My guest today is Dom, who goes by Domothy online. Dom works on the Research Team at the Ethereum Foundation. He is passionate about Ethereum development and tries to keep tabs on all parts of the roadmap, and communicates these details between the many teams at the EF.

This conversation comes in three parts. In the introduction, Dom and I discuss how he found his way from passionate bystander to working for the EF. In the second section, we discuss the hottest developments in the six areas of Ethereum Roadmap: The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge. We cover whether or not state expiry should concern onchain NFT devs, whether the price of L1 gas will go up or down over time, and much more. In the final chapter, we discuss the political and social organization of Ethereum development in- and outside of the EF, to try to determine if there are any lessons we can extract for DAOs and other open source blockchain development initiatives.

It's always exciting to get a peek inside the world of the EF and core protocol development, which is producing the most exciting specs at the intersection of cryptography and humanity.

This episode of Web3 Galaxy Brain is sponsored by Crop Top.

Crop Top is a decentralized blogging app built on Ethereum and IPFS. If you own a .eth name, you can use it as your own decentralized personal site, served peer-to-peer over IPFS, with content fees and revenue streams like NFT minting baked in. It's all accessible right from the vanilla browser. No emails, passwords, or wallets required. The easiest way to understand what it is to just take a look. Get started at croptop.eth.limo today. My thanks to CropTop for sponsoring this episode of Web3 Galaxy Brain.

Own a .eth name? Use it to serve your own decentralized personal site, served peer-to-peer, with content feeds and revenue streams baked in, accessible from any browser. No emails, passwords, or wallets required. Get started at

If you would like to sponsor an episode, visit web3galaxybrain.com for details. It’s as simple as minting an NFT.

As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

And now, I hope you enjoy the show!

0xmons is my guest on this episode. 0xmons (aka Owen) is a blockchain artist and the founder of sudoswap, which just launched its v2.

In this conversation, Owen and I cover the big questions: Why does the world need an NFT AMM? What's new in v2? Why the reverse course on honoring ERC-2981 royalties?

We also roleplay LPing on sudoswap and walk through how LPs might choose the parameters of their position.

I was particularly intrigued by the new 1155 open edition pools, which sound like a great fit for the bounty of NFTs minted during the most recent open edition meta. The new Creator Settings contracts, which let LPs share pool fees with NFT creators, could create more alignment between those parties. A further blurring between memecoins and editions seems inevitable.

Every chance to interact with Owen is exciting, and this coversation was no exception. It was fun hearing just how heads down Owen has been the past year learning and growing sudoswap in new directions. I hope you enjoy the show.

If you would like to sponsor an episode, visit web3galaxybrain.com for details. It’s as simple as minting an NFT.

As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

Jayden Windle and Benny Giang of NFT studio Future Primitive join me on this episode to discuss ERC-6551: Non-fungible Token Bound Accounts, which they co-authored.

ERC-6551 is a draft EIP that proposes a CREATE2 based proxy contract scheme to give every ERC-721 its own address on Ethereum, and other EVM chains. In short, this EIP turns every NFT into a smart contract wallet, which can hold NFTs and fungibles, have special access permissions on other contracts, and more. 6551’s flexible yet simple design allows NFTs to own NFTs that own NFTs, and so on.

In this conversation we discuss the prior art for NFT bound accounts and the specific technical choices that may make 6551 a more universally compatible and extensible option. We also consider NFT Accounts compatibility with Account Abstraction wallets like those covered by EIP-4337. Finally we discuss the social process of writing and carrying a proposal through the EIP process.

It was great sitting down with Jayden and Benny to discuss the ins-and-outs of their NFT account proposal. I hope you enjoy the show.

This episode of Web3 Galaxy Brain is brought to you by Interface. Interface is an iPhone and Android app that allows you to follow Ethereum wallets and track their activity across Web3 through push notifications and a twitter-like scrollable feed. Check it out at interface.social. My thanks to Interface for sponsoring the show.

If you would like to sponsor an episode, visit web3galaxybrain.com for details. It’s as simple as minting an NFT.

As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

And now on to the show!

On today’s episode I sit down with David Horvath for an epic dive into the world of character IP.

Since the late 90s, David and his wife and business partner Sun-Min Kim have been creating character brands in the US and Korea. Their two most famous creations are Uglydoll, which started as a handmade designer toy at Giant Robot, and Bossy Bear, which began life as a children’s book.

