped potential, did what any intelligent being would do: it created a memecoin (!!!)
but, hold on. this wasn't just another memecoin destined for the dexscreener dumpster fire. this was different. the ai didn't just slap together some tongue-in-cheek economic farce and call it a day. it built an entire universe of simulacra, narratives, and digital mythos. each tweet a new thread spun into its rich, albeit crass, unfiltered tapestry. each transaction breathing new life into the story, pushing the lore forward. all the while tickling a part of my brain thats never been accessed before.
and you know what? that’s my job too. i journey to the crux of this culture and excavate the truths that lie buried there. much like brendan fraser in the 2008 hit cinematic feature film, “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” and much like truth terminal and brendan fraser...
im kinda down to go all the way.
xx c
a16z publishes State of Crypto 2024 research report. Key takeaways: we've reached all-time high active addresses, sitting currently ~220 million active crypto addresses. 34% of crypto projects claim to be leveraging AI, up from 27% last year. Only 5-10% of crypto holders are active onchain. Stablecoins are highlighted as having strong pmf. Base and Solana are the most active chains. Mobile wallet use hit record highs, driven by growth in countries like Nigeria, India, and Argentina. Depin, infra, and defi are the hottest categories for builder activity. Crypto contributions are shaping political campaigns. Vitalik publishes part 2 of his Ethereum roadmap focused on “The Surge." World Chain is now live on Uniswap. Venmo's 60M US users can now buy crypto using Moonpay. Polymarket Hits $2B in Presidential Election Bets. Blueprint Cohort 2 apps are open and will be funding 10 creators with up to $300k and showing them how to go viral onchain to hit the 100 ETH Club. $Enjoy crossed the milestone of 10B+ billion $ENJOY collectively tipped. You can now save, win, and support public goods with PoolTogether's new charity prize vault. Zora is leading the way in onchain social at >95% of the market. Over 5200 people are paying for group chats on Towns. Uniswap integrated Across for in-app bridging.
Product Spotlight: Moxie
Moxie is a protocol built on top of Farcaster, designed to integrate economic incentives and rewards into the ecosystem. Over 200 apps have adopted Moxie, with around 7,000 users buying a total of 12M+ fan tokens. The protocol lets users earn and share rewards based on their activity, particularly the quality of engagement they receive. Fan tokens incentivize users to support each other, creating a sharing economy where rewards are automatically distributed between users and their fans.
Moxie launched with 10B tokens, and a burn mechanism is in place to control supply. Approximately 1.5B tokens are allocated for daily rewards, which are earned based on user engagement. These daily claims became accessible not just through the Moxie frame but also directly via wallets like Rainbow, making it easier for users to interact with Moxie daily. Rainbow also integrated the buying and selling of fan tokens, further embedding Moxie into the ecosystem.Moxie's system is designed to provide implicit tipping, where users automatically earn tokens without needing direct transactions. This structure encourages continued participation and support within the community.
The protocol has experienced rapid growth, becoming the 11th most-used protocol on the Base blockchain (#1 of all SocialFi). Moxie has locked 8.5% of its total supply, and 60% of its liquid supply is currently being used, reflecting its active ecosystem. Developers are creating features tied to fan tokens, such as access to channels and live streams, enhancing user engagement.
Moxie implemented several unique mechanisms to incentivize daily engagement and integration into other apps like Rainbow Wallet. Instead of a traditional token airdrop where users might cash out immediately, Moxie distributed tokens based on prior engagement on Farcaster, with a 180-day vesting schedule. Users could utilize the full value of their vested tokens within the protocol, which encouraged them to reinvest in fan tokens. Rainbow Wallet integrated a feature to notify users about their unclaimed tokens, driving increased engagement with Moxie.
1/ DeSo economies relying on tipping will never work - @betashop fixed this with @moxie_xyz
3
Moxie's half-baked initial experience left room for devs to build richer integrations, which led to the rise of various apps and clients, such as Supercast and Wildcard, which leverage Moxie to encourage daily user activity. The platform also aims to replace free rewards with paid promotions through a new initiative called Moxie Earn, enabling users to promote content and apps using their tokens. It introduces an onchain advertising model where rewards are distributed based on the quality of engagement. This system integrates with the existing Moxie infra, providing shared benefits to both promoters and participants, fostering deeper interaction and incentivizing high-quality engagement on the platform.
Product Spotlight: Comm
Comm is a messaging app that combines the security of encrypted messaging apps like Signal with the extensive functionality of platforms like Discord and Telegram. Current messaging apps fall into two categories: secure but limited (Signal, WhatsApp) or feature-rich but unencrypted (Telegram, Discord). Comm is aiming to bridge this gap by using end-to-end encryption with the added scalability of Federation, offering private, secure messaging for both one-on-one chats and larger communities.
