Alex Wittenberg

For instance, app teams that pursue community ownership first (starting with a wide token distribution) risk engendering a community of speculators, rather than real users. Without a working product, ownership is worthless, and the community won’t stick. Many teams that have done this are unable to back into product/market fit, and as a result have

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This is an observation about human rationality as much as it is about the epistemic conditions generated by life in what Jay Bolter has aptly termed the digital plentitude and which I usually call the Database. We are not as narrowly rational in our thinking as many would like to believe. Which is why conventional “solutions” to the problems... See more

What I can confirm, though, is that if you can adopt the outlook we’re exploring here even just a little—if you can hold your attention, however briefly or occasionally, on the sheer astonishingness of being, and on what a small amount of that being you get—you may experience a palpable shift in how it feels to be here, right now, alive in the flow... See more

The critical question isn’t how to differentiate between activities that matter and those that don’t, but what to do when far too many things feel at least somewhat important, and therefore arguably qualify as big rocks. Fortunately, a handful of wiser minds have addressed exactly this dilemma, and their counsel coalesces around three main... See more

Defenders of modern capitalism enjoy pointing out that despite how things might feel, we actually have more leisure time than we did in previous decades—an average of about five hours per day for men, and only slightly less for women. But perhaps one reason we don’t experience life that way is that leisure no longer feels very leisurely. Instead,... See more

Currently, only overcollateralized debt has become commonplace in DeFi. Despite this, the vast majority of DAOs cannot simply go on Compound/Aave/Maker and open a debt position — even if a DAO’s native token can be found on e.g., CREAM or Unit Protocol, the borrow capacity/debt ceiling for the token likely will be insufficient for the DAO’s needs.... See more

Generally, decentralized applications fall into two classes, likely with a substantial gray area between the two. The first class is a fully anonymous decentralized application. Here, it does not matter who the nodes are; every participant is essentially anonymous and the system is made up of a series of instant atomic interactions. BitTorrent and... See more

I like asking up-front, “So what criteria would you use if you were the one hiring someone for this role?” I love this question because of how unexpected the answers are. Some are tactical when you expect abstraction. Some improve your own criteria. Some use jargon that may indicate they are playing someone else’s game versus authoring their own. 

Instead of work as something you do for a maternalistic entity with a human face (sometimes nurturing, sometimes abusive) between you and every algorithmic process, you get a cloth mommy API if you’re lucky and a wire mommy API if you’re not.