The Crypto World's Fair Hackathon - Day 1

I've joined this month-long hackathon https://colosseum.com/worldsfair which has number of prize pools for crypto integrations.

While I am amply aware of the troubles which come when people emphasize the Fi before Social in SocialFi, I am also still a believer that ATProto solves a LOT of 'last mile' issues when it comes to crypto and that it honestly is a net value add for this ecosystem despite the number of negative, scammy, fraudulent, and disappointing projects which have dominated the public narrative.

I personally, have benefitted from the field and I in-turn have passed on some of those benefits to people in real need. I won't name names, but I can say unequivocally that they are, to a person, underprivileged and those crypto funds were used to pay rent, buy groceries, and in one case kickstart a whole career.

I have also seen big projects where things go right like when NFTs paid off over $7 Million in medical debt and have repeatedly fed people around planet Earth over $1 Million in pizza. Other projects have helped families send money home across borders without outrageous monopolistic fees, funded all kinds of development projects, caused the established banking order to pucker up, etc etc.

I give this preamble because there's a general sentiment in the crypto community that Bluesky hates crypto (mostly true) and there's a general sentiment in the ATProto community that crypto is only useful for scams, illicit activities, etc (sometimes true). This is hamstringing development which can and should occur over here just because of the initial conditions which led to the rapid growth up to 40 Million users. Unfortunately, this has become a local maximum which has led to a struggle for new user growth and general fumbling around for new user segments to entice (sportz!).

My flag in the ground is that ignoring the (at least) 700 Million users in the cryptocurrency community is a huge disservice ATProto as a whole and is a very weird projection of internalized shame or sub rosa given the technical foundations of the protocol. It is wasteful in all directions and I'm tired of waiting for one side or the other to get their shit in order.

All of that said, waving crypto around in people's faces is super annoying and has repeatedly irked me about the last (checks watch) 10 YEARS OF CRYPTOCURRENCY DEVELOPMENT. It's been a wild west of predominantly engineering-led development and some of the worst user experiences humanity has ever faced. The overwhelming majority of experiences out there are high friction, high jargon, extremely tech-forward flagellations. No wonder it's taken so long to grow this much.

Meanwhile, you can chat in a box and the computer just does things for you.

We need to build shit that is USEFUL NOW. So this month will be a time of exploration and constantly begging you to please try these experiments out until we find one that really makes a lot of you happy and starts to pull in a new audience.

First experiment: Mallbucks. Hope to give you a demo-worthy site tomorrow.