Building Relate to make a groundbreaking psychological paradigm available to everyone; a 20-minute AI conversation reveals what's going on beneath the surface
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hi, i’m chris and i’m building Relate
People don’t realize that abstention is an option in this red/blue saga
Didn’t fully think through the fact that if I work on something that squarely sits within the realm of mental health, that I’d be constantly talking about my own feelings and experiences everywhere I go. I’m here for it.
Welcome to the NFT Trough of Disillusionment Foundation winding down really marks a clear moment in time. To me, it feels like the marker we'll remember as the end of the initial NFT era. Foundation was one of the leading platforms of that entire period, alongside SuperRare and Art Blocks. Foundation got so many things right, especially around onchain provenance and how to make that accessible to people, creating interfaces that truly allowed the art to shine. Looking forward now, it’s clear that we’re entering the next phase where non-fungible tokens–as a technology to enable the digital art market to exist–are right-sized. I look at the recent launch of Node Foundation and the way it’s structured and funded, and I think it will support artists for the long haul and allow the ecosystem to grow at a sustainable pace into the future. The Gartner hype cycle has played itself out exactly with NFTs. We are absolutely at the trough of disillusionment now. Foundation winding down truly marks the arrival of this moment in time. But for anyone who cares, it’s important to know that the journey doesn’t stop here. What comes next is sustainable growth and a market that will continue to evolve as the ways we interact with digital art and consume it become more accessible and easier through advancing technologies. The company that has acquired Foundation’s assets makes displays for digital art, and those displays are only going to get better and more affordable. I’m really looking forward to the day when it makes financial sense for me to have a display like that in my home; I can't wait to display all the art I collected during the original NFT cycle, properly appreciate it, and share it with others. Imagine a future where there is more of that everywhere and it's easy to believe that digital art will continue to grow into the future. Thank you to @kayvon for stewarding Foundation through its entire life and helping set the course for digital art: that should always be remembered.
Goodbye NYC, I love you I’m moving out and moving on and don’t know when I’ll be back. I moved (back) here in Feb 2023 when I was still full-time at Ledger. I adopted my first dog living here which has changed my life for the better. The Ledger Layoffs of 2023 is what drove me to get curious and join Farcaster. The NYC contingent was (and still is!) strong and I immediately found incredible people. Huge shout out to @serendipity and all her organizing efforts with /fcny — that was true peak Farcaster x NYC energy and I’m eternally grateful to have gotten to be a part of it. I joined @syky as head of product in April 2024 and tried my darnedest to shift the culture there to be more crypto focused and build a community on here, but it was never fully committed to. A year after that, the writing was on the wall with that business, which coincided perfectly with my newfound interest in vibe coding, which @brenner’s events he organized at Asylum in /williamsburg and the /vibes 7-day-challenge-turned 30 days set me on a new path. /farcon-nyc was so much fun getting to meet even more internet friends IRL. I hosted the poker side event and started a regular poker game at the SYKY office before the lease ended (shoutout NYC Poker Cabal) and now @debbie carries the torch for poker games (fyi). Since then I’ve been building something new on my own and the builder energy and community in NYC (shoutout @slobo.eth and Shiphaus) has helped me to up level and get to a place where I’m ready for the next phase. It’s been a great run back in NYC, due in large part to @farcaster. Thanks everyone for being here. I love you all.
If tomorrow is day one I’m gonna be pissed
Clearly, Neynar believes a builder-first approach is the right thing for farcaster. I think this is an important aspect and is directionally correct. But there’s another element that I think needs to be brought to the forefront and an area of focus. For every 1 builder in the world, let’s say there are 1000 non-builders (8 million “builders” total?). But farcaster can and should be a place for the other 7.992 billion people. So what needs to be figured out and have resources and effort put behind, is: 1. What is the pain point Farcaster solves for these people? 2. How do we communicate that publicly to everyone that is not here currently? One area worth exploring is: existing social media is divisive, performative, ad-driven, manipulative. There’s no place for people to feel like they can be themselves without having to be performative. There’s no place where they aren’t being treated as a product being sold to advertisers (the actual customers). Enter: farcaster. A place where you own and control your social graph. Today, the main client is a place to connect with like-minded people on any topic you care about and to participate in a community that is free of ads and open to real discourse. Come and experience the breath of fresh air that’s only possible when the underlying protocol doesn’t see you as a product they need to manipulate. @rish I realize the team is small and there’s still much work to be done for builders and that in some respects, if you nail that and get it right, only then is this other part possible, but without some public discourse around this topic, without some energy and push to bring new people here, I’m afraid it will be too little too late if you stick with the “build it (for builders) and they (non-builders) will come” approach. Please reach out to your active users and ask them all, “when was the last time you told someone to join farcaster? What needs to change for you to tell your friends to join?” For new people that are joining, “what was is that got you to sign up for farcaster?” Consider taking inspiration from Anthropic’s recent 81k user interviews (ai can help scale the user research/interview part to help deliver the insights that can help drive this messaging that is so desperately needed).