Foundation auction closed at 0.69E. Fees were a bit ruinous, but still a tidy profit. Best part of this was being able to divert a nice slice to ... she's an amazing artist. Check out her stuff linktr.ee/gracewitherell
Also sent a slice of the pie to EFF
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I *think* we made it? Says we came in at #2 in the current round of voting and the rules say top 10 get in. But don't yet see a way to verify. I'll wait to confirm, but looks like yakcollective will be on mirror shortly, and that's like halfway to being a DAO right?
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Feels like this is the end of Phase 1, Random Acts of Web3ing
Phase 2 calls for some Cunning Acts of Strategery I think
GIF
read image description
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Thanks to all who voted for us in the WRITE race. If you're wondering why so many voters have 100s or 1000+ votes, it's because existing Mirror DAO members get 1000 votes when they get in and it increases slowly as they participate more. Outsiders get 10. It's an ingroupocracy!
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Everything about Web3 seems to be driven by an underground warren-like Signal/Telegram/Discord-based network. In a 2019 post, I had an area marked "Cryptoweb" under the Cozyweb region... well, it's kinda nearing completion and this is it.
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So far I think the most interesting general insight Ive developed some confidence in is that Web3 is all about flows, not stocks. In that sense it’s different not only from Web0 and Web1, but industrial organizations too (think “stock” markets).
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The split (branch between flows) is to Web3 what links (bridge between stocks) is to Web1 and Web2.
Calling it now.
The split is the hyperlink of Web3.
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If I’m right this is a radical subversion of even the OG vision of the internet, Vannevar Bush’s Memex, which is stock-centric. His classic 1945 essay, As We May Think, which shaped 70 years of tech development, (including my own modest bits at Xerox) does *not* fit Web3.
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Link for those unfamiliar with it. This thing was my North Star for a few years. google.com/amp/s/amp.thea
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In Web3 it feels like the fundamental behavior is not following a trail of links from stock to stock, but following a stock as it flows from address to address. Even our basic metaphor of a “bitcoin” is utterly wrong because it anchors on a stock view.
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The coin metaphor is going to prove to be severe baggage for Web3, just as the document metaphor was baggage for Web1 and Web2. The late Web2 metaphor of the stream (effectively infinite dynamic frankendocument) is a clumsy Web2 version of a Web3 flow.
Replying to
This is why the split is the hyperlink of Web3. It forks a flow structurally. Voting and staking mechanisms look like flows > stocks. Multisig wallets are flow control valves. “Balances” (not coins) are levels of fungible stocks in flow buffers. Burning tokens is flow.
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Minting is an unfortunate coin-metaphor term (“coinage” 😖). It’s really a kind of source spigot. I wish they’d called mining drilling. Drilling for hashes.
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Ethereum developed better language tbh. Ether, gas… fluid metaphors all over the place.
Oh yeah, hash rates! Can’t get more flow than that!
And mining “pool” … you can’t really pool solids.
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Okay will hit pause on this train of thought. Trying hard to stay on the hands-on side. It would be just too easy for me to get carried away by this flow 🤣
My natural mode is tinker with real things for 5 minutes, speculate wildly in the abstract for 15. Must resist.
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But here’s an old thing I wrote on hyperlinks when I was high on Memex visions in 2009.
Maybe I can write a sequel, the Rhetoric of the Split.
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Someone make a Sankey diagram based blockchain explorer. At the very least it will improve Sankey literacy for climate awareness. You can split me a royalty for the idea. See how natural the language is? “Link to me” —> “split to me.”
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Prediction: MetaMask will add a messaging function. You already have an address book. You’re probably doing splits with them. Why go to Signal or wherever? Mutisigs will develop attached group discussion fora. Messaging companies may acquire wallet companies. Or vice versa.
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Your main transactional (but not custodial) wallet will be your identity/social, replacing email and phone number.
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Venmo has already created a weird social network around Web2 payments. But Web3 is the natural home for the idea. On Venmo, it’s vaguely voyeuristic, like Glassdoor reviews. But on Web3 such things may have a healthier valence.
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This is probably going to be the big ideological divide.
I think *decentralized* artificial digital scarcity is a great invention. Incentivizes production without empowering aggregators too much. I think aggregation theory will be weakened or reversed by Web3. twitter.com/MattAlhonte/st
This Tweet is unavailable.
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A general pattern of question I’m getting as in every tech futures conversation I’ve ever had, is “How is Web3 thing X different from obvious analogical old thing Y?”
Anchoring on the most obvious analogy tends to minimize distinctions and magnify similarities.
