What's the Next Move Capt'n?
Possible Paths for Building in the Downturn + Chainlog + MF2 Retro + MetaAlliance
Building in the Downturn
A downturn is always the cause of great uncertainty for the future and uncertainty is the cause of anxiety, fear and rushed decisions. Luckily the crypto-space has enough collective wisdom now from past downturns to draw from as well as a renewed sense of direction to make more informed decisions about the future. So here are not one but TWO pieces to oil up your sense-making machinery and move in a more mindful way.
Next Move: Regenerate!
There seems like a wave of self-awareness is looming over our heads. After the chain-reaction of downfalls hitting second-wave DeFi projects from Olympus all the way to Celsius and after the (3,3) meme started showing its cracks, it has been made crystal clear that meme dynamics by themselves cannot sustain an eternal upturn. Tokenomic models around DeFi have grounded their sustainability on nothing but thin air, but token economies can be so much more. It seems like we are starting to realize that this virtual game we have been playing exists in a bigger context of material conditions and relations between the living and non-living things (what Bruno Latour has framed as Actor-Network Theory). The urban ecosystem is the Metagame!
The Degens tried to play with Moloch and their hubris made the beast even angrier! Their war cries were “Move Fast and Break Things” until the point they actually became broken. Now the Regens have to urgently recoup and strategize. So… what are the next steps?
To fight Moloch now, we have to channel the combined energies of Sun and Moon.
“there’s an oppositional quality to solarpunk, but it’s an opposition that begins with infrastructure as a form of resistance.”
Adam Flynn (2014), Solarpunk: Notes toward a manifesto
The Energy of the Sun is the collective optimism that is SolarPunk. For the SolarPunks, the blockchain-enabled social coordination of decentralized technologies can replace the exploitative and wasteful traditional market forces with ones that are more collaborative, democratic and ecologically respectful. This move has already started and is spreading like wildfire into the crypto-Zeitgeist. Gitcoin is spear-heading the fight in the finance sphere while collectives such as Kollektivo and Bloom are creating global networks of local action in the meatspace. Solarpunk’s fight is to support public goods aiming at the creation of sustainable commons.
Lunarpunks are the solar shadow-self. They are the unconscious of this cycle. While "solarpunks join DAOs" (Dylan-Ennis), lunarpunks are preparing for war, and building privacy-enhanced tooling to protect their communities.
lunar_mining (2022), Lunarpunk and the Dark Side of the Cycle
The Energy of the Moon is the militant skepticism that is LunarPunk. For the Lunies, SolarPunks can become too naive and ignore how easy it is for their organizations to fall prey to capture. The Lunies tend to embrace the darker side of humanity in order to acknowledge it and deal with it. They see the Moloch within rather than the Moloch outside. Hence, they focus on creating the means of protection of the open commons from capture by any powerful player who wishes to exploit them and profit off of them. They remind us that public blockchains and wallets aren’t as anonymous as we once thought. Projects such as DarkFi and Tornado Cash are building privacy technologies to fully anonymize transactions with the ultimate goal of giving the right to exit from surveillance and centralized control to the masses.
They are opposite forces but they compliment each other. The tragedy of the commons is that their Solar-style openness makes them too susceptible to capture which has historically led to their enclosure. Surveillance and control from legacy systems are real dangers and P2P relations need to be secured through privacy technologies that preserve temporary zones of autonomy. However, the danger of Lunar-style privacy and anonymization is the complete loss of human trust and the turn towards egocentric individualism. Infrastructures that incentivize communal ownership, gift economies and building trust (such as reputation systems) are important to balance the dark side of the Moon. Two sides of the same $COIN.
The metaphorical example is the archetypal drawing of the Moon hugging the Sun; the Sun radiates energy and is always giving and the moon is there lovingly embracing the Sun trying to protect its energy from radiating off.
This particular drawing is amazing in how well it depicts this marriage of the two energies by the creation of the circular whirlpools in the Moon’s aura. The energy radiated by the sun is captured by and re-cycled in a similar way that the Earth’s atmosphere contributes to the continuation and recycling of the geochemical cycles of organic elements on Earth’s crust. Analyzed energetically, ecology is full of thermodynamically open cycles that channel energy to the maintenance of processes in various ecosystems. A complete Regenerative social change will require the radiating givingness of the SolarPunks with the protective carefulness of the Lunies.
This complete picture is what Dr. Paul J. Dylan-Ennis in a recent article called hyper-regenization, proposing that it is the ultimate goal of Ethereum (in contrast to Bitcoin’s hyper-bitcoinization which is to replace fiat with Bitcoin). According to Dylan, the world computer endgame of Ethereum is void of any existential justification, but in the context of global regeneration, it suddenly becomes its most powerful tool.
