Welcome to the 20 new members of the TOC community!

I hope all 9696 of you had a great week

Pretty bold title right?

I'll bet you a Chipotle bowl WITH guac that this post will have the highest open rate out of all my posts in the past quarter.

Okay, before I get into today's topic, I wanted to quickly say THANK YOU to everyone who voted for my DeAI talk at Farcon...I ended up getting selected!!

I'm honestly feeling a bit nervous since this is the first time I'm giving a presentation that's so ~formal~ in front of such a huge crowd. But I'm working non-stop towards making the content first class and am excited for the next few weeks. Nothing forces you to grind harder than being expected to talk in front of 300 people for 8 minutes in the middle of Central Park.

Anyways, I'll have more details on how that's going soon...I'll spare you the DeAI stuff for right now.

Sections below:

1. Full Transparency

2. Crypto x Frontier Tech

3. Terminally Onchain: Tiered Model

Let's dive in.

Full Transparency

One thing that I believe sets my content apart at least in the crypto space is that I've always been 100% transparent about my creator journey from the start. I share all the details, what's bothering me, my wins, etc. And truthfully, I think the TOC community enjoys these posts even more than my usual deep dives.

Today, I want to be brutally honest and let you all know that if I don't start making money from TOC in the next month or so, I'm going to have to get a job and this newsletter will be officially categorized as a hobby for me.

It's less so about the money itself and more so realizing the opportunity cost of not having a full time salary while cranking away on a newsletter without any tangible business goals.

I made this cast last night at the airport gate.

For those of you that joined the TOC family recently, it's worth noting that I've tried doing banner sponsorships before but I really disliked them.

A bit dramatic, but in my head, I view each of my posts as an art piece. And having a logo and a low effort one-liner about a company feels like I punched a hole in my canvas out of frustration.

Maybe they're suitable for other kinds of posts I may do in the future, so I don't want to say I'll never do them. But for right now, I've eliminated the idea for getting the revenue started.

On the flight I decided to just sit there with a notebook and pen. No airpods. No background movie. No airplane wifi.

Just a notebook, pen, and the beautiful sunset I would stare at through the half opened window on my right.

And after a furious brainstorming session that lasted for 1.5 hours and took up 3 pages, I came to the simple conclusion that I have been undervaluing my work and contributions to the crypto community.

It may be imposter syndrome. Low self-respect for my own work. Or fear that people will think my head is up my ass.

But the truth is, for the last 4 years, I have been writing and writing and writing. And I've asked for nothing in return. I've lost count of the number of companies and founders I've written primers for just because I was excited about what they're doing.

Don't believe me?

Here's a thread of 10 posts I did back in 2021 covering companies like Rabbithole, Mirror, and Pool Together. Oh, and remember OlympusDAO?

I cringe at some of these now, but that shouldn't take away from the effort I put in.

YB

@yb_effect

From a single blog post covering Axie Infinity, @packyM was able to raise $45,782 (9.56 eth) on Mirror.

Web2 was for the platforms. Web3 is for the creators.

@ArweaveTeam & @viamirror make it possible to own and monetize your content.

Let's see how

267

10:27 PM • Nov 8, 2021

That same year, I also co-authored a 12 day course on how to get into web3 with Peter Yang for OdysseyDAO. We received 4k+ sign-ups in a few months!

Then in 2022, I joined Chapter One full time where just for fun I guided 10 university students from around the world to research, write, and publish 25+ pieces of content covering a variety of topics such as account abstraction, Vyper, DeSci, DeSo, and many more. That content has been shared by all sorts of people in the ecosystem including Vitalik.

YB

@yb_effect

12 weeks ago, @chapterone launched the first cohort of the web3 university research program.

How'd it go?

10 students wrote 27 deep dives covering a variety of web3 topics (see thread below) and landed internships at @Uniswap, @ironfishcrypto, @stelolabs, @Molecule_dao, etc.

127

7:15 PM • Nov 30, 2022

In 2023, I was hooked on learning more about the history of OG companies in Ethereum and noticed others were enjoying it as well, so I put together 14 threads on companies like Coinbase, Dapper, Uniswap, etc.

YB

@yb_effect

The history of web3 through timeless tweets:

17

5:51 PM • May 21, 2023

And right before I started Terminally Onchain, on my last newsletter, I did a series of company breakdowns with a "tech history lens" to help others better understand these products.

Even with Terminally Onchain (which I started in December 2023), I have continued to do the same. Here's a recent example of how my post on zkTLS helped Opacity land Kevin Rose as a client!

EulerLagrange.eth - zkTLS/acc

@Euler__Lagrange

1/ How i met Kevin Rose happened solidified why i’m so bullish @farcaster_xyz. Here’s the story.

@yb_effect wrote this banger article on zkTLS and Opacity last year. Def subscribe to him.

