Are you a techno-optimist?

Techno-optimist manifesto, community points, onchain media, and more...

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Forefront
October 23, 2023

Happy Monday!

Welcome to edition 163rd edition of the Forefront Newsletter. If you’re new here, we give you a weekly roundup of the best news and insights at the intersection of crypto, culture, and community.

This week we’re covering:

Let’s get into it…

Week’s Highlight

Last week, Marc Andreessen published The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, a blog post and thread that grabbed the tech community’s attention in more ways than one.

Unlike another Andreessen manifesto, It’s Time to Build, this one was certainly more controversial. The more recent manifesto argues that we should actively work to accelerate technological progress to improve human life. This requires rejecting stagnant ideologies and re-embracing an ambitious, romantic vision of using science and markets to build a better world.

To many, it was unclear what Marc’s guiding philosophy was for the piece. Sure, more technology is great, and improving the lives of humans everywhere is even better. But what do we believe is good? What do we believe is evil? And why should techno-optimists be blind to the pessimism of previous technological developments?

In conversations about Andreessen’s post last week, I found myself pointing people to another manifesto: Jasmine Sun’s “Take Back the Future!” for Reboot.

Jasmine agrees that technology has brought many benefits, like connection, education, and empowerment. But unchecked techno-utopianism has also enabled harms, like surveillance, addiction, and inequality. Strategies to check these beliefs include resisting oppressive tech, imagining better futures, investing in research for public good, and building tools that decentralize power. New models like platform co-ops also hold promise.

Take Note. While tech certainly needs a strong guiding philosophy to push it forward, blind optimism is not the way. Crypto as an industry is necessary because of the effects of Andreessen-esque tech optimism, and we should be more thoughtful and intentional in our approach.

What’s Poppin’

Community Points, which will be phased out by early November, were promoted as a chance for Redditors to “own” a piece of their community. First launched in 2020, Community Points were awarded to users who positively engaged in select subreddits in order to incentivize better content and conversation. The points were essentially interchangeable ERC20 tokens stored in Reddit’s Vault, a custodial crypto wallet. The program is winding down citing regulatory and scalability concerns. Onchain data indicates at that at least two moderators linked to Reddit’s Cryptocurrency subreddit liquidated large amounts of Moons before Reddit publicly announced the end of its Community Points program.

Uniswap Labs announced this week that a 0.15% fee would be added to major pools traded on the Uniswap website. At the protocol level, the fee is still governed by UNI token holders. However, the decision sparked controversy throughout the community. Many UNI token holders have long hoped that Uniswap would follow other DeFi protocols like Synthetix and GMX, which charge a fee and share a portion of it with their token holders. One delegate said that the fee switch is “more difficult to implement now that the Uniswap Labs team already captures 0.15%.” Uniswap Labs has stood firm by their decision, so it will be interesting to see how UNI governance responds.

The SEC voluntarily dismissed charges Thursday against Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen, both of whom had been charged alongside the company for allegedly violating securities laws with sales of the XRP token. Ripple described the decision as a "stunning capitulation" in a press release, while Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty called it "a surrender by the SEC" in a tweet. The price of XRP is up about 5% today, with most of that upward action coming after the news broke.

This piece discusses how onchain media can empower creators and communities through tokenized content and revenue sharing. Onchain media enables new business models and incentives compared to traditional media. The author believes experimenting with this, especially around gaming, is important for building better onchain worlds. Three models are discussed: Content NFTs, SocialFi, and value redistribution. This is a great analysis and case study for the future of onchain media.

Drew Coffman writes that the internet began as an open portal to knowledge and possibility but has narrowed into an algorithmic path that controls our experiences. To reclaim agency over our digital lives, we must reimagine the portal as a space for exploration and human connection again. One model could be a web3 wallet that curates our most valued possessions for self-expression, not just transactions. By reshaping the portal, we can transform the internet back into a realm of creativity and nurture rather than one that overwhelms. Portals represent possibility if we dare to step through with an open mind once more.

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Inbox Signal TL;DR

The 13th edition of Inbox Signal just went out to Forefront Members this weekend. Here's a taste of the stories:

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