MetaNews #11 - August 2023
MetaFest Streams, MetaFam back from vacation, restless builders & matcmaking
We had a quiet month in Discord while IRL MetaFest was going on. But the 🏗-builders-guild channels were busy with behind-the-scenes fixes, and we did get a podcast episode out & an online-only community gathering done.
Read on for the lowdown.
Wait! First time reader?
Check out our video intro to MetaGame and find out what all the fuss is about!
⛓ Chainlog
🤝🏽 Community
The big community gathering was (obvs) at MetaFest.
There will be a full MetaFest Retrospective post coming out next, but suffice to say it exceeded our own expectations & went down great.
MetaFest had a high concentration of MetaGamers, DAOists, Regens & Game B players. Besides being the biggest MetaFam gathering ever, t’was the first IRL conference organized by MetaFam & the first conference situated exactly at this intersection - coordination, regeneration & the bigger picture.
The mix was great, the vibes were great, food was great; honestly not sure what wasn’t.
Check out some of the sessions 👇
Meta/Regen Day
Coordination/DAO Day
Note that these are only from the main stage, so more will be coming out!
Huge thank you to the whole MetaFest crew, volunteers, sponsors, patrons, attendees & our streaming MVP, METADREAMER!
…
We also had a Discord-based community gathering on August 26. Props to joseacabrerav for inviting Grace Guan in for a chat about Unlonely, an on-chain streaming app.
And more appreciation to joseacabrerav for hanging out in 🍻-tavern to welcome new visitors all month.
📱 Technology
It was another big month of work for the UX Squad: Sero, nitegeist, Dave, dysbulic, and luxumbra, amongst others.
The big call-out, though, is the appearance of Alec’s long-awaited ComposeDB makeover. Ceramic (the project behind ComposeDB) were giving out grants for people to ‘build excellent products’ with their new ComposeDB product & we got one for MyMeta!
Props to Alec!
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of what the tech boffins were up to in August.
Alec made fixes to various PRs and test deployments, reviewed Udit-takkar’s search PR, and 🥳 merged 🎉 the 🥳 ComposeDB 🎉 branch 🥳 into 🎉 the 🥳 develop 🎉 branch🥳
dysbulic worked with Sero on XP calcs based on SEED disbursals, did some quick fixes to get the test servers working properly again, and rebased Sero’s Dework integration to add and update packages
This huge rework of the XP system (50+ hours) also creates a primitive for any project to issue reputation for their contributors, based on how much they earned through the project 😱
Polimyl helped reduce the burn rate by switching various MetaGame services on to cheaper hosts for cost reductions of 90% (extremely scientific measurement)
dysbulic took advantage of a tip from Polimyl to bust out nearly 4K of worth of Mochi from a mis-configured safe 🔓
dysbulic and Sero gave HHH an assist on getting set up for backend dev
nitegeist worked with dysbulic to fix up the code that switches players on to the (new) ComposeDB format from the (old) Ceramic datastore
vid added the “What people are saying” slide to the landing page 👋
Dave tidied up the design for an enhanced search function for the website, designed the new Guild Membership widget, and sketched up a signup page that works for Players, Patrons, and Guilds all at the same time—desktop and mobile
Dave also finished the design of the whole new unified page for all things educational inside MetaGame 👀
Overall, UX Squad is making strides & metagame.wtf will soon be ready for prime time!
🍰 Content
We released the 31st episode of the MetaView podcast, a conversation with Stephen Reid that covered Multi-Polar Traps, the Metacrisis, and various Web3 topics de jour. Interview and recording by peth, editing and publication by eowulia, with a Twitter promo assist by vanessagil.
Play it here: MetaView #31 on Youtube, or via MetaRadio on AnchorFM
As well as that,
Crisleash and dysbulic worked on animating a tessellated Octo drawing
dysbulic made a demo of OpenSea-compatible SVGs of Player cards
🌱 Growth
Sure a bunch more people learned about MetaGame at MetaFest but the main news we got this month in terms of growth:
We got a ~$50k grant from Optimism 😱
⚔️ MetaAlliance
TogetherCrew has a juicy new release, ready to automate & take your community analyzing to the next level!
TogetherCrew: A new science backed tool to build stronger communities
Community management is a complex job which requires a lot of creativity. The TogetherCrew team is bringing science to this art of community management. Their newly launched self-serve dashboard equips community leaders with cutting edge insights and recommendations on their community.
