Toilets, Shadows, and Tip Jars

Welcome to the 28th entry of my public journal, where I share *some of the things* I've been thinking about, learning about, and exploring across work, tech, wellness, and life.

Dear Friends,

I’m cursing myself this morning because I’ve let 3 long weeks pass since I last wrote, and now there are too many things to write about that I don’t even know where to start.

I’m reminded of my favorite DevOps analogy for explaining why small batch sizes are better: the toilet.

Flush the Toilet

I don’t remember where I first heard it or who I heard it from, but it goes like this: there’s a reason we flush the toilet after each use. Imagine trying to flush a toilet after a dozen people use it without flushing. It wouldn’t be pretty. It’s the same for code changes. The smaller and faster you can get them into production, the cleaner and safer they’ll be. But if you wait too long and batch too many together, you’ll have shit all over the floor. Or something like that.

That’s how I feel about my writing today. A toilet full of random topics circling in my mind. Hopefully I can get them all out without too much mess.

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Upcoming Travel in the Shadows

I am traveling 3 out of the next 4 weeks. Next week is a family ski vacation, the week after I’m going to ETH Denver, and then off to Portland for the DevOps Enterprise Forum. I’m going to 3 different places for 3 entirely different reasons, but I’m equally excited about them all. Yet this anticipation is a weird feeling because it’s all happening in the shadow of the one year anniversary of my mom’s passing. I keep finding my subconscious brain going back to this time last year, remembering how often I was driving back and forth between Philly and New York while she was in the hospital. I feel happier and more at peace than I have for most of the last year, yet acutely aware I’m feeling more sensitive and melancholic at the same time.

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An Update on GM Farcaster

GM Farcaster, the live stream Farcaster news show that has been a small side project since last September has picked up a ton of momentum over the past month, mostly because the quiet little social network I’ve been active on all of a sudden exploded a few weeks ago with the launch of a feature called Frames. As early users of Farcaster, we have often called out notable vibe shifts in the platform, but it’s different this time. I posted this meme to put this into context:

Early users on Farcaster would complain about vibes shifting every time there was a small increase in users over the past year.

My cohost NounishProf and I are having a ton of fun riding the momentum, and as Farcaster continues to grow we’re continuing to lean further into our little side project. It feels like a good time to have a show dedicated to Farcaster and nothing but Farcaster.

We added YouTube to our distribution strategy recently. Despite the common knowledge that YouTube is great for content creators, I’m still blown away by how many more people we’re able to reach now. We’ve also added a new segment called Friday with Frens and have started bringing guests on the show, featuring Farcaster OGs, developers and builders, including DWR, Rish, Grace, J4ck, Jacek, Non-linear, Jesse, and Linda. We added a /gmfarcaster channel and a GM Farcaster brand account, Prof has been writing up a weekly recap from our GM Farcaster Paragraph account, and we ran and completed a successful mini experiment using NFTs for sponsorships last month.

What I’m most excited about is we have press passes for ETH Denver and a 2-hour slot in their podcast recording studio. We are going to try to cover all things Farcaster. If you know any talks or events that we should attend, let me know.

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Read, Write, Own and Two Aha Moments

I’ve been actively participating in web3, crypto and blockchain projects for over 2 years. My conviction that blockchain technology can provide a better economic future for more people around the world, has only gotten stronger. If you’re curious about blockchains and why I continue to be so optimistic about them, I recommend reading Read Write Own by Chris Dixon.

One aha moment from reading the book was something I’ve often thought about but hadn’t spoken about with anyone — the idea that one of the reasons blockchains haven’t been adopted by the enterprise is because they don’t benefit the enterprise.

“Blockchains are multiplayer. They let you write code that makes strong commitments. Individuals and organizations don’t have much need to make commitments to themselves. That’s why attempts to create “enterprise blockchains,” which function exclusively inside existing corporate organizations, haven’t been successful. Blockchains are useful for enabling coordination among people who don’t have preexisting relationships.”

— Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet by Chris Dixon

See that last line? It’s the same reason that drew me into the Enterprise DevOps movement. Enterprise DevOps empowers individuals and creatives in large organizations. Enteprise DevOps may not be fully persmissionless, but it does put up guardrails to let individuals act with much more agency and speed, unleashing more creativity and innovation.

My second recent aha moment about web3 can be understood though the lens of this quote by Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of Ethereum:

“Whereas most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, blockchains automate away the center. Instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, blockchain puts Uber out of a job and lets the taxi drivers work with the customer directly.

—Vitalik Buterin”

Blockchains are supposedly “good for creators”, and while it’s a refrain I’ve repeated over and over again, I had an experience this week that brought my understanding to a whole new level.

The tl;dr is this - as a blogger (a content creator) I made a little money this week. What clicked for me wasn’t the amount of money, but how easily and frictionlessly I received it. And all of a sudden the “web3 is good for creators” just clicked.

I’ll explain.