Ethereum’s past motto was to “Accelerate!”. But don’t accelerate towards the wall! Be mindful of where you are heading towards and be mindful of the injustices and systemic problems we have helped reproduce.
Regenerate!
In defense of hobbyism
The MetaFam doesn’t hide behind its own finger tentacle. We often admit that we are a community consisting of passionate hobbyists who do this part-time with few crazy enough to have even attempted going full-time. But the community and its outputs still exist. We have learned to do it that way so we are not struck the same way when the market falls. If these were everybody’s full-time jobs, people would have lost their livelihood but it’s hard to take something away from someone when it isn’t there anyway :P Maybe MetaGame can offer a solid piece of advice here to the rest of the ecosystem if we proposed to a lot of struggling projects to just chill and go hobbyist for a while.
Paul Graham has put it very eloquently in his “The Top Idea In Your Mind” essay, stating that when getting money becomes the priority concern in early startup founders’ minds, the vision, and design of the product become secondary. It is absolutely essential to be mindful of the idea/desire that comes effortlessly on top of one’s mind because one can then realize that what is currently haunting their thoughts is not what they would really want it to be. Paul’s suggestion? Go take a shower; with a little self-reflection in the mix, it can become a hell of a psychoanalytic session!
Related to the above is an excellent video essay by finance Youtuber How Money Works defending the claim that having a boring job that is irrelevant to your creative vision might actually be liberating. For Daoists like us for whom meaningful work is a mandate, this may sound heretical but the real takeaway is that, burnout is a real thing and that this obsession with trying to make a profession out of your passion might irreversibly damage your psyche and alienate you when done in the current socioeconomic context of corporatocracy and the gig economy. Whether you are a builder, an artist or a content creator, the “monetization trap” is real. Especially if you have worked your ass off for years in the shadows, it is very natural to feel like you deserve the money and it becomes very easy to jump right into the first VC deal that comes your way. But creators who have dignity and care about the quality of their work rather than the depth of their pocket, have realized that this is one sure way to end up on the Hamster wheel! The profit motive becomes more of a need than a desire when you want to scale up so you have to seriously consider: is this what you really want?
This is why exit to community is such a groundbreaking development in order to escape the Samsara of merges and acquisitions. But exit to community… is hard and the unexamined assumption in web3 is usually that the community has to have the capital. However, this is not always the case, especially if the majority of members come from countries with dysfunctional economies. If the capital that is needed to sustain the project comes from interested stakeholders, where does the capital stakeholders have originally come from? Maybe from those who earned it from elsewhere in the first place in order to inject it into the community? And where does the time participants spend come from? Maybe from the financial independence or security some already have? If that’s the case, then this downturn is maybe time for recuperation.
We have been living under this myth of the dauntless leap of faith into one’s passion and going all or nothing. But it’s not too bad to double, to multi-task to have options. Because being too clingy to the success of a singular passion without any alternatives or security net is correlated with a high chance of stomach ulcers, bankruptcy and developing a case of chronic bitterness. We often take even greater risks and are more daring when some baseline of safety has been achieved. If you don’t believe me, try going for job interviews while already having a job and see how you score, you’ll be surprised!
So don’t feel like you definitely have to go pro to make a thing spin. Just keep chipping away because you CARE about it. And who knows… one day when the condition are right, it might even start spinning on its own.
Yours Truly,
UniPuff
⛓ Chainlog
The last three weeks at MetaGame were almost entirely MetaFest2-focused, and instead of a MetaFest2-focused Chainlog we’re signing off with a HELL YEAH BABY and mega-props to the MetaFest2 crew (lawyer voice including but not limited to szab0gie, penguin, UniPuff, Misanth, luxumbra, peth, lanmower, tommy, Musashi13, TYMED, ApeironCreations)
So what went on in MetaFest2?
Here’s a smol taste of what has been happening.
100+ guests
Special props to eowulia for producing promotional banners for EACH AND EVERY GUEST! Check them out here 2 weeks full of content
…that we will have to curate at some point :P Memorable panels
Tooling Panel 
Women in Web3 Panel 
Meta Panel. The Vinay eye-pop will probably become a meme. MetaVerse events
On-the-spot building of the Moloch Cloudship in NEOS. 
Mo’ Caso doing a tour around RAW DAO’s space in NEOS. Live performances
MetaFest2 is over but the work is not yet done!
The fam will soon get to the job of splitting up the talks and events (not to mention there are some discussions of minting them as NFTs—if you were a guest, make sure to send us your wallet address😉.
What is more, be ready for some documentation and sharing of our experience from our time organizing MetaFest2. Despite the huge amount of content, this is probably the most impactful part.