TogetherCrew uses network analysis and machine learning to analyze member activity and the community’s overall structure. Using this tool, a community manager can do member segmentation, evaluate the onboarding funnel, identify disengaging members, understand opportunities to improve the community’s structure, and much more. The tool works through a Discord bot that takes seconds to install.
In superficial communities members are passive and growth requires constant spending. But in strong communities, members are a partner in the growth. The TogetherCrew team believes its tool will help businesses unlock the power of their community and drive growth.
To learn more or try it out, visit TogetherCrew!
Members of a bunch of MetaAlliance guilds were spotted at MetaFest: dOrg, Deep Work Studio, MetaCartel, Raid Guild, DAOhaus, MetaFactory, Giveth, Liminal Village, Urbanika, RnDAO, and Breadchain Coop! Lovely to see you all 🥳
Here’s what else was going on:
Looking for a gig or offering one?
Definitely check out the Trusted Seed Matchmaking program!Want to be a Giveth ambassador? And take a look at their Euro Tour recap
Opolis gave their suggestions on the best type of insurance for freelancers
Ceramic shared an explainer on how KaratDAO is using ComposeDB
After attempts at reactivation & fundraising for the continuation of the grants program, MetaGammaDelta DAO decided to wind down it’s operations. RIP.
MetaFactory presents the LFG Woven Towel. 100% cotton … luxurious
BuidlGuidl welcomes OpenSense to their builders program
Liminal Village shared a classic Sagan speech on climate concerns
Safary was part of a panel on Web3 marketing tech – catch the replay
Agartha wrote about Digital Nomading with Friends
Bloom Network is now an official member of the Permaculture Innovation Hub – congrats!
Lex DAO put out Edition No. 4 of LexNews
A post-mortem on Ceramic’s Discord Breach 😨
Coordinape giving CoSoul holders the opportunity to get some GIVE, check it out
Bloom Network shared a new Local Bloom Hub: Yampa Beaver Believers, in Steamboat, Colorado, USA
dOrg shared a tech talk with Gian Segato from Replit 🤖
Latest Deep Work Studio updates
🔭 Meta™
A quick collection of various things we were reading …
Week in Ethereum News: August 5; August 12; August 19; August 26
Hypercerts for collective sponsorship of Funding the Commons conference; what do you think about this way of funding MetaFest next year? 🤔
Ameen drops the Privacy Pools paper with Vitalik, Jacob Illun, Matthias Nadler & Fabian Schar
Also, even Vitalik got hacked somehow (twitter account) - stay safe out there!
Story Protocol, an IP ownership & creation network raises $54m in funding
The Not Boring Sci-Fi Idea Bank: a spreadsheet of 3,567 ideas from sci-fi, including notes on which have already been built. Bonus: how the Idea Bank was built, using various AI assists
Gitcoin partners w/ Shell & causes drama. Shell shows its true face 3 days later
Visa is using account abstraction to bring its settlement to Ethereum?! Nope, chooses Solana for the pilot
Make the Collabs Stop—or don’t? Harry Potter kitchenware fam 🔥
Make the “Funny Brand Voice” stop—one voice applied to the same memes, using the same vocabulary, for ever and ever
The Rise of Stablecoins: in 2022, stablecoins settled over $11tn on chain, dwarfing the volumes processed by PayPal, almost surpassing the payment volume of Visa, and reaching 14% of the volume settled by ACH
Leverage points in System Dynamics—twelve leverage points to intervene in a system
Ceding control in favour of coordination—a post on functional autonomy and political autonomy, based on a talk by Blockscience founder (and MetaGame patron & advisor) Dr. Michael Zargham
Prefixing the World - analyzing the difference between polycrisis & metacrisis, why metacrisis is the correct term to use, and what the hell it even is?!
🐙 Onwards!
Now what, you ask?
We’re keeping Community Gatherings on pause for a little while longer.
Why?
While most of the community is sleeping &/or enjoying the summer, we’re getting MetaGame ready to return in a big way!
As soon as the UX Squad is “finished” & ready for testing, we’ll be doing a big call to action & rebooting Community Gatherings with some cool guests.
Meanwhile?
Join us on discord &/or just join me (peth) on a personal quest.
As usual,
HHH & peth