🛠️ 2 Paths of Crypto 🤑
Don’t want to sound ungrateful for the number, but I am kind of nostalgic for the bear market vibe 🤷♂️
You know, the time when it was all about building the future?
Maximalism 😬
For a long time, Bitcoin-maxis were the only maximalists in the space; with the rise of Ethereum killers, there seemed to be an increase in Ethereum maximalism.
Somehow, some way, some people figured that rather than being any-specific-project-maximalists, they should be profit maximalists instead 🤦♂️
“Don’t choose sides, choose profit.”
☝️🤮
The Split 😱
No, not the split between Bitcoin maximalists & Ethereum maximalists,
the split between technologists that are here to build the future & those who are only here to profit - regardless of what or whose that future is.
For some, its about decentralization
For others, its about profit-maximalization
And if this is such an ingrained part of the crypto culture already - think about what happens in bull markets, when the new people come here almost exclusively because they heard about big gains 👀
Every bull run, its the same shit all over again:
Fresh blood flows in chasing easy money hoping to get rich quick, completely unaware of the larger narrative & the underlying philosophy of the movement.
Each new bull run further dilutes the idealism.
Retail buying absolute bullshit peddled by people of influence & self-proclaimed experts while institutions are quietly scooping up Ether, beating them to it.
But its not the only way of doing things. Over at the other side of the crypto realm, there is a rise of community first & community governed projects. 👀
🤔 2 Paths - Value Capture vs Value Creation
There are essentially two paths that people take in crypto:
One is about joining pump groups where people post memes & exchange tips half of which lead to rug pulls.
The other is about finding projects with whose vision & mission you align.
One path is acquiring new shitcoins over & over again, expecting things to pump.
The other is about investing your time & money into a few projects & sticking with them for the long run.
One is about scanning the opportunity landscape for value & capturing it.
The other is about creating value.
To rephrase it, two games to be played:
Game A: The goal is to squeeze out as much profit as possible and for as little effort as possible. The value already exists, you just need to capture it.
Game B: It’s about finding value-aligned communities & creating value by contributing to building infrastructure for a decentralized world.
Sure, but, like… Weren’t we supposed to replace Wall Street with something better, perhaps something regenerative rather than something even more degenerate? 😅
We’ve successfully been building a new Wall Street but, I’m obliged to say that, in a way, decentralization is what made it worse. Give everyone access to financial instruments & what you get is a giant casino in the wild west - surprise surprise 😂
As opposed to Wall Street, crypto still doesn’t have much consequence on the real world except for a few idiots who will mortgage their home for Doge at peak mania.
Also, the purpose of DeFi ≠ purpose of crypto.
We Failed 😬
We haven’t built a proper onboarding system & the narratives have gotten drowned out in the noise - joining through the news of price pumps, people just coming into crypto have no idea why we are here.
The purpose of DeFi is to build a decentralized financial system but the purpose of crypto as a whole is much greater.
Even within the Ethereum community we’ve kind of lost the plot 🤷♂️
”Eth is ultra-sound money”? Is that all we got - a counter to bitcoiners? 😅
Its not about decentralized finance, its not about decentralized certificates (NFTs) - its about building infrastructure for a decentralized society.
Ether is fuel for a decentralized socioeconomic infrastructure layer for the society of the future - that’s kind of mindblowing so why reduce it to “better money”? 🙃
From The Wild Web to A Web of Opportunity
Right now, crypto is a wild west - if the snake oil merchants don’t get you, looters will.
Newcomers flock in search of easy riches, arriving with high hopes only to get drawn into bullshit or rug pulled out of existence.
On the road to riches, the ones who go deeper than “Ripple is like Bitcoin but banks like it” & “Binance smart chain is like Ethereum but cheap” end up getting sucked into best-shilled centralized forks of existing projects. 😅
“If this thing gets to just $1, I’ll be rich!” - while having no idea of what market cap is 🤦♂️
Don’t let me discourage you! The last thing I want is people condemning me because the shitcoins they were about to buy ended up pumping like crazy. 🙃
Truth be told, you’re not likely to multiply your money by more than 3 times by playing it safe & holding Ether - not during this bull market.
If you want to 10x or 50x your money, its probably not too late but it comes at orders of magnitude more risk.
These are rich lands, we just need to make them safer to explore. 🤷♂️
Unfortunately, turning the Wild Web into a Web of Opportunity will take much much more effort and is definitely not going to happen during this bull run.
Playing The Long Game
Ask yourself: why are you here; what is your goal.
If you’re only now entering crypto and you’re here because you think you can get rich quick, you probably closed this post a few paragraphs above and aren’t reading this 😂. Still reading? Its possible but you’re not gonna find a how-to here. 🤷♂️
If you’re here because you think this is your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to disrupt the status quo, make an impact on the world and profit (in a long run…).
First thing you should know is that you actually don’t even need money, just need to be willing to learn & work for the next ~5 years.
