Chris Carlson (chrislarsc)

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.

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If tomorrow is day one I’m gonna be pissed

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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.

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2025 was a pivotal year for me. I started out thinking I was going all-in on crypto and would be pushing a startup forward in the space. In December 2024 we launched on Base and the founder I was working for was in the middle of fundraising mode. I was gearing up for FarCon with big plans to launch a mini app and iterate from there. A month before FarCon though, the round didn't come together and instead of building, we went into preservation mode and the founder started looking for a buyer. It was at this time that I was getting hard into vibe coding; I built (nearly) 30 things in 30 days and learned a lot. Fast. Right after that, I went out to SF for my brother's graduation for his doctorate in Psychology and had an initial conversation with someone about building at the intersection of therapy and AI. As the crypto gig wound down, new models were coming out that made vibe coding projects look more like real apps and not just toys, and I was reading the manuscript for a book encompassing the greatest advancement ever in modern psychology. One more trip out to SF in September solidified the idea for our first product, which I built an MVP of and got in the hands of people to try out and give feedback. Were we on to something? Was it a bunch of BS? The results were incredible. *Every* person said they felt seen and understood by our assistant. Other feedback: there's no way ChatGPT could ever do this, getting the best night's sleep in years, physical relief, crying from the realizations. I'm working on V2 now and will be ready to bring on the next round of testers soon. It's a *big* improvement on V1, which was already so encouraging. 2026 will be the year this new thing takes off. I've got 6 months runway to work on it full-time, get it farther along and raise. I think I can honestly say that the Farcaster community contributed greatly to me pursuing this path and being so committed to it now. Happy New Year! LFG 2026!!!

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