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For those interested in the unit economics, in USD right now, minting this cost about $121, which is a sort of variable cost, and setting up and unlocking the split contract for Dan and me, which is kinda like a fixed cost for our future collaborations, cost about $116+$53
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An interesting thing about wallet account histories mostly show $0 actions, since most transactions are zero value contract actions, and only cost gas. You have to click through to the receipts like in the tweet above to see what it actually cost.
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It's like getting shopping receipts for $0 but nonzero taxes. Nice motif for abundance economics with nonzero Coasean transaction costs.
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Made a thread of just my NFTs on the ribbonfarm twitter account. This time, without a polite "mute this if you don't like Web3/nfts" stuff, so that's an experiment in itself. That account has 18,631 followers right now, how many will rage-unfollow? 🧐
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A thread of ribbonfarm NFTs. You can find the current index here. ribbonfarm.com/nfts/
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While I'm not exactly a people-pleaser type, I do like peace and harmony, so I tend to avoid conflict in public. But Web3 is a seriously divisive topic, and there's no way to be active in it without pissing off people, no matter how gently you tread.
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Wise person once told me: you’re always going to piss off some group if you try to do anything at all, and the trick is to piss off the right people. I have since modified to: piss off a unique set of people. If your hater list matches another person’s too much it’s just a tribe
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Something that seems trivial at an individual level but could have big implications at protocol level. Many contracts need fee-based actions to get money out. For eg, one of my Mirror edition contracts has 0.2E on it, and the withdrawal cost is 0.011664E, or 5.8%... not cheap
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It doesn't scale with amount, so if the amount were 2E as in one of my other contracts, it would be just 0.58%, which is more reasonable. But point is, a lot of money is probably sitting in contracts waiting for either low-gas period or more accumulation to be worth withdrawing.
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These aren't frozen assets exactly, but more like costly-to-unlock kinda-stranded assets. So based on gas prices, the protocol itself be more or less full of funds. A bit like islands you can walk to at low tide, but not at high tide.
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Funds quasi-stranded on the blockchain are like funds in a bank account in another country (which is also an annoying thing I navigate re an account in India) from which repatriation is difficult/costly. In principle, you have access, in practice, you should time it to be cheap.
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Replying to
On post-game, I feel the same as David here. This is a good team, and if there were an option to let my contribution ride to the next quest rather than pull it, I’d take it. Solid coordination-serendipity tailwinds should not be wasted. It’s a rare resource.
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I don’t want my ETH back, I want to vote on how we can allocate 40 million dollars to something equally ambitious @ConstitutionDAO
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Though there are many structural similarities, there is some sort of vibe difference between r/wsb and Web3 that makes me meh to negative on the former and favorably disposed towards the latter. Not just good vibes but upside creative potential of a sort missing from r/wsb.
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It feels like r/wsb is/was defined by the very Wall Street ethos of zero-sum gamesmanship and Wolf-on-Wolf Hobbesian competition it resists. Just decentralized. Web3 certainly has a grifty side to the ethos, but also a genuine e creative streak. Like a NY vs LA thing almost.
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Interesting factoid: 860k on gas for a 41m flash fund amounts to about 2%, comparable to both credit card processing fees and VC/hedge fund management fees in a typical 2-20 arrangement. And could have been *much* lower if for eg they’d imposed a minimum contribution.
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In case you're curious, @ConstitutionDAO members have collectively spent 199.38 ETH ($860k) in gas. dune.xyz/queries/252602
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I spent about $40 to contribute about $200, a 20% fee I didn’t mind paying at all. But it would have still been $40 if I’d contributed $2000 which would have made it 2%.
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People are upset in various confused ways about these fees. But try and remember that the cheapest comparable fiat mechanism, like a GoFundMe, would have actually taken vastly more than 2% off the top!
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But if I were to pull a stunt like this I’d probably try to encourage a high minimum. It’s a trade off: total raised vs yield. 98% for 41m is pretty good.
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Repeating the prompt at the top of the thread: if this whole Web3 topic offends you or triggers your scam-dar, please mute this thread, or mute/unfollow. From some of the questions/replies it looks like some people didn’t see that. Should repeat it periodically.
