Alex Wittenberg

I’ve stood sentinel, I confess. Feeling at once the draw of the spectacle and the urge to bear witness, knowing, to some degree, the evident limits of both, and trying to embrace my own distinction between, on the one hand, having my attention captured and, on the other, attending to the world. 

In what cases should treasuries borrow instead of spend native tokens?

How much time and ability does the team have to oversee administration of the incentive mechanism?This question can be very tricky. For example, bounties are an elegant solution for easily definable tasks with clear success criteria (e.g. Does the code run or not?). But a bounty needs to be defined, advertised, reviewed and rewarded, all of which... See more

When people talk about identity they usually mean one of three related but quite different scopes: (a) a unique identifier, (b) a holistic view of an entity, or (c) a specific piece of context about an entity.Unique identifiers are critical in any social setting. Names are an adequate ‘identifier’ amongst friends, family, or small tribes (under... See more

More broadly, NFTs could serve as one anchor for decentralized identity. Already, several users identify their online presence not merely with a username but also with an NFT project. As an example, co-founder of Manifold @richerd explained that he turned down a $9.5 million offer for his cryptopunk NFT because he identifies his cryptopunk as his... See more

The decentralized economy will truly be unleashed.As we move towards a future with broadband liquidity, it becomes challenging to imagine what, exactly, that future looks like. While we know that deep liquidity will enable reliable pricing and less volatility, the implications are much more intriguing.

It has for me. It means arguments of the form "Life is too short for x" have great force. It's not just a figure of speech to say that life is too short for something. It's not just a synonym for annoying. If you find yourself thinking that life is too short for something, you should try to eliminate it if you can. 

Aristotle argued that true leisure—by which he meant self-reflection and philosophical contemplation—was among the very highest of virtues because it was worth choosing for its own sake, whereas other virtues, like courage in war, or noble behavior in government, were virtuous only because they led to something else. The Latin word for business,... See more