# Daily discussion thread 2025-02-05 Source: https://hackmd.io/QaMCfYaBQqSnwIAOgCDXDA?date=2025-02-05 ## Comments **timdaub.eth**: gm, yesterday, in the daily, I said that > Thinking of making all of Kiwi exclusively about Ethereum news and moderating content hard Why? WiE is dead, ETH is now only 1/6 of BTC, and generally we're seeing that there's a wide difference between sentiment at conferences and online. This has become a huge issue and not even the EF seems set up to solve this. As a community of Ethereum enthusiasts, I think we're uniquely positioned to serve Ethereum's community here. But this means we have to carefully self-moderate what we submit and talk about here and we have to put our private interests to the side. As a reaction to my post, Misha said: > All for this ! LFG > > Only thing is to question where are the boundaries. But we might also find out in the process. > > So guess regarding Ethereum: full Ethereum ecosystem would be a fit? So ETH L2s, L3, etc? And how about Gnosis, kind of an ETH L2, or in fact an Ethereum parallel chain? Bridging maybe ETH cross-chain? And of course art projects on Ethereum? While removing some of the non Ethereum-related posts yesterday, a question that always seemed useful was: "Could this be a link in Week in Ethereum?" Now, this question is not only applicable when submitting a specific link, but it is also relevant when looking at the new and hot feed of the day overall. Is the feed "about Ethereum," or are we curating the "Other things that happened" section of WiE? As I don't really know another community who's deciding to dedicate itself to serving the Ethereum community in earnestness, I think for as long as this moderation regime is in place we'll be judged based on our capability to curate the site towards informing the Ethereum ecosystem well. I'm curious to see where it leads us. There's already a list of links that I haven't submitted here! Fingers crossed! PS: I think we can still use the daily to talk about anything! **macbudkowski.eth**: > Now, this question is not only applicable when submitting a specific link, but it is also relevant when looking at the new and hot feed of the day overall. Is the feed "about Ethereum," or are we curating the "Other things that happened" section of WiE? I am not sure if WiE is the right role model. I have tons of respect for their work, but IMO they were a part of the problem we lately discussed. Their newsletter supported the academic-style, technical, and low-focus-on-beauty perspective of people building Ethereum. Partially because of its very narrow subject focus. It was great for the infra phase of Ethereum, but I don’t think it’s good enough for the consumer adoption phase. So how else could we define our audience (and content)? There are a few classic ways of profiling the media apps. 1) “We are focused on subject X.” We define the audience by their interest in one particular subject rather than by who they are as people. Example: Psychology Today, Wall Street Journal, Week in Ethereum 2) “We are focused on people who share values X.” Audience is defined by aligning with certain beliefs, ideals, or lifestyles. Example: New York Times, Indie Hackers, Pirate Wires 3) “We are focused on people who want to solve problem X or satisfy need Y.” Audience is defined by looking for ideas, guidance, how-to advice, and so on. Example: TechRadar, Money Matters, Stack Overflow *** Ofc method 1) is much easier than 2) and 3). But I think going after 2) is worth it, because then the community is bonded by shared values, and being active on Kiwi can actually be a part of my identity as a person. And when you look at our conversations in daily discussions or groupchat, it more or less happened. Everyone believes +/- same things such as decentralization, open source, design and so on. The problem is ofc that we might’ve become too broad in terms of content, and we need to narrow down. And I second that. But maybe there’s a way to keep this value-alignment on the way. Wdyt? **mishaderidder.eth**: A good question is also, who’s reading? All good points by @macbudkowski, personally hanging a bit towards 2) It might also be an idea to do a survey and see what people are looking for who are coming to Kiwi? Besides that I think it is good to take a position, so people also know what to expect when they come to Kiwi and don’t let content become to fuzzy, diluting quality. I am guessing, but I’m not sure, that most of people reading have a warm spot for the larger Ethereum ecosystem, including Gnosis, Optimism, Base, Farcaster, Lens. So aligning content towards this might be a good idea, also bc it feels like we arrived at a critical moment for this ecosystem and Kiwi could take a more activist stand in this respect being a source of information and hopefully the center of critical discussion regarding these topics. But there is a danger too. If Kiwi becomes too tech academic (like Mac is suggesting) Kiwi readers who are coming for the fun and news dopamine excitement might be turned off. So in this case it is possible Kiwi indeed becomes the next WiE. **timdaub.eth**: Yeah I think it's not necessarily only about what content is being submitted, but also about the experience of feeling as a member of one community supporting Ethereum and having an impact. I think a defining characteristic should be that you come, read, contribute etc. here because you are fundamentally an Etherean, and to be that you have to behave a certain way. Aiming towards this would be in service to Ethereum as there are many other communities which aren't really vetting or validating their members for being Ethereum-aligned. > If Kiwi becomes too tech academic (like Mac is suggesting) Kiwi readers who are coming for the fun and news dopamine excitement might be turned off. This is true. Also, we would then compete with Ethereum Magicians etc. That said, when I removed links yesterday, I couldn't help but feel that we became wayy to random as curators here. Mac even shared with me a post on Reddit where someone asked why there are Trump and art related articles on our front page if we're "handpicked web3 alpha." I think this was also a feedback by Freeatnet recently. I think the opportunity here is to become what the big Ethereum conferences are to the offline Ethereum experience. Namely that you get connected to your peers and start to inform yourself about what's going on in the ecosystem. However, if