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If you have questions like: “How is this not just X but worse?” “What problem does it solve?” “What value does it create?” “How can you justify the emissions?” “Isn’t this just privileged play?” I’m the wrong person to ask. I’ve done my tours of duty on such debates.
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The post linked above got me thinking, with its heuristic of following “smart, good-judgment, knowledgeable” people, who appear to be divided on Web3. Makes me realize I *don’t * take my cues from such people. They’re basically a crapshoot around tech booms.
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People who seem to have uncanny instincts are rarely particularly smart or knowledgeable. And they don’t tend to have good judgment in traditional ways either. What they do have is an ability to avoid both of Clarke’s “failures of prophecy” — lack of imagination, lack of nerve.
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You need mediocre smarts and mediocre knowledge as table stakes, but beyond that everything is a function of imagination and nerve. Bayesian modes of good judgment, which Wil gestures at, are like QA to limit errors, but irrelevant to seeing the imaginative+gutsy options early.
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Quite possibly the difference between people who are hostile vs favorably disposed to Web3 is whether or not they think traditional orgs work fine or need improvement. Frustration with traditional organizational pathologies is not universal.
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The right comparison may not be with past tech revolutions. It may be to organizational evolutions like monarchy to democracy, women entering the workplace, the invention of the limited liability corporation etc. In each case there were people who thought it was unnecessary.
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All tech has organizational innovation effects, but not always where you might notice personally. Eg. the mobile phone disruptively empowered the poor a lot, but was merely sustaining for the middle class. All the org innovation was under the API (both good/bad).
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I suspect what makes Web3 *appear* extra contentious is that it divides core members of the middle class. Like artists for eg. Artists tend to be reliably anti-tech initially, taking pride in being socially middle class but economically underclass unless supported by other means.
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Artists still largely depend on patronage but now are less beholden to institutions/expert tastemakers (museums, grants, commercial art buyers like movies) or potentially tyrannical cohesive crowds based on ideological aesthetics (Patreon style). Web3 loosens the grip of both.
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Web3 is Crowds3 too. We focus too much on authority figures and institutions. Crowds evolve too. Crowd1 = geographic scene in a city that could ostracize you Crowd2 = filter-bubble online crowd that can cancel you Crowd3 = skin-in-the-game crowd that doesn’t subsume individuals
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I suspect in the long run, the empowerment of individuals over metastasized bad crowds will be a bigger effect of Web3 than anti-authoritarian effects. Institutions and experts are *already* crippled by Crowd2s. Web3 empowers Crowd3s against Crowd2s and Crowd1s.
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The reason is both Crowd1 and Crowd2 are both social proof. You’re cool if ingroup decides you’re cool and can learn to trot out the right shibboleths (=communally shared private keys). Web3/Crowd3 forces you to add material proof (“tokens”). Higher cost but more independence.
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This is a *direct* (and if it works, crippling) attack on Crowd2 forms of collective authority where peer pressure can be super-intense and force you to conform. Web3 has a) materially embodied autonomous agency that takes violence to coerce from you b) nymity-agnostic norms
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Take a Web2/Crowd2 thing like Trumpie or Wokie mob. If you’re in an online/offline geography where either is dominant, the peer pressure to conform is extraordinary because the crowd controls a lot of the value you depend on.
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You are required to be a) non-anonymous to ingroup in proportion to value you depend on b) subsume your individuality within it c) toe the party line on group action on pain of social death d) surrender political agency to the groupmind.
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Tentative radical conclusion: Web3 actually solves the culture war (Crowd2 vs Crowd2 internet of beefs, institutions and experts are peripheral). People critical/hostile to it are likely those with a big stake in Crowd2 collective action/solidarity models.
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This is why, despite cosmetic suitability, Web3 models have *not* been eagerly adopted by Crowd2s. A TrumpDAO won’t work. A WokeDAO won’t work. Web3 requires you to exercise too much individual autonomous agency. Yes tech adoption difficulty is a factor but it’s not *that* hard.
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