Kevin came across it and randomly DMd me. We quickly hopped on a call and he conveyed

60

4:33 PM • Apr 2, 2025

And this is just the writing. It's worth noting that last year I also created a "BeReal Minting" game and a Farcaster content curation client.

Even beyond the screens, I've hosted events for the crypto community like my Venice Beach pizza party last May and the crypto x ai hangout from a few weeks ago.

I shared all this not necessarily as a flex but rather as a showcase of how much I love writing, building, and hosting for the crypto community. Truly, it brings me so much joy that I haven't once regretted giving up my big boy salary to just be an enjoyooor and contributooor.

But, reality is starting to creep in a bit. It's been almost 2.5 years since I quit my last job. If I don't start thinking of Terminally Onchain as my business and get serious about what it means to run a company, then there's only so long I can keep this up.

Even past the money, I just want to get rid of the uncertainty that comes with not knowing how the finances are going to work out. I can only depend on airdrops and pseudo bull shit trading for so long to pay the bills. I'm willing to bet that as I start figuring out the MRR, my writing will get exponentially better because it's coming from a place of full creativity rather than stress.

So what's the plan?

Double down on who's here.

For the LONGEST time, I genuinely thought it was all about sponsorships. My plan was simple: get a shit ton of subscribers and then have companies pay me. Packy's model was always the approach in my head.

But it's becoming to clear to me that the verticals I'm writing about right now have a small TAM. Initially, this bothered me. However! It's worth noting that the people who do care about what I write are extremely curious when it comes to those topics.

So I think it's time to start taking the idea of a paid tier & community seriously. I always thought this was dumb because why limit the number of people that are reading your work or engaging in your community?

But now I'm starting to understand the flip side: by gating content and community, you attract people who are genuinely interested and want to meaningfully engage. These true fans think similarly, enjoy learning about the same topics, and are mostly aligned with the what the core creator is curating.

And what is it exactly that I'm creating and curating?

Crypto x Frontier Tech

I mentioned this framing in last week's post.

At the end of the day, I realized what I enjoy most is going down rabbitholes and learning everything I can about a topic.

So, why did this realization ease my anxiety?

Because I realized that it wasn't actually about "publicly committing to DeAI". I reframed it to me being a crypto evangelist for other verticals of frontier tech - I just happen to be starting with intelligence. Maybe in the future I add in energy (Daylight, Flow) or DeSci or DePin.

To me, it's become crystal clear that there is a wedge in the content market for targeting people who come from the crypto world but are interested in exploring other verticals of tech.

If you're like me, there's an intellectual desire to know everything that's happening in AI and biotech and renewable energy and robotics and BCI.

If that sounds more exciting than stressful, then I believe you are the target audience of the TOC community.

To be clear, I don't want to write "institutional reports" or that kind of stuff. I want to learn and write the way I want and share/discuss with friends (all of you) that also find my content and voice interesting.

Terminally Onchain: Tiered Model

With that being said, today is not about making any commitments but rather just getting a pulse check on how all of you are feeling about the pitch below.

There will be three tiers. Based on the crypto x frontier description you just read, what tier below resonates with you the most?

True Fan Tier: $75 / month

1. Access to community Telegram chat

   Goal: provide quality curation, discussion, and feedback for each other

   • I have been doing this with my DeAI chat the last few months (~50 people) and it's gone really well. Tons of great feedback, members sharing content, helping each other edit posts, discussing current events, how they're using new tooling, etc.

   • I'll be expanding this to not just for DeAI but a general TOC chat

2. Gated Monthly Livestream

   Goal: provide actionable takeaways from folks in the trenches

   • Interviews with founders and/or researchers

   • Community led discussions on how to improve workflows, hidden gems, find what's undervalued, etc.

   • Will be recorded and sent to true fan subs in case they miss it

3. Monthly Coffee Chats

   Goal: intentionally connect you with other TOC community members

   • I'll be actively understanding what each of you is looking for most in terms of professional help. Are you a founder looking to hire? Are you an investor looking to understand a vertical better? Are you in BD trying to meet other BD/GTM folks to discuss strategies?

   • Based on that information, I'll match you up in groups of 3-4 people to have a virtual (or maybe IRL) coffee chat

4. Guaranteed access to all IRL events

5. Access to all paid posts (3 / month) + free posts (3 / month)

Paid Subscriber Tier: $15 / month

1. Access to all paid posts (3 / month) + free posts (3 / month)

2. Guaranteed access to all IRL events

General Subscribers (Free)

• Access to just the free posts (3 / month)

I'll be starting this model the first week of May.

Until then, I'm going to be working closely with community members to figure out the details and the Paragraph team to get the subscriptions going.

Note: it's worth remembering that maybe the company you work at is willing to reimburse this subscription as a work expense?

That's all I have for this week.

I appreciate all of you and it truly means the world that you take time to read my work :)

Have a great weekend and don't forget to reply with your tier choice!

- YB