good morning angels,
i planned to unleash a biting critique of the HBO bitcoin documentary that aired yesterday, but the whole affair fizzled out. in the end, my magnesium glycinate won, and those Bitcoin forum screenshots blurred into the fabric of my dreams. i woke to a pallid, melancholic New York morning, its dullness almost indistinguishable from the gestalt evoked in the documentary.
at least we all had fun on speculating on polymarket ahead of the release. in the writing world we call this foreshadowing. also ahead of the reveal, memecoins linked to the alleged creators of Bitcoin surged in popularity. $petertodd even edged a ~$5M market cap. but everything came crashing down once Todd was named Satoshi, only for him to deny it, leaving many disappointed with the evidence presented by the filmmakers.
it's almost like satoshi was smart enough to not only birth Bitcoin but also to cleverly dodge being doxxed by some fringe QAnon Hollywood director. better luck next time!
enjoy a week in consumer crypto below.
xx c
HBO released a new documentary yesterday claiming to have uncovered Satoshi's identity. In it, the creators claim that bitcoin was developed by prominent bitcoin developer, Peter Todd. But Todd denies the allegations, and many are disappointed with the evidence presented by the filmmakers. Interface introduced Trades, a feature that lets users see trading profits and losses for any user, follow and copy trades based on their history, now available for Ethereum and Base. Multiplier is an upcoming betting app that lets users play games to win leveraged payouts in microcaps and memecoins, with the option to earn free plays by posting content, and it's set to launch on Abstract after being incubated on Blast. The rug.fun team’s latest experiment is very fun and degenerate: Coins that earn 1,000,000 points within 6 hours are deployed on Uniswap with bonus prize pool liquidity, while those that fail get rugged and fund the pool, all while creators earn 10% of the supply if their coin launches.
Drakula, now live on the app store, is like TikTok but videos are minted so there's trading, collecting, and liquid secondary markets, and creators can pin tokens to their profiles and earn fees for any trades that happen from their videos. Highlight added support for ERC1155s. Kiki News is running a writing contest with Nouns. The prize pool is 3.5 ETH, and all crypto writers are welcome to participate. Songcamp launched its revamped onchain music app. Layer3 is now live on Solana, aiming to be the consumer fun hub driving every next transaction, with partnerships from leading protocols and a vertically integrated app and distribution layer for Solana apps, all powered by the L3 token. Phantom is rolling out beta support for Base. Dynamic artwork from Ryan Koopmans and Alice Wexell will be the first-ever Bitcoin Ordinal to appear in a live auction at Christie’s on Oct 10. You can now search any ENS address in Google and you'll see the Ethereum balance right in search results (alongside a link to Etherscan).
Product Spotlight: Ponder
Ponder, co-founded by Colin & Ben, Ponder (SC07), aims to improve on legacy platforms like Quora, Reddit, and SurveyMonkey by using decentralized social networks to enable users to curate human insights. Ponder is a key player in the Farcaster community, providing survey tools that gather opinions from devs, artists, and users. On Farcaster, one of the most effective ways to engage your audience and foster deeper conversations is through the use of composer actions, which transform passive scrolling into active participation. These actions empower users to create interactive content like polls, quizzes, and other dynamic formats that go beyond simple posts. Ponder allows for token-based gating, reward systems, reputation systems, and the use of open social graphs, giving it a much more dynamic and real-time approach to gathering information than traditional social media or Q&A platforms. The team is additionally working on integrating predictive polls and other gamified elements to enhance user engagement and increase the platform's value as a knowledge hub.
Ponder’s mission is to provide real-time, actionable insights from communities. In the past 3 months, Ponder has facilitated 19,335 polls, gathered 295,880 total votes, and has 99,801 participants engaging on the platform. One of the opportunities Ponder seeks to unlock is the potential for users to contribute knowledge and insights and be rewarded. With future plans to tokenize and redistribute value back to its network of contributors, Ponder aims to build an enriched and useful data layer (and token network) that could appeal to advertisers, AI systems, and devs.
