Alex Wittenberg

The unhappy truth of the matter is that it is normal for friendships to fade, even under the best of circumstances. The real aberration is keeping them. In 2009, the Dutch sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst published an attention-grabber of a study that basically showed we replace half of our social network over the course of seven years, a reality we... See more

Along these lines, one recalls, too, Arendt’s warning in the prologue to The Human Condition: “The future man, whom the scientists tell us they will produce in no more than a hundred years, seems possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it... See more

Why we’re having this meeting and what the goal isAgenda overview 

I believe that following the full transition to Proof-of-Stake, most long-term financial investors will become stakers to maximize their total return and capture the yield available to stakers. Not doing so would be akin to owning a stock that pays a dividend and actively opting out from receiving the dividend! 

You might also be aware that all this is delivered by means of “persuasive design”—an umbrella term for an armory of psychological techniques borrowed directly from the designers of casino slot machines, for the express purpose of encouraging compulsive behavior. One example among hundreds is the ubiquitous drag-down-to-refresh gesture, which keeps... See more

Given their operating expenses are denominated in USD/fiat, another sustained bear market might force DAOs to sell native tokens at “fire-sale” prices to finance their normal operations. DAOs therefore ought to generate multiple income streams (i.e., protocol revenue and yield from investments) that can cover these operating expenses; but since the... See more

So while it’s tempting to be purely analytical, don’t discount how far a token can get with faith, clever memes, and a cult-like following. 

Were friendships always so fragile? I suspect not. But we now live in an era of radical individual freedoms. All of us may begin at the same starting line as young adults, but as soon as the gun goes off, we’re all running in different directions; there’s little synchrony to our lives. We have kids at different rates (or not at all); we pair off at... See more

The idea here isn't to write about one topic, one time. The idea is to take whatever you want to write about and write about it over and over again using different frameworks: you should write about it through an actionable lens, an analytical lens, an aspirational lens, and an anthropological lens (because each piece will yield a different... See more