i have been very lucky with @qrcoindotfun, in many ways, but one in particular which prompted this post.

i thought it was a good idea from the beginning, from the day i launched $QR via clanker through a 10-second post on farcaster, but it's pretty obvious from the origin story that i did not think it was THAT good or THAT exciting relative to other ideas i've had, because i had total control of my time at that time and i didn't immediately decide to start working on it. i just clanked the coin to plant a seed. it was a fast & easy way to start (which is the hardest part) and I figured i would basically have this floor value coin as a reminder to myself, as silly as that sounds, until a day i thought i may decide to take a next step.

that day came a few weeks later when i saw a cast from @jessepollak with an advertising related coin idea which prompted me to share some of my thoughts on $QR, which was then a few weeks old clanker. even then, i wrote "Transparently, this is probably not something I want to work on a lot for a long time, but I do think it's more interesting than 99% of memecoins, so if someone wants to build the nouns-like daily auction as a simple website or a frame, I would manage the website swapping to start."

it's obvious that despite thinking QR was a good idea or maybe even a great idea, i still did not think it was THAT great or THAT exciting or else i would not have said what i did, and again, i would have more immediately started working on it. instead, i just offered that, if anyone wanted to build the auction site, i would manually swap the redirect on the QR.

it wasn't until @chomu and @sarvadshetty.eth volunteered to build the v1 auction site and we launched to a surprise bidding war that resulted in a $3,303 bid that i started to take QR more seriously. i took that information from the market and realized that maybe there was more to this than i thought. it's since that point that i've gotten extremely lucky.

specifically, i've been lucky in that I have continuously stumbled into great ideas for what to do next with QR, what it is and what it can become. i had another big idea this morning which is what prompted me to write this. this process i'm describing, i believe, is how great things get built. i've been fortunate to talk with several of the best founders in the world on my podcast over the years and it's not as much a concrete takeaway as it is a pattern recognition. many great companies it seems started somewhat by accident, or at least, the founder did not know what it could or would become when they started.

rather, they started with a seed, planted from a place of curiosity, a pure desire to do the thing, independent of any expected outcome, just a gut feeling that there might be something there. i've planted many of these seeds over the years and most of them don't grow. i've found that before you plant it, it's almost impossible to know. something seemingly small may be huge and something seemingly huge might be a dud.

it might not even fail because it doesn't have potential. for any number of reasons, you might just not follow through with it, and i think you have to just trust that that's for the best, that somehow you know what is worth pursuing and what is not, that everything happens for a reason.

on the other hand, the seeds that have compelled me to continue working on them i believe have done so because they're worthwhile. Base Colors ("the NFT collection for every color on the internet") was one such seed for me, planted about a year ago, and for the record, i still believe it's an awesome project with huge potential. i doubt my work on it is done and i'm excited for what it can become on a multi-year and maybe multi-decade time horizon, but i'm not actively working on it right now. we did a lot with Base Colors post-launch but not all NFT projects require constant work in perpetuity. in fact, i'd argue the best ones haven't (i.e. CryptoPunks).

a few months ago, i planted the seed for what would become @qrcoindotfun, and i have fallen deeper and deeper into obsession with it since. i am coming up with seemingly worthwhile next steps (seeds of their own, in a sense) much faster than we are able to execute on them which, of course, is a great problem to have.

i genuinely do not know how long this will continue. i keep thinking that the pace of ideas for what to do next is going to slow down and then we can just execute on those things and if i don't have anything new by the time we're done then maybe that's that, a possibly temporary stopping point, sort of like i arrived at with Base Colors.

but so far, each step up the mountain through the fog has made the next steps more clear. climbing a mountain in the fog is probably my favorite analogy for building things. i got it from @barmstrong, which seems somewhat serendipitous given that i am building QR on Base.

now i'm not going to share with you all the future stuff i have in mind because i don't want to overpromise and underdeliver. there's plenty of that in crypto as it is. and if i lose my enthusiasm for the project and no longer think that it's the best thing for me to be working on, which is not something i believe i can predict, then i have reserved for myself the right and freedom to stop at any time.

this freedom is made possible by genuine sacrifices with real trade-offs such as not raising money and continuing to fund expenses out of pocket. this forces me to operate profitably, which i believe is a good thing, but again it's a genuine trade-off. paying more people more money could probably allow us to move faster, but sometimes I think that's a trap as well. doubling personnel does not necessarily double speed. it might increase speed by 50% or something, but it might even counterintuitively decrease speed, especially past a certain point.

another thing i have done to reserve the right to stop at any time is i have publicly announced many times when $QR has hit new ATHs that anyone can sell if they want, it's nothing personal, no obligation to hold, this is crypto, it's risky, and you genuinely should not hold more than you'd be ok to lose. so as the value goes up, you might exceed that amount which you are comfortable holding, or at least you can take your initial amount off the table so you're playing with house money.

please don't make any crazy bets on this project. know that it is not equivalent to a bet on me. a bet on me looks more like getting reasonably and responsibly involved with all of the things i do over time, or many of them at least. i want people who bet on QR to win (of course, and no one is betting on it more on me), but not as much as i want people who bet on me to win, long-term. and to make that bet a good one i need to do what i believe is best for me, which may at some point mean working on something else. there's almost no chance i'll be working on QR in 50 years. i can't even say for certain that i'll be working on it in 50 days. to be clear, i think i will be, and i don't know of any reason i wouldn't be, but again, I'm always going to try to do what i believe is best.

all i can say is that i continue to be very excited about what we are building today. if there was a chart for my excitement about this idea, it would be a bit volatile, like crypto, but generally up and to the right, also like crypto, in aggregate at least :)

to wrap things up, i just want to thank everyone who has gotten involved so far — holders, bidders, followers, and everyone checking out the link of the day every day and earning a little bit of $QR. i'm working really hard and having a ton of fun, largely thanks to you.

https://farcaster.xyz/jake/0xa81311f5

https://farcaster.xyz/jake/0xd8b4babe

"please don't make any crazy bets on this project. know that it is not equivalent to a bet on me"

I don't think there's a more honest and transparent builder out there than @jake .

Always keeping it 💯

Just a dude who loves birds /songbirdz /birds /birdwatching

That line resonates with me too. The best outcomes will always come from people who are free.