Farcaster is currently in a phase of steady growth with many builders actively engaged, though not at the peak frenzy seen in previous months. They've been focused on delivering meaningful updates, like enhancing channels and technical features, and with ample cash reserves, its builders remain confident in the platform's potential for an "exponential moment" and continued growth. Colin also points to the multiplicative power of giving surface area to developers. Rather than relying on a top-down approach, Farcaster recognizes the value of inspiring developers and granting them the autonomy to innovate in their own lanes, ultimately enhancing the protocol as a whole. This approach aligns with the broader sentiment that decentralized social offers vast potential for developers, builders, and users as it continues to evolve.
Live & online Fridays at 10am PT / 1pm ET.
Monad !
We've been stoked by the energy in the Monad builder ecosystem lately. Last week they hosted Monad Madness, a pitch competition offering $1M in prizes, with judges from top VCs and over $60M in capital dedicated to Monad ecosystem teams. The competition is taking place in two sessions: one was last week in NYC and the next will be in Seoul from Dec 6-8 this year. Here are the teams that made it to the finals in NYC and some overall themes from the first pitch competition!
1st place: @earnos_io - democratizing the $1T ad industry with an app that allows brands to surgically target their ad spend, better aligning consumers in the process. EarnOS is using web proofs to allow users to prove their status, allowing advertisers to only target users that have a specific attribute or that have done a particular action.
2nd place: @saucegg_ - building a trading app that offers both convenience and security - like Bananagun meets TEEs. The app features a super simple trading interface, social login, and auto-yield, while protecting the user by keeping all trading logic inside a TEE. The team gave a great presentation and is shipping new features quickly.
3rd place: @LEVR_bet - bringing leveraged sports betting to life, where users can bet with up to 5x leverage. This leverage is tied to real-time odds monitoring, with positions automatically liquidated if the odds drop too far. The dynamic nature of real-time risk management—and the ever-present possibility of liquidation—makes the entire experience both more thrilling and rewarding.
Other finalists:
@chippedsocial (SC07!!!) 
- NFC-chipped press-on nails. They are building in a massive market (1B/year) and have already captured significant mindshare (3M impressions, tier 1 press coverage plus partnered with Paris Hilton) while building a product that is unabashedly for women in a space that rarely considers selling to women. I like that there are so many possibilities for further expansion, as the product touches decentralized identity, network creation, and biohacking, while already carving out a niche with high virality and margins.
@DrakeExchange - building a 1-click perpetuals DEX with a hybrid order book and AMM model to take on the CEX monopoly. The team implements new features quickly, like order expiries, margin collateral swap, a stablecoin for funding rate arbitrage, to build a feature-rich and slick interface for trading.
@Plato2Earn - building a gamified dining experience where eaters, restaurants, and network participants can all collectively win. Eaters earn rewards for supporting local businesses, restaurants gain valuable user acquisition tools and access to purchasing data, while Plato enthusiasts can stake on the success of their favorite spots. What stands out is Plato’s unique approach, targeting a vast market while executing a strong, community-focused strategy centered on individual neighborhoods.
@CadenceProtocol - building a 1-click cross-chain perpetuals aggregator. Users submit an order on one chain, which is split into suborders on different exchanges/chains and executed by solvers. Symphony gives you an AA wallet on every chain so that you have full custody of the position on each chain, while aggregation tools allow you to manage positions individually or in aggregate.
@TowneSquarexyz - enabling Dapp Abstraction to meaningfully accelerate the onboarding process for all apps in the Monad ecosystem. Their side-by-side video showing onboarding with and without Townesquare was night and day.
teams are being thoughtful about simplifying onboarding flows; many teams are building mobile-first apps and utilizing @privy_io, @turnkeyhq, @dynamic_xyz, or others for social sign-in and key management
teams are increasingly aware that being deeply crypto-native is a prerequisite for early traction and momentum. Many pointed to the strength of the Monad Community as something they wanted to emulate in their own community-building efforts
teams with a precise/narrow value prop that can immediate generate revenue, with much larger adjacent verticals or markets that provide the possibility of expansion, did well
Judges looked especially for value creation, ability to capture a portion of that value, robustness of UA (user acquisition) plans, robustness of mechanism, product-founder fit, clarity and brevity of presentation
Full recording of the finals here!
internet explorers every friday, live n online. This friday with TH from Kizzy!
48