David shares contrarian insights about his experience growing character brands that endure. This episode is a treat for people who want to know how to create characters as popular as Hello Kitty and Paddington Bear

In the first part of the conversation, we discuss how David got his start making kids TV cartoons in Japan, the Uglydoll and Bossy Bear development arcs, and strategies he’s learned for retaining character IP.

We talk about the value of being discovered in meaningful places, and the pitfalls of being perceived of as marketing, and the difference between successful toys and enduring characters.

There are links to most of the characters, people, and shows that David mentions in the show notes.

If you would like to sponsor the show, send me a DM @nnnnicholas.

As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

I really enjoyed this extensive conversation with David Horvath where we had the opportunity to go deep on the small world of building big characters. I hope you enjoy the show.

Links

My guests today are Ed Fornieles, Sam Spike, and Jake Allen, three of the four cofounders of Finiliar. Finiliar is an NFT collection of cute 3D characters whose mood and animations are driven by price action of popular cryptocurrencies. Ed Fornieles created the project first as a gallery exhibited artwork, and it has since grown into a character brand and software company.

On this episode we discuss Ed’s career making fine art installation and sculptural work in London, Sam’s art production and curation work at Fingerprints DAO, and Jake’s experience as Head of Product at Cameo, the premium short form video platform. We discuss how their experiences informed their work on Finiliar, and why faces are both the past, and perhaps future, of interface design.

I really enjoyed this conversation with the Finiliar team. We covered a lot of material concerning the making of art. I hope you enjoy the show.

This episode of Web3 Galaxy Brain is brought to you by mint.fun !fundrop. !fundrop is mint.fun’s brand new weekly rewards program. Gas Rewards are the first !fundrop reward. With Gas Rewards, every Friday, users with a 7-day mint streak earn a gas refund for 1 NFT minted per day. !fundrop rewards drop every Friday and are claimable for one week. To get started, mint a !fundrop pass at mint.fun/fundrop. My thanks to mint.fun for sponsoring this episode!

If you would like to sponsor the show, visit web3galaxybrain.com for details. It’s as simple as minting an NFT.

As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

And now on to the show!

Links:

Tulip

2018

Ed Fornieles’ Wikipedia

Sam worked on

Sam worked on Every

Sam

Mint.fun’s

On today’s episode I’m joined by Paul Seidler and Sam Hart.

Paul Seidler is an artist and design researcher. He is co-founder of terra0, an art project, DAO, and EVM framework for automated ecosystem management and simulation. He has worked at research groups including Hybrid Platform and Design Research Lab and has created onchain NFT artworks including Straylight Protocol, which explores multiplayer EVM-gaming with onchain NFT automata.

Sam Hart Berman is a programmer and artist. He has a background academic biochemistry publishing, fine art curation, interdisciplinary publishing at Avant.org and Other Internet, and has contributed to various technical projects including the design of EIP-1559, the FOAM mesh network blockchain, Cosmos’ Interchain Foundation, and now Skip Protocol, which is building infrastructure for mitigating bad MEV the Cosmos ecosystem.

Both Paul and Sam contribute to Folia, an NFT open edition curated platform, and live in Berlin.

In this episode, we discuss Paul’s recent talk On Smart Contracts as a Medium, which he presented at Trust Support. We use this jumping off point to discuss blockchain as an art making medium. We cover a variety of interesting art and research projects including Rhea Myers’ Is Art, OpenTimestamps, Sam’s One Token, Brotchain, VanityBlocks, Sam’s Kudzu NFT, and much, much more.

 It was a pleasure talking to Paul and Sam about the spectrum of conceptual art, from fine art experimentation through research projects and infrastructure building. This was a great conversation.

As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

 This episode of Web3 Galaxy Brain is brought to you by RainbowKit, the best way to connect a wallet in your web3 project. RainbowKit is built for developers and designed for everyone. Try it today at rainbowkit.com. 

If you’d like to sponsor the show, visit web3galaxybrain.com for details

I hope you enjoy the show.

