💖 Weekly News Roundup

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This Week Onchain

Things are starting to heat up a bit on the web, and I’ve heard from more than a few friends how we’re starting to feel left out of the loop again.

So, for this issue, I thought I’d get in some quick links to get you back in the loop and provide insights on a few things that have excited me through the week.

Writing
First up, I want to introduce you to a new-ish AI writing tool that’s totally blown me away. It’s called novelcrafter. A full-featured take on writing an entire novel, and it’s even better than Sudowrite, which I talked about earlier this year when it was released. Why should you use it? Well, first of all, you can use ANY LLM with it- including Open Source and less censored models.
You organize your book with chapters, add scenes with AI, and chat with various chapters that pull from context like the novel title and chapter titles. Novelcrafter is free while in beta and not too expensive once it goes live. Love to see it!
Learn more in this video.

Social Media & Points
This was a big week for community Points systems. From BLAST and PORTAL (not ideal in my view) and $BONK (one of my fave memes) to $POINTS birthed on Farcaster and Rainbow Wallet points, this often centralized engagement tactic has been analyzed a lot over the week.

Points
I’ve equated this in a way to playing arcade games that spit out tickets and speculating on your local Chuck E. Cheese dropping dropping a token. Will it happen? Maybe? Who knows, but you likely went to every location in town to take advantage of the speculation, met some new friends, ate some pizza along the way, and played some mediocre games. Onchain that looks like bridging, staking, and making a fool of yourself on social media in hopes of getting some free money. Is this the future of finance? I don’t know. Probably. Does that mean you have to participate, care, or even like it? Hell no.

$POINTS was particularly interesting since it was created on Farcaster and as many memes it was basically a joke/dare/whim of one guy saying, “why not” and then dropping some to friends before opening it up to others. Read more on POINTS here.

It is equally important to note the impact that this type of runup of a memecoin has on it’s founder. The exponential stress it puts on someone to quickly gain this much success, a significant decrease in sleep, along with expectations are damaging to one’s health. Being a degen has more consequences than strictly financial.

🌈 An actual points use case launched this morning combines ERC6551 (token bound accounts) with Rainbow Wallet points. It essentially acts as a virtual credit card that you can send tokens to at any time. Claiming your Rainbow points sends the tokens to their own NFT viewable on OpenSea. Learn about them below 👇️ 

Farcaster
This week saw a couple of major updates on Farcaster, aside from the POINTS saga. I highly encourage you to check out Farcaster as a Twitter alternative if you want to connect with builders. Although there’s a lot of noise since the new Channels influx, I believe the team is working hard to improve the algorithm and give more tools to users to calm that down.

Channels, which I talked about in my Expansive Communities writing two months ago, are now permissionless on Warpcast and picking up steam. This means anyone can open a channel for a niche community at will. They cost 2500 Warps or $25/year. You can buy Warps on the web version of Warpcast and open a new channel on the web or mobile app once you receive them. Channels are, in a lot of ways, an alternative to Discord or Telegram since it’s a social media platform rather than purely non-stop chatter. Maybe in the future, they can be gated so channels feel more intimate and closed off via holding a token.

I am a Channel Maxi - it’s the way to go for communication and community growth. Find your niche, create and own your niche, or become the consumer of niches. Either way, you’ll have more fun than doomscrolling on Twitter.

Minting: you can now mint any Zora NFT with Warps directly from your feed on Warpcast. This is an extremely seamless process and makes minting quite enjoyable. Personally, I hope other apps take note of this abstraction and UI/UX flow in the future.

Links to Check Out
Network Stats: trending users, network activity, find the best people to follow, all at your fingertips… for free
User Stats: info on any user, including best casts, activity level, and more
Channels Index: detailed analytics on Farcaster channels for all the data nerds and community builders

Writing
I’ve been a huge fan of the Interface app since being introduced to it. This week alone, I’ve received notifications when people are making moves onchain but, more importantly, when the Mirror Discover account has curated new articles.
Interface notifications also show when collectors leave comments on mints as well which is an innovative addition to the experience. This is an excellent way to show onchain support and communication with an artist.

Here are a few articles I’ve read this week that I think you should read too.
Levels of the game: the psychology of RetroPGF and how to build a better game: here, you’ll be guided through everything you need to know about Retroactive Public Goods Funding and how to get better at it

Community Building in the Age of Decentralized Social Networks: from the Growth Manager at YUP, community managers will understand the basics of utilizing YUP as a communication tool

The Future of Digital Identity: an extensive, though not entirely exhaustive, look at the world of digital identity from dcbuilder on the protocol team @ Worldcoin

Vulnerability & Trust: a deeply beautiful piece written by one of the most brilliant community builders in the space, cstreet - Director of Community at Consensys

Art

We ❤️ The Art: if you have yet to submit to the Optimism art contest, there’s still time left. Deadline is January 8th and the prize pool is 1.2M OP tokens. Read the details and submit here.

Artist to Watch 2024: The HUG team is partnering with MoMA, Christie’s, and more to choose 100 artists to watch for 2024. Chosen entries will be included in a hardcover book in Q1. Submit your entry here.

That’s all for today folks! Have a great rest of the weekend and a happy holiday 🎄🤟🏻

I’d love to hear how your year has been! Let me know in a reply 😊 

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