Hello, gang

It's your mans @brownalytics here. So much has happened in just a couple of weeks since $DEGEN Airdrop #1 went live, and the momentum around this project has shown no signs of stopping.

With attention on this community-created token growing every day, token price so far in Up Only mode (green candles 13 out of 15 days since launch), and multiple projects and ideas now set in motion, I'm taking it upon myself to document this unique story as it unfolds.

So, here it is: the first edition of The Degen Post, where I'll be amplifying all $degen-related news, sharing project updates, and waxing philosophically on this grand social experiment.

How It All Started

When I started a Degen Thursdays column in my Substack back in December, the $DEGEN token wasn't even on my radar. I was a Farcaster lurker posting weekly (if that) with little engagement, still figuring out the whole channel layout, and failing to convince frens native to other platforms to give it a run. I was excited by Farcaster's potential, but underwhelmed by the content and what seemed like a small active user base fragmented into tiny islands. That all changed in late December when I stumbled into the /degen channel, which was by far the liveliest channel, and I minted this NFT as an afterthought while uploading some of my photos to be mintable on Zora:

I didn't know it at the time, but this mint counted as a points multiplier for an airdrop campaign for a token called $DEGEN launched by @jacek that was set to launch on January 8th. I thought I was late to the party, and, at the time, my bones were weary from a year of airdrop fatigue, shit projects, memecoin euphoria, and rugpulls. I farmed along, not taking it seriously, with low expectations. For the culture.

Curiosity turned to cooperation as I took note of something that distinguished this airdrop from all the others I've seen: $DEGEN was truly community-driven. Now, the feed wasn't immune to the low-level engagement farming and wen-moon-ism that plagues other airdrops, but lurking in the spam forest were fellow forward-thinking degens who saw $DEGEN as a blank slate to create whatever the fuck we wanted to make out of it.

A truly open playground of ideas without transaction-fee farming or staking required, no mysterious dev squads and VCs, and most of all, an enthusiastic community with an inclusive ethos that fully embraced degen culture while seeking to evolve it.

Degen DAO

I wrote about $DEGEN on my Substack as Airdrop 1 wound down. What solidified my conviction in $DEGEN and the /degen community was the formation of the Degen DAO, founded by @purp, an independent entity not directly affiliated with the $DEGEN token project but created to pool resources with the vision of incubating future projects to increase $DEGEN's visibility and use-case. NFT projects, apps, content, etc.

It's been three weeks since I joined Degen DAO, and it's already the most rewarding (financially, creatively... emotionally lol) DAO experience I've had in nearly two years of participating in DAOs. The ideas are flowing, it's still early, and the initial .0169Ξ membership fee entry (which has since closed) now has a .2Ξ floor on the secondary market. There's an abundance of ideas floating around for $DEGEN-related projects, and as they crystallize, I'll be sharing them in this publication.

What's Next?

Well, this is fun. 15 days since launch, $DEGEN is currently at an ATH as of January 22nd, 3 AM UTC with no signs of slowing down. As with all small-market cap tokens, volatility can run wild in either direction, but every selling dip seems to have bigger buyers waiting, and hodlers holding tight. I haven't seen conviction like this in a long time.

There are 1,161 holders, almost $450k in liquidity with a 9.6m market cap. Everyone who faded $DEGEN two weeks ago has since done an about-face or are quiet af. With $DEGEN being built on Base, which is still fairly new among Ethereum Layer 2's, and run by Coinbase with its massive user base of 150 million accounts, a potential incoming wave is in very close proximity with less onboarding friction than other Layer 2s.

Mind you, this has all happened so far with very little presence on X/Twitter, which remains largely ignorant of $DEGEN (the official X account currently only has around 500 followers). The ideas and potential projects being talked about in the /degen channel are abundant. In a landscape full of meme/shitcoins fueled entirely by speculation and whales waiting to dump on your heads, we may be witnessing the emergence of a new kind of token: one that captures the euphoria and excitement of such projects but transcends it to become something more than a cash grab. What that looks like is entirely up to the community that pushes it forward, and just a glance at the Farcaster ecosystem reveals a potential that will undoubtedly garner more attention and liquidity. We are so, so early. Strap in.