Once upon a time, in a village much like any other, there wandered a group of curious travelers. They arrived with nothing but an empty pot, a handful of stones, and an idea that would change the village forever.
When I was going through the process of buying my house, I decided to give it a name, because names are important.
I named it Stone Soup Hermitage based on my belief that economic success can come from pooling and sharing resources so that all thrive rather than just a few.
"Stone Soup" comes from a fairy tale story.
As the story goes, the travelers told the villagers they were going to make stone soup, but they needed a carrot. A villager gives them a carrot. Then the travelers told the village they needed some meat to make it heartier. Someone ran to their home and grabbed some leftover cuts of meat. Bit by bit, more villagers added to the Stone Soup, and before long, there was a rich and hearty meal for all in the village to partake in, no matter how much or how little they'd each been able to contribute on their own.
Farcaster and Moxie
I came to Farcaster in July. The 12th was my first post, and I've been posting fairly consistently since. Loving every minute of it. It's got a different vibe to it than other spaces, and the built-in tipping culture meant people were generous to casters who inspired them in a frictionless way that doesn't happen on other platforms. For someone to tip me on Facebook, they have to go off app to one of the payment platforms, and Facebook loves to hide any post mentioning any raising of money or selling of anything at all. Cuz they want you to buy ads.
I've made enough to keep going with the donations from my Facebook audience since late 2019, but it's not growing the way that I want to grow my life.
In fact, my Facebook income has been shrinking from a combination of algorithmic pressures and my own burnout with having to churn out the same sort of content over and over and over because it's what's expected.
One day, during a meditation where I was pondering what I was going to do to bring my income back up to a growth level, I got a nudge to explore crypto.
Not long after, a friend mentioned Farcaster in their newsletter.
I explored.
I got hooked.
And then Moxie came.
Once upon a time, in a village much like any other, there wandered a group of curious travelers. They arrived with nothing but an empty pot, a handful of stones, and an idea that would change the village forever.
Cast on Farcaster, and when someone interacts with your cast, you earn a bit of Moxie. How much depends on the Far Score, a metric that roughly correlates to their social influence within the Farcaster network.
You can swap that Moxie out for other crypto, or even for cash. You can also hold the Moxie, send it to someone else, or use it for Fan Token auctions.
I won't get too much into the functions of Moxie in this, there's lots of docs out there about that you can find.
What I'm pondering here is how much Moxie reminds me of Stone Soup.
You bring what you have.
You. Your content. Your personality and your dreams. Your ideas and your projects.
You share. You engage.
And together, rewards come in the form of Moxie and other tip tokens.
The more engagement, the more the "village" comes together, the greater the rewards.
The more variety we bring, the more flavorful the soup will be.
But it's going to take some work to make it a Perpetual Soup.
A Perpetual Soup is a type of soup where you save the stock from day to day, adding new ingredients each day to add new flavor to it. There's restaurants that lay claim to soups with stock that is decades old.
How can we make Moxie into a perpetual driver of the economics of Farcaster?
I'm a nun. A contemplative monastic. I spent years arranging my life so I could sit and think and learn about things all day long.
So I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I'm going to engage with the economy of Farcaster.
It won't survive if everyone cashes out immediately everyday, but if nothing is ever cashed out, it's just a digital game. There needs to be balance between holding, investing, swapping/cashing it out.
My own split that I came to is:
10% donated
30% invested in Fan Tokens
30% holding for Moxie to rise
30% cashed out to live life
Those numbers may change in the future depending on how big my account grows on the platform - I don't actually need a lot of money to create the life I want, so the more that grows, the more I can invest back into the community through donations and Fan Tokens.
But as illustrated in the Stone Soup story, a village doesn't thrive when members are isolating themselves in their homes, hoarding their resources and ideas. It thrives when it's shared, when the good ideas are given opportunity to take root and grow, and when everyone has the opportunity to get their needs met in a way that works for where they're at.
And I think that Moxie, and similar tokenomics experiments we'll see in the future, will go a long way towards a world where we can all thrive.
My personal goal is to get myself to a place where I can not only thrive, but also start to uplift others. Because it's not just about me.
It's about all of us.
Gwynne
