I hope all 8008 of you are having a great week so far 🔥
If you're enjoying my writing, please share Terminally Onchain with your friends in Crypto and join the /toc channel on Farcaster 🤝
In September, the Terminally Onchain (TOC) newsletter crossed 8,000 subscribers 🥳
Friday's deep dive on Splits Protocol was also my 75th post since starting this newsletter on December 18th, 2023.
I also started the TOC Zora collection a few weeks ago to experiment with "Newsletter Shorts" to help distribute snippets of my long form content.
So far, I've posted 18 shorts on Base and grew to 470 followers on Zora. I'm excited about how this collection is looking. If I continue growing this series, it will be a high utility endpoint to give future subscribers a quick glance of what kind of content they can expect for me.
For some of the shorts above, I've been airdropping them to the TOC pro community, that's why some have ~140 mints and others have none 😢
But the truth is I don't care about the actual mint numbers. The only reason I'm airdropping them is because the pro subscribers get an e-mail with the quick tl;dr straight to their inbox. Here's an example of the one I sent out yesterday.
In terms of the TOC Pro community, we're sitting at around 130 true fans.
All of these folks get:
To be part of the TOC token gated chat where I and many others send our hot takes, useful links, discuss new products, etc.
Shorts such as the one above e-mailed & airdropped to them weekly so they can quickly stay up to date with what's happening in the ecosystem
Access to fun onchain perks and TOC partnerships
If you're interested in trying out TOC Pro, I'll gift you 1 month of the subscription for free!
Just post in the TOC Farcaster channel with a link to one of your favorite pieces from the roundup below + 1 quick sentence with any feedback.
Alright, on to the roundup of my last 10 posts!
In the bear market these past two years, one thing has become increasingly clear: stablecoin usage is continuously growing regardless of how the rest of the crypto industry is performing.
What has been arguably the most "safe & boring" software innovation in crypto since Ethereum launched is now becoming the goto narrative for crypto's high utility use case.
Farcaster's Rube Goldberg Machine
Think about it...a dev can build a normal react native mobile app as they would and can automatically submit their product as a Farcaster mini-app for distribution purposes. Nothing changes from their end, but discovery, distribution, & viral loops are now possible without affecting the product experience.
The Parallel Burden of Onchain Creators
...it really does feel like the wild west for onchain creators. There's so many new tools popping up, endless new strategies to try out, uncertainty with what works, etc.
Anyone aiming to be an onchain creator not only has to nail down the traditional newsletter + Twitter format, but also navigate through the maze of new crypto creator tools that barely even make sense.
My job as an onchain creator is to try everything! Use all the tools, experiment with the different features, and iterate on what the best flow is for me.
Grab a beer, we're going Bier mode
"Apps inspire infrastructure, then that infrastructure inspires new apps".
The best thing consumer devs can do is build a framework that allows them to spin up new ideas and test them as fast as possible.
To me, it's clear that Slokh's approach of building a base infra with the new tooling from the last two years is the way to go. Now, he can continuously iterate on new ideas, tweak features, try marketing to different audiences (i.e. teens, movie fanatics, chefs) etc. until one path turns out to be a gold mine.
Intro to Decentralized AI Agents
In order for the Internet of Intelligence thesis to play out, it's essential that there's a way to conduct financial transactions. Or else, there's no way to exchange value and complete tasks! We can't have E2E agents without giving them the ability to take charge and make decisions, even those that involve set allowances/budgets. If you're the CEO of a company, do you grow by delegating or micromanaging every transaction & decision?
Niche down or die tryin: Farcaster Channels Update
One analogy that came to mind was student organizations on a university campus. When a student enters college, they share the campus and what it has to offer with everyone else there. But very quickly, they go to campus fairs to find clubs that interest them and make new friends with like-minded people. They end up finding 3-4 orgs that seem like a fit and use them to enhance their college experience.
Similarly, it's fair to expect new users who join Farcaster to initially see a huge campus full of all kinds of activity. But the goal will be to eventually find their own channels that feel like home in order to have memorable experiences and make new friends. The most important part of this channels update will be reducing the friction of finding cozy corners new users resonate with.
Base's Moat is better than Free
By providing services such as smart wallets, RPC nodes, Onchain Kit, etc., for free Coinbase is "scorching the Earth" around them to make sure they are the front-door to the onchain world.
Coinbase is using it's leverage, brand, size, resources, and diverse product line to invest heavily into Base. And they're just getting started. If the above data was the results in just the first year, I can only imagine how strong the funnel becomes in the near future.
From Binary to Analog Prediction Markets
Well, it enables analog prediction markets. Meaning, it's now possible to make open-ended bets with a clear method of market judgements to determine payouts.
These application markets are like niche newsletters - they have a concentrated set of true fans that deeply care about a given subject and want to explore the depth of that topic with their peers.
Techno-optimist Hanseatic League
And for most people, even for those of us working in tech, the idea sounds a bit odd. New country? What does that even mean? And while that may be the grand vision, my guess is that it's a turnoff for many folks just like how "rebuild the financial system" doesn't make defi feel inviting. The scope is too large, there's no clear starting point, and it doesn't feel immediately applicable.
But with this Hanseatic League analogy, things start to seem more approachable. Now it's not about starting a new country but rather for a few community leaders focusing on organizing what are effectively longer duration conferences.
Starting my first Onchain SMB in 5 minutes
There is yet another wall to be broken down in terms of what a company can be and how this new capital coordination model can unlock the next growth curve of innovation.
In each iteration of the company, the primary metric that improved was the decrease in time (and effort) to experiment.
This concept of an Onchain SMB is doing exactly the same.
That's all for today's post!
Remember to post your feedback in the TOC Channel for 1 month free of TOC Pro 🤝
See you all on Friday, hope everyone has a great rest of the week :)
- YB
