balajis

@balajis.eth

54 Following

217438 Followers

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We just launched the Network School Fellowship. Anyone from anywhere can apply for $100k in funding. Apply online at ns.com. https://x.com/balajis/status/1913280710531826057

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Most countries are small countries. More than 50% have <10M people. Almost 20% have <1M people. We've built social networks much bigger than that.

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Peer to peer ad markets are now live on Zora. For any post you can buy the content coin. And if you’re the number one holder, you can pin a link under the post. This solves many issues at once. (1) First, it gives utility for holding a post-specific digital currency. (2) Second, it allows creators to share directly and instantly in ad revenue. (3) Third, it allows advertisers to micro-target individual posts more specifically than ever before. Entire new crypto ad exchanges can arise on this basis. (4) Fourth, it’s an application that’s legible to web2 execs, as they understand the monetization of attention. (5) Fifth, you can work out the CPMs, but they may well be lower than traditional ads. (6) Sixth, it’s enabled by the p2p aspect of crypto, as it’d be hard to facilitate this kind of microtransaction otherwise. (7) Seventh, creators will probably want to curate their top reply or have AI doing it for them. (8) Finally, if this works it can be scaled across any social crypto product.

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Great work. The infrastructure is finally there to enable internet micropayments.

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Cryptocurrencies are digital boundaries. That is, in the physical world you can clearly distinguish where France ends and Germany begins. And you can enumerate the millions of people near the Franco-German border, as opposed to those who are more internally located. But in the digital world, you can’t easily see the Instagram/X border. You can’t see which people spend a lot of time on both platforms, and are in a sense near the network border, as opposed to those who are “patriots” to just one platform. Until crypto. Because coin holdings give public digital boundaries. You can determine from wallets and posts which people are coin maximalists (and hold 100% in one coin) vs which people are in digital border territories (and hold balances in multiple coins). This is machine-readable information that can establish digital and physical borders for a community. NFT-gated Discords and door locks prove the point. So: it’s early now, but eventually crypto tribalism becomes crypto patriotism.

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A map of the cloud predicted the pope.

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NFTs have evolved into at least four categories. First, there are name NFTs like yourname.eth. These are the easiest to understand because they are just like domain names or usernames. Next, there are profile NFTs like Bored Ape. These have value because they are like club memberships, and people make them part of their public identity. Next, there are Zora-style content coins like horse (see reply), which update the art NFT model by setting up a market for every Instagram-style post. Buyers buy these coins to show appreciation for the creator, to speculate on how much more popular a given post will get, and sometimes to show (via onchain timestamps) that they’re early to spotting new talent. Finally, there are micro-NFTs that just represent onchain data, akin to “typed likes”. Many social actions are now cheap enough to record onchain.

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Crypto conferences are a precursor to crypto communities.

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I want a simple open source JS text widget that automatically detects and rejects AI input. - It constantly keeps up to date with the latest models - As the user types, it displays the probability that the input is AI - If the user pastes in text, the AI probability increases - It flat-out rejects input if AI probability is >50%, by graying out submit - It doesn't show anything unless the AI probability is high Basically, a good slice of people now paste in AI slop because they're lazy, can't write, or don't realize how detectable it is. I don't want to manually detect it with my eyes, I want AI to do that and reject it prior to submission. Put the widget up at noaijs.com or a similar domain. Allow developers to subscribe for a hosted version, or even perhaps buy a memecoin (ha!) to support.

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“The meme and the memo” is itself an excellent example of a meme that encapsulates the memo! Great write up by @jacob. We got a lot done together.

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What can’t AI do? Deterministic polish. Maybe it can get there for code. With formal verification. But then that’s not really pure AI.

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We need a movement for offline spaces, just like walkable cities. Faraday cage environments where phones and laptops simply don’t work. Libraries with pencil and paper and no distractions. Laptops without WiFi chips, so you can type offline and then sync back manually via USB or Ethernet when you want. Restaurants with phone lockers at the front, where everyone must check in devices beforehand. What else?

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I have some ideas for AI-proof interviewing. But I’d like to hear yours.

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🙂 All right. Let’s go a few rounds. Our mutual friend @mazmhussain can adjudicate. (1) First: startup societies are based on 100% consent. No one is there who hasn’t chosen to be there. No one is in a hierarchy if they haven’t opted into that hierarchy. Signing the social contract to join a community is much like signing a contract to join a company: you view the docs, make an informed decision, and opt out if it doesn’t work. That right to exit is the fundamental right. (2) Second: not all existing laws are good laws, like the PATRIOT Act. Sunsetting *some* laws doesn’t mean you don’t believe in laws in the abstract. (3) Third: you likely have views on what your ideal community would be. Maybe it’s a vegan village. Maybe it’s modern Amish, where tech is paused at the level of flip phones and people enjoy each other’s company. If you ever decided to build such a peaceful, opt-in community, then we would support you. And that’s what startup societies are about.

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I am hiring Farcaster devs. As context, I’m the former CTO of Coinbase. While there I drove our transformation from a four asset company (BTC, ETH, BCH, LTC) to the infinite asset backend Coinbase has now. I also championed and led the USDC launch at Coinbase, taking it from $0 to $1. And worked closely with @dwr.eth, who has been a friend for 10+ years. So, if you want to build real crypto products — not gambling, not vaporware — come work with us. I think Farcaster is exceptionally underrated as a protocol and want to use it as the backbone for a new kind of crypto-first school. To motivate: imagine if every problem you solved in college doubled as a portfolio piece — as a *proof-of-learning* NFT added to your public ENS. That would build a new kind of AI-proof verifiable resume. And that is what we want to build on Farcaster. So, come work with us! https://jobs.ns.com/33467

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We are hiring for Network School, starting immediately. You should apply if you want to bootstrap startup societies and build global meritocracy. Our basic thesis is that (a) Stanford and SF were amazing in their day but (b) they're in decline now and (c) the political process isn't going to save them so (d) we're going to have to build back better ourselves, if you will. If you share this thesis, and if you're an engineer, designer, or academic lecturer — please do apply at jobs.ns.com.

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Btw, the Network State Podcast is back. Season 3 starts with me and Rudyard Lynch, also known as WhatIfAltHist on YouTube, who's one of the few people as obsessed with researching the past and forecasting the future as I am. Enjoy! https://youtu.be/90ghx9MXTTg

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The market is the grader. That is: AI accelerates grade inflation and makes it harder to test skills. So, we might have to replace traditional interviews with externalized paid bounties. You interview for a job by doing a micro-job.

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What does an AI-first social network look like? Some thoughts. First, you can prototype it with Farcaster. You don’t need to reinvent users, wallets, the feed, any of that. So that alone speeds you up. Second, open source models are now cheap enough to run that you can just put them behind a normal button. X’s Grok integration is a good example. Third, there is tremendous room for an AI which is prompted not just on immediate context (your post) but on social context (your past posts and those of your friends). It could autogenerate prompts it thinks you’d like. Fourth, AI improvements on seemingly simple things like image upload widgets could be profound. You could automatically search for similar images, upscale them, auto-annotate them, or do something else. Fifth, AI could enforce a certain style in a community. As heavy-handed example, every post could be rewritten in Olde English. If you opted into this kind of moderation, it could produce unique communities. Like filters, but for text.

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My strong impression is that Farcaster’s feed is much more positive than the feed of other sites. Who wants to prove that with a sentiment analysis?

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