Welcome to the 4 new people who joined the onchain letters community since Friday!
I'm thankful for all 90 of you and I hope everyone is having a relaxing weekend 💤
If you're enjoying my writing, please share Onchain Letters with your friends in Crypto 🤝
Every Sunday, I share what I minted throughout the week.
It can be hard to keep up with everything that's happening onchain so hopefully the list below helps you discover a fun project or initiative you may have missed.
Today, I also added in a community notes section where I share a few thoughts top of mind for me.
In case you missed my letters from this week, here's a quick recap:
Ethereum's Broadband Moment - I dive into one of the most anticipated Ethereum scaling proposal: EIP-4844. The name of the game is bandwidth. The internet only became popular after broadband technology started spreading. Like DSL, 4844 is providing us a new frequency for rollups every single block! It's like the Ethereum mayor approved a project to build a 6 lane highway to help shorten your morning commute.
Follow the (onchain) data dammit - The Nethermind bug and DC Investor's note to Coinbase caught my eye last week. I decided to dive into staking & validator data and it turns out things aren't as pretty as they look. Geth, a go-lang based client, is used by >75% of stakers! It's important the community checks the data and speaks up when necessary. I also went through 100s Dune dashboards and curated the top 15 for you to check out 📈
Community Notes
First off, a huge thanks to everyone for their kind words on my Ethereum's Broadband Moment post from Tuesday. I was a bit unsure of my "DSL-blobspace" analogy but it seems like it clicked for many of you.
It's been a bit over a month since I started Onchain Letters! This is post #21 - definitely been a grind but I'm really enjoying it. The support from readers gets me so pumped to keep on researching & writing. Even a simple comment changes my entire mood for the day.
When I started this newsletter, I intentionally decided to not worry about anything but writing. No marketing, crazy experiments, DM'ing people to subscribe, etc.
My goal was to show up and write 20 posts before I thought about anything else. And I'm glad I did exactly that.
It helped me figure out my research process, my voice, and what posting cadence works for me. Of course, I still have a long road ahead but it finally feels like I found a rhythm:
Tuesday & Friday: Onchain deep dives that simplify technical topics and/or give analysis on a growing trend in the ecosystem.
Sunday: Curating what I minted that week (art, writing, memes, podcasts, etc). Right now, I've been focusing on OP Stack (Optimism, Zora, and Base) but may expand ecosystems over time.
What else?
Well, I realized I really enjoy drawing parallels to what's happening in crypto to what happened in the early days of the internet.
Six's screenshot essays on Zora notes to Justin Hall's first Internet blog
Even to early tradfi: BTC ETF to Gold ETF and Stablecoins to Eurodollar
And I'm not surprised. I've always been obsessed with learning tech history. As someone who is young in tech, learning about web1 & web2 helps me realize that much of what's happening right now is just a different flavor of what OGs have already gone through. In fact, when permissionless channels launched on Farcaster, my first thought was to start a /techarchive channel.
I'm also glad I've been continuing the "what I minted this week" series.
Sharing my weekly mints forces me to stay conscious throughout the week on what's happening onchain. This means actively checking Interface, browsing through Zora, going through my Daylight emails, etc.
In just the last 4 weeks, I've minted over 60 NFTs!
Okay, with all that being said...what's next?
Honestly, just what I've already been doing. My goal will be to continue showing up everyday and focus on learning and writing. As of right now, this newsletter is my full time job. That means no matter how hard it gets, I have to show up and send an Onchain Letter every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.
One request I've gotten is to create an "about" page for Onchain Letters. Some people have mentioned that it's better for them to share that with friends as it serves as a welcome guide. That's a great idea and I'm going to create one and share it with you all this week.
If there's any other requests or feedback you have, please respond to this email or DM me anytime! I love getting feedback and am constantly trying to iterate and get better. Even if it's 3 words I don't care, just send :)
What I minted this week
One mint I want to specifically call out from this past week was the "frames" one from the Farcaster craziness this weekend. The best way to describe it: hitting the mint button on @jacopo's frame had the same "wow" feeling as I had when I minted my first NFT back in 2021.
Zora
1 year of Design Everydays! Was so excited to collect this one - I've been following 0xDesigner's work since he started cranking out crypto UX ideas and it was incredible to see the 365 day video. You can check out my letter to 0xDesigner in case you missed it!
Base
GM Farcaster morning show hit 50 episodes this week! Mint their episode here.
Basepaint #169 - the theme was Degen! Doge, pepe, and the whole gang in pixel form.
The Base team released such a cool mint called "Get Onchain Today!" which is a play on AOL's carpet bombing CD strategy from the '90s..."Get Online Today!"
Optimism
Reviving trust in crypto - a post by Ria Bhutoria covering sovereignty, transparency, and credible neutrality
By all points - a post covering gamification and the rising points system in crypto by Katie Chiou and Graeme Boy
That's all for today's letter - hope all of you have an awesome week!
- YB