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The snark form of this is perversely self blinding, as in “X, you invented X”
“Rideshare with published routes”… “public transit you invented public transit” (treating app based failing as a rounding error).
Thing is *you choose your anchors, you choose your blindness*
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This is why I don’t engage “how is it different from X” whether motivated by sincere curiosity or bad-faith trolling.
You chose your anchor. I don’t have to. I may offer alternate anchors, but I don’t have to correct the invisibilities of your frame. That’s a futile battle.
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In general, I try to understand a thing on its own terms. You can never avoid metaphors (unpopular opinion: there is no System 2; there is no ‘first principles thinking’, there’s only conceptual metaphors too subtle to notice), but you can pick one that highlight the differences.
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Obvious metaphors and analogies aren’t intrinsically bad. They do save you cognitive labor. But they make good servants and bad masters. If a hammer in your hand makes you see everything as a nail, the hammer is using you, you’re not using the hammer.
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I’m not trying to preach. Just explaining why I don’t engage with some comments. I am not necessarily assuming bad faith or disputing or ignoring your point. You’re just using anchors I don’t care to conform to.
Choose your anchors. Don’t let them choose you.
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I guess part of me is just kinda exhausted by a sense of “here we go again; new tech revolution same debates” deja vu. It would be nice to have weird new arguments and a strange new type of techlash at least.
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A question I’m mulling — anyone have a sense of the demographics of the ENS token drops, or how to probe that? Unlike the early crypto era, where those who got in were either wealth-privileged or tech-privileged, or both, this one I suspect has been more of a true trickle-down.
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Poll: Sampling demographics of ENS token drop. Interpret rich/middle class/poor by your local geography.
- Got drop, rich11.7%
- Got drop, middle class16.2%
- Got drop, poor3.8%
- Didn’t get drop68.3%
290 votesFinal results
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This is the future Bitcoin maxis want 😆
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Hard-earned cash: The monumental stone coins used by the Yap (Jap) people in Micronesia which are called Rai are still a working currency on the island of Palau. Although no more disks are being produced or imported, this money supply is fixed.
Show this thread
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I've been looking at Web3 culture through the lens of Geertz' classic Deep Play lens. The DeFi degens (profiteering hucksters) are clearly shallow play, and those building DAOs etc are clearly deep play, but happy frothy gm/wagmi crowd is kinda in between jstor.org/stable/20024056
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For those unfamiliar with Geertz, it's a classic anthropology study that pioneered the "thick description" research approach. It looked at Balinese cockfighting through the lens of Bentham's (19th century utilitarianism pioneer) "deep play" idea.
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Roughly speaking, shallow players are gambling for legible profits, deep players are playing to signal, shift, and reshape political alliances and commitments to ideologies, kinship relations etc. But gm/wagmi culture frankly doesn't strike me as deep enough.
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But one cultural bit that DOES strike me as deep play signaling is the Web3 crowd eschewing .com domains for their web properties. Besides the native .eth tld handled by ENS, the DNS tlds that are popular are .xyz, .io, .app etc. Anything *but* .com.
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This presents an interesting tension. The main website is a .org, and we have .com held in reserve, and just won a $WRITE token to create a mirror.xyz subdomain. I suspect we're going to be hybrid and have use both .com and .somethingelse primaries.
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TIL... the common auction pattern on Web3 where the deadline gets extended repeatedly by late bids (kinda like overtime) is called a Coldi auction.
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Replying to @vgr
It's called a Coldie auction, and afaik it was pioneered by @Coldie, who started by doing the whole thing manually
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In 2000-08, .coms were the *only* serious option, or .org if you were really a nonprofit. A .net meant you weren't savvy enough to play. In Web2, the .com hegemony began to unravel ~2010 as a few others like .io, .me, .ai, .ly began to gain alt subcultural cachet
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But the Web2 subcultural fragmentation tlds were still kinda in harmony with .com. They typically signaled a vertical orientation, but still with "dot com" basic neoliberal capitalism values/ethos. I think Web3 is signaling a fuck-you to that at an axiomatic tld level.
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Update, it's only a strict Coldie auction if you extend by 24h each late bid, because the intent is apparently global time-zone fairness. I guess the 15-minute extension model is a Coldie-like model but with other intentions (sniping defense etc)
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Replying to @vgr
@withFND does not use the Coldie Method. The auction function i invented extends the bidding 24 hours for each new bid. I did this so people across the world would have equal opportunity to bid no matter what time zone they are in
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I have acquired an official Gen Z mentor. gmi.
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Replying to @vgr
no problem, happy to help 
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