you think about where Ethereum's online sentiment is cooked, then currently its scattered on many platforms which are explicitly NOT maximalists and where multicoiners can chime in. X, FC, Discord, TG, they're all nations consisting of multi coiners. But this creates a problem that when you have all of these unaligned people talk about Ethereum, you get a wild mix of opinions and sentiment about the asset, which leads to struggles in influencing roadmap, and eventually price depreciation. **timdaub.eth**: > I have tons of respect for their work, but IMO they were a part of the problem we lately discussed. Their newsletter supported the academic-style, technical, and low-focus-on-beauty perspective of people building Ethereum. Partially because of its very narrow subject focus. > But there is a danger too. If Kiwi becomes too tech academic (like Mac is suggesting) Kiwi readers who are coming for the fun and news dopamine excitement might be turned off. So in this case it is possible Kiwi indeed becomes the next WiE. I fully agree here, and in terms of the content that we should curate, what I diagnose as ugly and boring is the tendency to report on "how much better Ethereum scales with this or that optimization e.g. enabled through rollups" or whatever the fuck. This article is a great example: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Gigagas-Rollups?index=0x67a33587a0d975752a02fb7edbe5a899fd92befb2a957541fd32d5d7c537017867568165 It's just aesthetic cancer from the perspective of making people excited about the purpose of being in Ethereum. Not saying that this research isn't important etc., but we're past the point where anyone cares. We have to shift the focus towards what users can do with Ethereum and we have to educate and promote stories which further understanding why it is important that these things happen on Ethereum, and NOT on e.g. Solana or Bitcoin. There's a big cultural difference between those and us. Let us be clear about this! Finally, because this, I think, is also a major reason why Ethereum's sentiment is so bad, I think there are some Ethereum-related NGOs which have really lost the plot and which have positioned themselves in favor of the tech-doomer camp. RadicalExchange, for example, is now embracing a pro-labor, anti AI narrative by arguing that AI is reducing bargaining power. While I do think these orgs are, in part, also responsible for why Ethereum's vision is currently so lacking of excitement, I think we have to pick up the scraps from those imploded orgs, and we have to re-combine them into narratives and demonstrations that get people excited. Georgism, regen, network states, dacc etc. Neither Solana or Bitcoin, or anyone else has these movements and all they have is "consumer apps and cheap and fast txs," or "hodl." On our site, however, I think we've, for too long, allowed a techno-skeptic voice to reign the tone and messages of implementing Ethereum's vision. When Etherean's want to promote visions, I think we shouldn't start by casting doubt and by demanding caution. This will extinguish visions right at their birth. A few examples: - Soulbound tokens were falsely framed as an alternative to China's social credit system and a privacy nightmare. Soulbound tokens are, of course, not like China's social credit system. - Network states are framed as neo-colonialism, I hardly see anyone still interested in them and their mission has been cucked into impotence. Essentially you can't be caught to build a Network state as this would inevitably be neo-colonialism. What if it isn't? Or where's the fragment of network-stateism that can be implemented in Ethereum that brings growth and prosperity? Why can't we implement a new form of international citizenship, even if it would be colonial in nature? How about we implement it in the most powerful countries first, as to not exploit those who are weak? - Popup democracies are frames as undermining existing governance structures. Digital voting is always framed as competing with democratic elections. - A further proliferation of wallets in every-day payments is framed as too risky and non-ready for mainstream adoption. But many types of wallets are ready for prime time - Tornado Cash and true financial privacy is framed as a tool for criminals and terror regimes, yet actually, this stuff just enables decent financial privacy. How about we lobby states to punish the baddies (North Korea) instead of the devs? - d/acc never really got off the ground - etc. While I do see everyone's concerns around not going further on some of these visions which have been formulated within the Ethereum community, I think it's also a welcomed gift for Bitcoin and Solana maxis to tap into arguing for caution and to doubt the good-intentions of Ethereum developers. I think we have to start to form a narrative against this, and we have to allow Ethereum's vision to prosper before we demand caution and moral excellence. **macbudkowski.eth**: > I think a defining characteristic should be that you come, read, contribute etc. here because you are fundamentally an Etherean, and to be that you have to behave a certain way. Aiming towards this would be in service to Ethereum as there are many other communities which aren't really vetting or validating their members for being Ethereum-aligned. 100%. Ethereum has this unique culture. I was lately checking Daily Gwei Discord channel and they managed to gather very aligned people, which results in a high discourse quality, without DDoS attacks on their attention by Solana maxis. BTw it's easy to forget that Ethereum culture is special if you don't go to conferences or check other communities. E.g., Solana community doesn't even value open source, and that's why their biggest wallet (Phantom) and contracts are closed source. *** Unrelated, but why advanced users still keep using Coinbase? In the last few months I read 10+ stories from CT people I follow of them getting their funds frozen because of some security reasons. Last week ZachXBT published a thread explaining why it's happening - tl;dr is that many normie Coinbase users are getting attacked by scammers, so they try to prevent that by overreacting. Today my friends money got freezed because he's sending it to multi-sig. And I read this: https://x.com/erla221942/status/1887001796473704731?s=46&t=ckKu9J9v0ruNKfYnUq_-tQ which is basically a hilarious onchain trolling meta commentary to Coinbase practices.