Top crypto stories of week 14, 2024
Mon 1 to Sun 7 April 2024
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 1 to Sun 7 April 2024, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 14 comments in total. Most-shared sources: warpcast.com.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Degen communism: the only correct political ideology (vitalik.eth.limo)
Vitalik Buterin argues that current political ideologies are failing and proposes "degen communism," an ideology that embraces chaos while tilting its rules and incentives toward the common good. He applies the idea to crypto, where he proposes that project terms of service prioritize making smaller users whole first, up to a threshold such as $50k, when projects become insolvent. For government policy, he proposes land value taxes, looser building rules citing Austin, Texas, and Harberger taxes on copyrights and patents.
- What makes $DEGEN a $1B project in three months (noweb3.ai)
- The History of DEGEN (zerion.io)
DEGEN grew from a fair-launch memecoin on Base, distributed through Farcaster's /degen channel, into what the article calls an unofficial Farcaster token with wide-ranging utility. Airdrop 1 allocated 15% of the 37 billion total supply to Farcaster users who posted in /degen, with multipliers for other actions, and another 15% went to the liquidity pool. The community built the brand, including the "Degentlemen" name and the top hat symbol, and Jacek, the lead dev, supported it through bounties and grants. The article adds that DEGEN is now the most widely listed Base token and that a DEGEN-based Layer-3 network is the next planned step.
- Why the Ethereum Community Is Up in Arms Against a Proposal (unchainedcrypto.com)
Ethereum Foundation researchers Ansgar Dietrichs and Caspar Schwarz-Schilling proposed changing Ethereum's issuance curve to keep the staking ratio balanced, and the proposal has drawn strong opposition from parts of the community. The authors argue that a high staking ratio creates negative externalities, including diminishing real staking yield, inflationary pressure on non-stakers, and centralization risk, with Lido holding 30% of staked ETH. Critics such as Eric.eth, Martin Köppelmann and Jon Charbonneau say the change undermines ETH's monetary stability or only shifts incentives between groups. One community member also argued the move could strengthen SEC arguments that ETH is a security.
- Farcaster Action - Bag Bias | Potential undisclosed shilling detector (warpcast.com)
- Logical Token Design (newsletter.auditless.com)
- $ENJOY: New rewards system for mints on Zora (warpcast.com)
- Creator earnings: ERC721-C Compatibility on OpenSea (opensea.io)
OpenSea announced that creators can now use ERC721-C from Limit Break to set and enforce their own creator earnings on the platform. The feature relies on Seaport Hooks, introduced with Seaport v1.6, which let creators set conditions that must be met before NFTs in their collections can be transferred. Enforcement requires an ERC721-C compliant contract, and enforced sales will be supported only on OpenSea and marketplaces powered by Limit Break's Payment Processor, which at the time of writing includes Magic Eden.
- An introduction to Composable Culture, what it is and why it matters (netspherepop.substack.com)
The author argues that emerging technologies such as blockchain, web3 and AI are driving a rise of "composable culture," a broad umbrella term for entertainment, digital products and their business and hardware infrastructure. Composable culture is framed as extending pop culture into areas like payments, legal services and infrastructure, with the GenAI revolution and the 2022 Web3 boom cited as examples. As a case study, the article points to NVIDIA's reported plan to build a Steam Deck competitor, which could combine its own hardware with GeForce Now and a storefront, and it suggests that personalized, niche fandoms may grow more numerous.
- What is ERC721-C ? (erc721c.com)
Apptokens are tokens whose every buy, sell, or claim requires the developer's app, with rules enforced on-chain at the contract level. The page describes several types: Trade Apptokens can set price ranges, fixed ratios, tiered fees, and gated access, while Temporal Apptokens unlock on a schedule, expire after a season, or exist only during a live event. Spend-Only Apptokens can be used within an app but not traded on a DEX, and Compliant Apptokens can gate ownership by identity verification. The page also claims Backed Apptokens are redeemable from a backing pool, giving holders a guaranteed floor price. It does not mention ERC721-C.
- What happens when the creative class makes their own currencies? (jamesbeck.mirror.xyz)
- ENS Points (points.ens.domains)
- Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy (longform.asmartbear.com)
The article argues that most startup failures, like most amateur chess and tennis losses, come from avoidable blunders rather than from the absence of a good strategy. The author tested this in about twenty chess games with similarly rated opponents, where the player who made more blunders lost 86% of the time, rising to 81% of decisive predictions when mistakes were added to a weighted error score. It then applies the idea to startups, separating proximate causes such as running out of cash from underlying self-inflicted errors such as not talking to customers or not selecting a target audience.
- Matrix 5 in the works? (perplexity.ai)
- Farcaster Actions spec (warpcast.notion.site)
- The Replyguys Manifesto (paragraph.xyz)
tervo lays out the vision and values behind /replyguys, a Farcaster channel he started in late January 2024 that he says grew alongside /wearesoearly, which ciniz started on February 2nd. He argues that the channel's growth came from authenticity rather than financial incentive, and that its community should show up, be respectful, have a sense of humor, and contribute something of value. He describes himself as exercising dictatorial control over channel curation to keep out engagement farming like follower-for-follower schemes and mass tipping. The channel combined for over 11,000 followers one week after launch and has about 18,000 today, according to the post.
- The Art of Technology, the Technology of Art - a16z crypto (a16zcrypto.com)
This a16z crypto podcast episode features Berlin-based artist Simon Denny in conversation with editor in chief Sonal Chokshi about how technology has changed art and how artists have changed with technology. Denny says he was drawn to the optimism of technology entrepreneurs, which contrasted with the cynicism he found common in the art world. He describes making a 2013 artwork about the DLD conference in Munich, and he recalls that the 2007 iPhone launch and the marketing around it drew his interest in the intersection of art and technology. The conversation also covers debates over inventing versus remixing, commercialism and art, and whether there is an artistic monoculture today.
- The fabric of Hyperstitions (leo5imon.com)
- L3s exist only to take value away from Ethereum & onto the L2s they're built on. (x.com)
- Reth archive node dashboard (reth.paradigm.xyz)