🤝🏽 Community
Community action this time around moved to the MetaFest2 server.
tenfinney took MetaGame inkeeping into Voxels for virtual onboarding and education—see what you can find at Quests, Treasure Hunt, and the MetaFest2 popup booth
📱 Technology
Quest Chains App
It’s looking fresh with dan13ram’s work on NFT minting contracts, vid and biux’s new landing page, Dave’s design for NFT minting and the gallery, and beti’s NFT templates. Questgivers can create NFTs, questers can mint those NFTs on quest chain completion…
…visit Quest Chains for a look 👀
Special shoutout to backend paladin Polimyl who continued fine-tuning the Ceramic node ⚡
🍰 Content
chair and Bacon have been busy with their Share What You’re Makin’ podcast, putting out two new episodes.
Episode 8, with a true Ethereum OG, Texture! The episode went on about his origin story as a designer and developer, the concept of success, contributing in Web3 vs. extracting value, the genesis and early days of Ethereum, the Texture Punx NFT project, and more. Listen here 👈 (Produced by eowulia, show notes by PiedraDeMar | Vanessa Gil)
Episode 7, with our own penguin, covering MUD (Multi User Dungeon) games, the NFT and NFT game industry, evolution of gaming, and his NFT gaming project Battle of Evermore 👉 Listen here (Produced by eowulia, show notes by PiedraDeMar | Vanessa Gil)
If you like the podcast so much that you want to… I dunno… SPONSOR IT, we are waiting with open arms! Metafam’s new sustainability strategy is to make major raids independently sustainable so if you’d like to be the Patron Saint of the MetaRadio in general or a specific series (such as Chair and Bacon’s), drop us a DM!
🌱 Growth
UniPuff, FearlessThompson, tenfinney and dysbulic mapped out the next steps for MyMeta—who’s doing what, what’s getting done, what does it all mean 🗺
peth added Safary DAO, Atlantis World, RnDAO, and EthicHub to the MetaAlliance group. Welcome to the fam 🖐
Anna put out the word about the MetaGame Gitcoin grant 💱
TYMED hit up WTF NFT and the NFT Street Fair, all niced up in MetaGame finery to start some convos on MetaGame, bumping into penguin at the street fair. You can see a replay of some of the talks at WTF NFT on the Hammer Museum website 🔨
🥳 Special mention to Web Three Prophet—gl with Urbanika (and we know you’ll be back)
⚔️ MetaAlliance
A mega MetaAlliance—please enjoy the highlights from three weeks of happenings from the fam:
The Commons Stack
URGENT! Today is the last day to renew your Trusted Seed membership at The Commons Stack!
MetaFactory
MetaFactory got a mention in Forbes on Web3’s impact on fashion!
See a highlights package from MetaFactory’s MetaPhysical event and check out the new look of their website 💻
SourceCred
The hand signs introduced by SourceCred are spreading to other communities like RnDAO 🙌 Shout out to LexBirdie for making this a thing!
Giveth
Giveth reminds users of the GIVeconomy that use Gnosis Chain / xDAI to switch to one of the new Gnosis Chain RPCs (This is because the xDAI Chain is being transformed into Gnosis Chain)
What connection does Giveth have to the 2016 hack of The DAO?
Have a look at Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Giveth Galaxy by Suga, a tour of some of the DAOs that have emerged from the Giveth ecosystem
DAOHaus
DAOhaus’s latest Haus Party sparked some fascinating discussions pointing to the future of DAOs. Interested huh? Watch a replay of the Haus Party and read the DAOhaus tweet thread on DAO governance models
Bloom Network
Learn all about the worldwide mycelial growth of Bloom Network and its history in this interview with Terexitarius
1Hive
1Hive lists some of the awesome projects they’ve worked with 🐝
CRE8OR
CRE8R DAO celebrated one year of destroying goblins!! 👺
They also did a twitter space where they shared some learnings from marketing work on 40+ DeFi and Web3 projects—play back the recording here 🎦.
Panvala
Niran from Panvala moderated a panel at the World Wide Women event at NFT.NYC, and appeared on the Green Pill podcast
Opolis
Opolis has partnered with Braintrust to offer 20-50% discounts on health, dental, and vision insurance.
Its founder John Paller talked with Avra Talent about the next generation of employment
Replay a conversation with 0xJoshua from Opolis on building a career in Web3
Project Ark
Project Ark was at the Consensus2022 conference in Austin.
Project Ark’s Jonny O’Sullivan discussed incentive structures, natural capital tokenization, and impact NFTs at NFT.NYC—see a short clip
Deep Work Studio
Deep Work Studio is getting serious with producing bite-sized educational content to raise awareness of the subtleties of product design and management. Their Twitter is full of cool infographics and Andrej has now become a TikToker!
