Alex Wittenberg

As it turns out, the Greek root of the word heresy can be translated as “to choose for one's self.” Thus Berger’s heretical imperative, or the imperative to choose. 

Given anticipated limited new token issuance rate under Proof-of-Stake (and potentially even a deflationary token supply given the fee burn), this creates a competition for ETH tokens between staking and DeFi. Assuming DeFi activity continues to rise as more users are onboarded onto the network, the only way for the market to solve this conflict is... See more

There are many projects that have created protocols for decentralizing discourse, including ActivityPub and SSB for social, Matrix and IRC for chat, and RSS for blogging. While each of these are successful in their own right, none of them fully met the goals we had for a network that enables global long-term public conversations at scale. 

To summarize, tokens can certainly play a role in building a network, but they are not a GTM motion in themselves. Pay attention to the kind of network you’re building and how token incentives interact with network utility before relying on them as a bootstrapping solution. 

Achieve alignment — getting all stakeholders to agree on a subject.

Psychedelics help. Or just when the work feels like a chore. Remember, you’re looking for an infinite game of a type of work. Every job is going to have parts that suck, that’s just necessary. But if you love the underlying type of work you’re doing, the sucky parts are worth it. 

To receive no one’s attention would be a kind of death. There are, of course, disordered ways of seeking attention, but we need the attention of the other even if only to know who we are. This is why I recently wrote that “the problem of distraction can just as well be framed as a problem of loneliness.” Digital media environments hijack our desire... See more

The Catholic legal scholar Cathleen Kaveny has argued that the reason so many of them are so unhappy—despite being generally very well paid—is the convention of the “billable hour,” which obliges them to treat their time, and thus really themselves, as a commodity to be sold off in sixty-minute chunks to clients. An hour not sold is automatically... See more

The problem of distraction can just as well be framed as a problem of loneliness. Sometimes we turn thoughtlessly to our devices for mere distraction, something to help us pass the time or break up the monotony of the day, although the heightened frequency with which we may do so may certainly suggests the signs of compulsive behavior. Perhaps it... See more