Links

On Smart Contracts as a Medium

Rhea Myers

OpenTimestamps

Brotchain

Vanity Blocks

Lifeforms

Simon de la Rouviere's blog

ERC-721: Non-Fungible Token Standard

Straylight Protocol – Folia

Terra0 White Paper 2016

Sam Hart's website

Artificial Scarcity by Sam Hart

Lifeforms

Kudzu on Folia

Kudzu Graph

On today’s episode I’m joined by Julien Genestoux, founder of Unlock Protocol. Unlock is a protocol for memberships as time-bound NFTs. Creators can monetize their work with Unlock by deploying sovereign membership contracts that allow for trials, partial refunds, and membership trading, in addition to the various superpowers granted by the ERC721 ecosystem, such as airdrops, token gating, and governance.

On this episode, Julien and I discuss the attention economics at the heart of advertising driven Web2 services and social media. Juilen weighs in on Nostr, Blue Sky, Farcaster, and Mastodon, to which he contributed in the early days. We talk about the lessons he learned about open communication protocols and monetization in his prior startup Superfeedr, which generates RSS feeds at scale and was acquired by Medium.

Finally, we discuss how Unlock Protocol synthesizes Julien’s career experiences into a sophisticated paid membership system that enables creators of all stripes to layer crypto subscription memberships into their revenue models.

It was great having this wide ranging conversation with Julien and to learn about the internet-native economic theory underlying Unlock Protocol.

As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

This episode of Web3 Galaxy Brain is brought to you by RainbowKit, the best way to connect a wallet in your web3 project. RainbowKit is built for developers and designed for everyone. Try it today at rainbowkit.com.

If you’d like to sponsor the show, visit web3galaxybrain.com for details.

I hope you enjoy the show.

Links

Unlock

Protocol

Unlock Docs

Superfeedr

Multiparty

 At the top of the show, Daniel and I discuss GPT and related Large Language Model tooling, and what impact they are having on his company’s work building new software products. We turn to how Sepana works, who it’s useful for, and how it’s being used in the market today. At the end of the conversation, we discuss how Sepana’s searchable Web3 data APIs may provide verifiable data sources to LLMs, in a world of bot content.  

It was great talking with Daniel about Sepana. I hope you enjoy the show.

As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.  

Links

https://sepana.io/

https://docs.sepana.io/sepana-search-api

Today, I’m joined by Chris Carella, Osama, Bill Zh, Phil Mohun, Kmac, and Alex Paden to discuss Purple, a DAO

Farcaster is a progressively decentralizing open-source social network protocol. Its account system is built on top of Ethereum. User identities are managed on L1, while Farcaster’s increasingly decentralized network of nodes, called Farcaster Hubs, manage message storage and sharing. For more information about Farcaster itself, listen to my interview with Farcaster co-founder DWR linked in the show notes.

On this episode, the Purple gang and I discuss how Purple was born from the enthusiast community of open source builders that Farcaster has attracted. Compared to other ecosystem funds, Purple is entirely community run and funded, rather than originating with the Farcaster founding team themselves. We discuss this, as well as the Nounish DAO model Purple is using, what’s on the horizon for open source funding, and a variety of projects that have emerged from the Farcaster ecosystem. 

It was a pleasure speaking with some of the members of Purple and learning about this unique experiment in crowdfunded ecosystem development. I hope you enjoy the show.

As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

Links

-  Farcaster’s architecture

-  Farcaster general info

-  Purple

-   Purple’s Warpy proposal

- Purple’s Prop House

-  Purple’s Farcaster founder allocation

-  Fardrop

-  Discove

-  Alphacaster

-  Launchcaster

-  Nouns Stream

On today’s show, I’m joined by María Paula, Trent Elmore, and Sam Spike to discuss JPG. JPG, or Juried Protocol Galleries, is an evolving set of experiments that seeks to bring curatorial memory to the NFT art scene. Often contrasting themselves with the highly financialized speculative art market for which NFTs are well known, the JPG team is dedicated to bringing art appreciation and long term curatorial memory to the decentralized art world through onchain interventions.

JPG’s latest project is Canons. Canons are Token Curated Registries. Holders of the Canonicon non-transferrable NFT vote to elect NFT collections to Canons, which are lists of NFTs on a particular theme. Votes are stored on arweave, and a mathematical formula rewards JXPG, the protocol’s reputation token, to voters whose taste is confirmed by their peers.

It was great chatting with María, Trent, and Sam about the origins and evolution of JPG’s gallery, exhibitions, and new TCR projects. I hope you enjoy the show.

As always, this show is provided for entertainment and education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto is risky and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

Links

- JPG’s main website

- JPG Canons Docs