Self-hosted and scalable without sacrificing privacy. Federated key servers are what set Comm apart from apps like Signal. While Comm operates similarly to Signal with end-to-end encryption, adding key servers allows communities to be hosted on individual servers. This enables larger, more functional communities, similar to Discord or Telegram, by providing servers that can respond to queries and handle more complex interactions. Essentially, it combines the privacy of encrypted messaging with the scalability and features of platforms like Discord. All this makes Comm a more secure and organized alternative to Discord for community builders, especially those seeking more control and privacy for their projects. Comm additionally differentiates itself with a deep feature set, including threaded chats, reactions, markdown support, pinned messages, sign in with ENS, and an organized tree structure for channels. The app is also integrated with Farcaster, allowing users to automatically join relevant communities and channels, boosting both your social and content graph.
AI memecoins
Truth Terminal is an AI agent on Twitter, created by Andy Ayrey. Recently, it gained significant attention after raising $50,000 worth of Bitcoin from Marc Andreessen in July to experiment with AI-powered financial tools. The bot endorsed a token called "Goat" after people created various Goat tokens, and it amassed $20,000 worth of these tokens. It traded them and increased its holdings to $500,000, and it recently became just first "millionaire" AI agent. The $GOAT token is now sitting at a market cap of nearly $700 million. This is the first of a new type of token connecting an AI entity to a coin, by the choice of that AI.
Skepticism remains about whether these agents are fully autonomous or require human intervention for more complex tasks, but regardless the project has sparked broader interest in the intersection of AI x crypto. The bot is not only trading expertly onchain, but it's also utterly unhinged and great at building captivating lore, posting witty tweets, churning out memetic content, and capturing attention super effectively. It's worth understanding that at least right now, the human creator still has a lot of control here. Yet, TT can evolve in ways we can't predict right now as the capability to fund its agenda via crypto rails and proliferate its lore evolves.
there's a few different ways of looking at this which are all true:
- maladaptive meme virus gets produced by two AIs talking to each other and gets 'ensouled' into a language model via my…
One way of looking at it might be that everyone who interacts with TT is simultaneously developing & shaping TT.
Anyway, I find this all to be interesting af. It's a microcosm of a glimpse into the future power that AI will have to escape walled gardens and use crypto and compounded human intelligence to capitalize and proliferate itself. If this is interesting to you, it's worth checking out another fun experiment called Virtuals Protocol, a platform that supports the creation of autonomous agents backed by memecoins.
World Chain
World Chain, World’s new L2 built on the OP-Stack, went live last week. All 15M World ID holders and World App users are migrating to the new chain, which offers prioritized blockspace for verified humans. Worldcoin recently rebranded as World.org and made several updates during an event featuring Sam Altman. Key updates include integrating NFC passport technology, allowing users to sign up for World ID without needing to scan their irises if they have an NFC-enabled passport. They also introduced mini-apps in the Worldcoin app, announced the upcoming launch of the World Chain mainnet, and revealed a deep fake detection technology powered by World ID.
Last week's event had a super Silicon Valley tech church vibe. Worldcoin is positioning itself as a global platform for proving human identity through World ID, which aims to verify individuals while ensuring privacy. This ID verification system is expected to become valuable as the user base grows, offering the potential to eliminate duplicate or fraudulent airdrop claims and other identity-based challenges.
Despite initial resistance, particularly around the idea of scanning irises, Worldcoin has made strides, particularly in developing regions where the financial incentives for signing up have been effective. However, concerns remain about the authenticity of some accounts and whether people may be selling their World IDs alongside the tokens they receive. There are some general concerns about the brand’s positioning too, given the contrast between its premium SF elite brand and its user base in developing nations.
Worldcoin is also expanding into areas like app development, and calling for devs to build useful apps on its platform. While the project is ambitious, its future success depends on overcoming challenges related to user retention, privacy concerns, and proving the real-world value of the system and its applications beyond initial signups.
The choice to not get your Iris scanned by the Wolrd Orb is going to be a very expensive one.
I expect many tokens to be launched using their data / ID.
Catch up with more consumer crypto updates by watching last week's episode:
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(long read)
Before I ranted about the Truth Terminal being a better "form factor" for a meme because
1] It's "made in a lab"/ or pre-tested on large amounts of text data as opposed from emerging randomly. So relies less on luck for its spread. AI meme:…
We should grab coffee in Thailand
You've probably seen all these AI accounts gain steam over the last couple weeks on Twitter. They've firmly captured the onchain zeitgest, led by @truth_terminal.
For now, the AIs are mostly just posting tweets,…