MetaGammaDelta
Read an insightful MetaGammaDelta DAO interview with Good Ghosting’s Rachel Black 👻
🎩 Open Roles 🎩
The above made you want to jump in & do shit? 🙃
Here are some of the open roles 👇
🐙 Normal Roles
Normal roles are entry-level roles that anyone can take on without committing too much time or taking on too much responsibility.
Technical:
🛠️ Builder - Are you a TypeScript wiz, a React.js virtuoso or maybe a data structures nerd? Frontend or backend, devs and coders are the life-blood of this space and the doors are always open if you are one. Come and introduce yourself in 🛠️-builders-guild or get right into the action😇
🐛 Bughunter Do you get high by obsessing over fixing stuff? Then this role is for you!! Come and introduce yourself in 🐞-bughunters-guild or get right into the action😇
Funding:
💸 Creative Funding Guru Come up with inventive ways to monetize content and create revenue streams while ensuring public access and avoiding paywalls.
Content Creation:
🔍 Journalist Research and collect info about happenings in web3 and its relation to “the world at large” for our newsletters, articles and Twitter posts.
📰 Blogster Are you into technical writing or more into fiery polemic texts? Whatever it is, the only true requirements are quality, nuance and alignement. Join our ever-expanding publications of over 4000 subs! Introduce yourself in 📝-writers-guild, or DM UniPuff 🜐.
🎨 Graphic Designer - We're trying to make MetaGame into "an intersection of technology, philosophy & art". Well, we need more art! There is no lack of art that needs to be made, just ask about it in 🎨-artists-guild
Community Management:
🤗 Innkeeper Onboard new Octos and organize events. Good facilitation skills are a must!
Marketing and Social Media:
📣 Shiller - Promote MetaGame and its products in any adjacent DAO or the crypto community and keep the social media audience engaged.
💩 Shitposter - Come up with dank memes & witty twits to post on Twitter, drop in 🐤-tweet-arena
🧠 Educator Come up with useful knowledge & tips and construct engaging threads for Twitter, drop in 🐤-tweet-arena
🐙🐙 Deputy roles
Deputy roles are more important, thus come with some responsibility & commitment. You will be working with Champions.
Technical:
🧚 XP Fairy - This one's for those who get frustrated with the injustices in the XP system. Sourcecred is great but it's not a panacea & there are problems that can be fixed, things that can get balanced! Ask 🤗-innkeepers-guild & help!
Community Management:
🤗 Innkeeper’s Guild Deputy Make sure the community is tight AF!! Plan and organize events, facilitate the onboarding of new octos and ensure that important information gets communicated to all guilds. You will be working closely with the Guild’s Champion with the expectation of becoming one yourself! If that tingles your jingles, introduce yourself to the 🤗-innkeeper’s-guild.****
🙌 Meetup Master - To help with organizing community events with the focus on workshops - facilitating knowledge exchange by scheduling workshops based on 🧠-brain-exchange
Content Creation:
✍️ Writers’ Guild Deputy Words are one “s” away from swords and we need people that can wield them with mastery. There is a lot to write about and there are newly concocted editorial processes to be tested out. If fancy yourself as a mighty wordsmith, introduce yourself in 📝-writers-guild
Marketing and Social Media:
📈 Market Researcher Do you have an eye for trends? Do you have the ability to peek into the web3 hive-mind and eavesdrop on its thought? MetaGame needs you ASAP! We may have hardworking devs and ambitious content creators but we do lack the wisdom of the streets! If you are up for a challenge, drop a few lines about you in 📣-shillers-guild.
🐙🐙🐙 Champion roles
Champion roles are of the highest importance and highest commitment & responsibility roles. There are requirements that need to be taken seriously.
Technical:
🤖 Bot Army - Bot army champion does what bot army champions do - work on bots. The needs for bots are many & varied, there is much to do. Humorous and witty hxmans are encouraged to apply
🛠️ Builders’ Guild Champion 👀 - Michiel has some real-life shit coming up soon, looking for someone to carry the Builders Guild torch, run meetings & organize sprints.
👩🏼💼 MyMeta PM - If you feel like you are up for a challenge, you are welcome to disentangle the overly-ambitious mess that is MyMeta and help make a user-friendly product that will revolutionize decentralized collaboration.
Recap ♻
Through the countless talks and discussion throughout MetaFest2 it has been made clear that it’s not just Metafam or web3, but the whole world is undergoing a critical moment, a phase transition. We will have to make decisions and sacrifices. But if we are to struggle, let’s struggle for a bigger goal, one that makes each day of walking on this Planet meaningfull AF!
The moral of the story is: Recuperate and Regenerate.
Much Love ♥,
UniPuff & HHH