Some guidelines:
Find a few projects you really like. Their blog or website blows your mind or at least makes you go fuck yeah! - then go deep on them.
And I mean deep. Subscribe to their newsletter, learn all you can about them, but more importantly - join their community wherever it is.
What are they like? Is there only price talk or is it a real community? Are they cool people? Are they open to participation?
Spend time there and not just lurking. Get active, ask questions & try to be useful. They are humans, not much unlike you.
Most people think “I’m not a programmer so there’s no way I can contribute” which couldn’t be further from truth.
Seriously try to be useful - there is always a way. If not, ask better questions & learn new skills - there’s time.
Be ready to put in effort and time. A lot of time.
Make friends. Ask about more projects & learn about them. Be useful in more places, try to connect the dots & make more friends.
By now you should be earning tokens from your contributions. If you’re not getting anything in return, maybe you’re in a wrong places?
By now you’re also seeing problems in the space. If you came up with a great idea or a problem you want to solve - now is the time to do it; raising money for ideas has never been easier. Make sure to turn this money into stables or gold if you want your project to survive the next bear winter though 🙃
Disclaimer: This is a spiritual advice.
An Onboarding Machine
Anyway, MetaGame is about onboarding people to this path of value creation. To teach them about why we’ve been here for so long, how they can create value & help us build this decentralized future we’ve been dreaming of.
To this end, we’ve been growing a community of like-minded people & putting together all the resources & information one might need - from dipping their toe in crypto to starting a career in the DAO space.
Crypto splits into missionaries & mercenearies - our feet stand firmly planted on the missionary side.
Btw
In case you’re interested, I’m paying whoever wants to compile this 👇
DM me on Twitter if interested.
MetaGame Meta 👀
The Better Onboarding raid has been progressing pretty much as planned, we’ve filled most of the needed head innkeeper roles & dealt with the basic requirements like the evergreen quests for people wanting to get started in role-specific guilds.
Work on the Metarrhizal Network (reorganizing discord) has been continued by FearlessThompson, Tommy & Sparrow; expanded, updated & waiting for feedback.
The Designers Guild has concluded the card sorting exercise ran by Davor to help us put together the MetaOS in a way that makes sense, the results to be discussed on tomorrow’s Designers Guild call.
The MetaRadio team puts out another podcast episode - MetaView #12 - Deliberately Developmental Organizations with Durgadas of TEC - recorded by peth, edited by eowulia & written up by karmaticacid, continues with eowulia putting together a draft of the MetaRadio page design & b0gie working on the music side of things.
The Builders Guild is all setup & ready to start onboarding new developers with handholding included, also continues making progress in structuring the roadmap for MyMeta, Quests & the MetaOS as a whole. Reaches out to the Headhunters Guild - to have its first call on Monday.
After a lenghty Sourcecred AMA with MetaDreamer, Seeds have been minted & distributed to the merkle drop. Go claim them & feel free to sell them here or plant them here (multicollateral pls)
Open Roles
We got a few but always open for more!
🍻 Innkeeper
Innkeepers are the lifeblood of MetaGame. People think innkeepers are just about welcoming new players & helping them get going, but the role of an innkeeper actually branches off into a bunch of specializations.
Ask about it in the #innkeepers-guild & get started.
🛠️ Builder
The most important role currently, one which all headhunters should be all over. Like all projects in the bull market, we’re lacking builders.
Good thing is that we don’t need Solidity developers, we need good old web2 developers. Those of ReactJS, TypeScript kind & those familiar with Hasura & Graph.
Check the role description here, get going on the builders path here or ask about it in the #builders-guild.
🤑 Patron
Patrons are the players that are contributing to MetaGame by buying & planting Seeds. You can read more about how it works here. We won’t be making a big push for patrons for at least another week, but do know that the planting season is soon & it might be worth it being among the earliest 🙃
🕵️♂️ Headhunter
Headhunter is a player who knows a lot of people or where to find them. His role is to get the other roles filled. Currently, the highest priority for headhunters are the builders, though finding more innkeepers & patrons definitely won’t hurt 😇
fix time
Onwards! 🐙
The cycle continues with a few changes:
Mondays:
Champions Ring - the 14 raid leads stand-up meet
Headhunters Align @ 10am PST / 2pm EST / 7pm CET / 10:30pm IST
Wednesdays:
Builders Align @ 7am PST / 11am EST / 4pm CET / 7:30pm IST
Better Onboarding @ 8am PST / noon EST / 5pm CET / 8:30pm IST
Mid-week Storming, Feedback, AMA - open office, coworking
Thursdays - Designers Align @ 10am PST / 2pm EST / 7pm CET / 10:30pm IST (only this Thursday & next, then back to Tuesdays)
Fridays - Community Gathering, welcoming new members & discussing things
All meets @ 9am PST / noon EST / 4pm UTC / 6pm CET / 9:30pm IST except when noted otherwise!
Great post <3