"Age of Miracles"

Isaac Newton's lifelong pursuit of alchemy may surprise you. Newton is the father of science and one of the most rational thinkers in history, but he also dedicated enormous amounts of time and energy to the now discredited field of alchemy. Yet, without alchemy we do not have chemistry. Many of the key problems and methods posed by alchemy would lead to the development of chemistry.

We see this repeatedly throughout history. Seemingly frivolous or unproductive experimentation ultimately leading to major breakthroughs.

Packy explores this historical trend in the context of our current markets and offers an optimistic view of where the last decade of seemingly frivolous experimentation and resourcing may take us in the future.

This audio essay is sponsored by Masterworks. 

This is episode is a cross-post from the podcast Cartoon Avatars, hosted by Logan Bartlett. Logan is joined by Packy and Ben Thompson of Stratechery. Packy, Ben, and Logan talk about their respective businesses and experiences on the internet, and give advice for other content creators. Packy and Logan have been friends for nearly 15 years. And both Packy and Logan have been reading Ben Thompson for nearly a decade. In fact, Stratechery, and Ben's work generally, was the initial inspiration for Not Boring.

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When the Twitter acquisition was a story about free speech and content moderation, I didn’t have much to say. Those are really hard problems about which I have no special insights to contribute. But over the past week, the story has evolved into one with which I’m much more comfortable: how to better monetize Twitter.

I have some ideas, one of which is that Twitter’s users should have a seat at the table, and upside in the outcome.

This essay covers three topics:

This audio essay is sponsored by Masterworks. 

Gabby Dizon is the co-founder of Yield Guild Gaming (YGG). On its website, it says YGG is a play-to-earn gaming guild, bringing players together to earn via blockchain based economies. That description is starting to expand - YGG is quickly becoming the infrastructure for x-to-earn DAOs. Packy and Gabby discuss the future of ownership, earning, and work and how the the x-to-earn model can shape the world in the next decade.

Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US.

You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees.

The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, etc) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month.

Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange.

Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.

Packy is joined by Alex Danco of Shopify's Blockchain team to discuss "Tokengated Commerce." Alex breaks down what it means to make Shopify "wallet-aware," answers why this type of commerce needs blockchains, and paints a picture of what web3 commerce might look like in the future.

 This audio essay is sponsored by Masterworks.

Gina Bianchini is the founder and CEO of Mighty Networks. Mighty is a platform that makes it easy to create, grow and monetize online communities. Mighty is the result of nearly two decades of Gina's career spent building online social products back to the early 2000s, when she built Ning with Marc Andreessen, and she's been building for community and online social spaces ever since.

Gina explains how social media and other platforms are designed for people that already know each other and not for building a community of strangers on the internet. Mighty, however, was natively designed for community building on the internet -- prioritizing creator customization, social lubrication, and context.

Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US.

You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees.

The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, etc) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month.

Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange.

Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.

Alamin Uddin is the co-founder and CEO of NexHealth. NexHealth’s mission is to accelerate innovation in healthcare. It's doing it by making it easy for your health data to go from point A to point B, and from doctor to doctor. The company recently announced its Series C round of $125M at a $1B valuation led by Buckley Ventures.

Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US.

You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees.

The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, etc) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month.

Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange.

Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.

ReFi (Regenerative Finance) is having a moment. ReFi is a reimagining of the financial system that accounts for the needs of all stakeholders, current and future. It puts a price on externalities: charging those who create negative externalities and rewarding those who create positive externalities.

Celo is becoming ReFi's home. Celo is a carbon-negative EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain designed to make it accessible and usable by anyone with a smartphone, anywhere in the world. Celo was built with its mission in mind and is making a big bet: in an omni-chain world where liquidity is not loyal, a blockchains distinctiveness and strength of mission will determine success.

In this essay -- Not Boring breaks down Celo's mission and what the world looks like if it succeeds.

When Adam Smith began writing about an invisible hand, a metaphor for the market’s self-correcting mechanisms, in 1759, the world was very local, and information moved at a more leisurely pace. Today, though, information zips around the world instantly, the talent pool is becoming more liquid and global, venture capital has more money to deploy than ever before, and the scope of the world’s ambitions are getting bigger. Ideally, all of this combines into one big matching engine that puts the right people and capital to the right problems.

How does the swarm know what to attack? Packy explains entrepreneurship through his concept of The Visible Swarm.

This audio essay is sponsored by Masterworks. 

Shane Curran is the founder and CEO of Evervault. Evervault is an encryption infrastructure company that makes collecting, processing, and sharing sensitive data ultra secure. When a company encrypts with Evervault, they could put their database on a billboard and no one could get at the data. The company’s mission is to encrypt the web. Its goal is to end data breaches.

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Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US.

You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees.

The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, ect) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month.

Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange.

Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.