Substack is not a web3 company but it’s known to be different than other companies that serve content creators. Why? Because it’s built on email which is an open protocol. Writers on substack have direct access to our audience; if we no longer like substack we can take our audience with us. (Of course, there’s nothing that guarantees it stays like this forever and we still have to trust substack to not turn off the feature that lets us download our subscribers).

After writing my own Substack for one year, I did a thought experiment with Substack’s monetization abilities and considered experimenting with paid subscriptions. Except it felt completely wrong to me. While I understand disrupting the business model of traditional journalism, I’m no journalist. This isn’t a job, it’s a hobby. I appreciate having an audience but I am writing for me, not you. I could never ask you to pay to access this. So while I appreciate that Substack is better for writers than its competitors because it allows for direct monetization and ownership of your audience, there will never be a monetary benefit for me.

But web3 is different.

There’s a company called Paragraph - maybe you’ve heard of them. They’re just like substack or medium, but with crypto native functionality built in. I created a newsletter there as well, mostly for my farcaster and crypto specific community. Each post is mintable which means people can collect my posts as NFTs, after they read it. Unlike substack where the only option is to pay as a recurring subscriber in advance, paragraph lets users collect posts after they read it. It’s like a tip jar. It’s a way for readers to say, “I like what you wrote and here are a few cents or dollars”.

There’s a saying in web3 that “mints are the new likes” and Fred Wilson recently explained this concept very well by talking about mints as the native business model for web3.

So… on to my a-ha moment.

I used my paragraph account to publish an update about the GM Farcaster sponsorship experiment we ran. There’s nothing of much value in that post. It took me less than an hour to write. I casted (“cast” is to Farcaster what “tweet” is to twitter) once about the experiment, linking to the post. And then over the next few days I started seeing a trickle of ETH being deposited into my wallet, like coins falling into a tip jar. Strangers on the internet were reading and collecting my post. They didn’t have to - it’s a free read. I didn’t ask them to. They just did.

This is completely frictionless. It didn’t feel transactional. Consumer and creator are completely decoupled.

It makes me think of my substack. I have no intention of turning on paid subscriptions. Ever. But what if this were a native web3 newsletter? What if it was really easy for people to express their “likes” with a few cents, with no added friction? And what does that look like at scale? Hmmmmm…. makes me wonder.

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Some of the Other Things

As always, here are some of the other things I’ve been getting into:

• In my consulting company Tenger Ways’ February Newsletter , I wrote about the Groundhog Day phenomenon with Enterprise IT. Much like Bill Murray stuck in a loop because he wasn’t learning how to change himself, most organizations have an IT function stuck in the past, in their own endless loop of bugs, issues, and project delays, with teams too busy in meetings to get any real work done. (Read it here, or subscribe for future ones)

• I can add any credential or skill to my LinkedIn account, but how does someone know whether I really earned a certain degree or have a certain skill? The Ethereum Attestation Service is a cool concept using blockchain for verifiable credentials. J4ck from Icebreaker is using EAS to verify Farcaster qDAU, and I picked up my credential this week. You can see the proof here.

• Next week I’ll be in Steamboat, CO for a full week of skiing with the family as well as a bunch of college friends and all their kids too. This will be our 5th repeat trip and I don’t know how I became the person who does the same vacation every year, but here I am and couldn’t be happier.

• Here are some photos from the Cartagena yoga retreat I attended a few weeks ago. Top row: fresh ceviche, the door to our villa, colorful streets; Bottom row: Getsemani district (note: the Spanish accent local to Cartagena pronounces Gs as Hs, so say this in your head as hexamani, as you say Cartagena as Cartahena), views from a beach club on our boat day.

  

  

  Cartagena

• I learned about something called Dzud phenomenon, a slow onset disaster that happens in Mongolia where extreme cold plus deep snow converge. Animals have nowhere to go and cannot reach food. According to this Nat Geo article, 700,000 animals die in January 2018. I heard from a contact that in this past December 10,000 horses lost their way in blizzard conditions and perished, a very tragic event for nomads that want to keep their way of life alive. The nomads were unable to find or move the horses in time. Nomads can lose their entire livelihood in conditions like this, which are being exacerbated by climate change. With more frequent climate disasters plus inflation, they cannot afford to buy new animals.

• Happy Tsagan! Tsagan Sar is the Mongolian lunar new year and it’s the year of the dragon ~ bring on all the good things this year! 🐉

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A Note to My Subscribers

I started this substack in December 2022 as an experiment to see if developing a writing habit would help clarify my thinking and/or provide other benefits. You can read about my original intentions in my first post or my more recent reflections after sticking with it for a year.

I write about twice a month and share musings, meditations, and links to things I’m finding interesting as I build out my consulting company, raise my kids, and have fun creating and learning in the worlds of crypto, tech, finance, science and wellness.

Thank you for supporting my writing and journey. If you’d like to get in touch you can reply to me here or find me on X and farcaster.

Until next time, keep putting good into the world. —adrienne🌏❤️