088. Just another day in paraDeSo 🏝
Happy new week everyone!
How was the weekend? Hopefully you enjoyed some time away from screens, soaking up the dwindling sun as summer turns to autumn. And as the leaves start changing colors on us 🍂, we expect the next few months to hold lots of changes for DeSo and bitclout.com — beyond the blockchain name change from BitClout to DeSo, there’s lots on the horizon, from referrals to new protocol level functionality, and probably lots of good humor too.
For now, let’s keep it simple and catch up with updates from the weekend ✌
Bits on the menu tonight:
Ubiquitous UX drops: Wrapped $DESO — not a pipe dream? 💭
DeSo NFTs: GAN fever sweeps bitclout.com 🎨👨💻
Community matters: DeSo discourse heats up 🥵
General absurdity: @artz and @FreeMrktCptlst command center stage 🎭
Diamondhands’ drops 💎
#1 BuzzClout️
Which creator coins were getting the most love over the weekend (or falling out of favor)? @designal is here to give us the juicy deets 💥:
Same goes for community projects. Anything big shakin’ out there, @bithunt?
#2 Ubiquitous UX drops: Wrapped $DESO — not a pipe dream? 💭
While the core team gave us plenty of updates on their near-term roadmap in the townhall hosted on the @pulse stage on Friday night (we recapped the conversation for you in edition 087), updates to the bitclout.com UX or the DeSo protocol have been sparse over the past week. As always, the community is forging ahead on its own. One of the biggest things that caught our eye recently 👀? @dgsus working on getting $DESO wrapped and usable on the Ethereum blockchain 🤯:
What would the significance of Wrapped $DESO (“$WDESO”) include? For one, if $WDESO were a thing, you’d be able to swap it for any other Ethereum based cryptocurrency or token in the many decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and Sushiswap 🔀, which would be an amazing compliment to more ‘centralized’ exchanges like Blockchain.com and eventually, Coinbase.
Further, liquidity pools, Defi applications, and opportunities for staking $WDESO would likely sprout up overnight, offering $DESO holders the opportunity to earn yield even before the blockchain itself moves to proof-of-stake. The opportunities are truly limitless on the Turing complete Ethereum blockchain ✨. Mad props to @dgsus for taking on this project 👏👏👏.
So… what’s up on the bitclout.com UX front? Well, it seems like the ‘Top Daily Gainers’ sidebar is being gamed aggressively and excessively. @ourielohayon has been all over this — it looks like accounts are either spoofing volume invested in their coin or have found some way to hack the system entirely. Be VERY wary if you’re considering investing in these accounts for a momentum trade… something is fishy here 🐟:
Finally, looking to not only get caught up on all the UX and tech updates happening in the world of DeSo? You could be working for @nader and team formally (that is, if you have the requisite chops). Turns out the DeSo Foundation is actively hiring for a Senior Software Engineer 👨💻 (as well as for a COO, if that’s more your speed 🦍). What’re you waiting for? Throw your hat in that ring baby 🤠. You can explore open roles at DeSo here.
#3 DeSo NFTs: GAN fever sweeps bitclout.com 🎨👨💻
As NFTs on bitclout.com start booming again, the latest trend that’s gaining traction is projects that integrate code-based / generative principles into their digital art work 💻. This concept has been popularized on the Ethereum blockchain, with GAN projects (short-for generative adversarial network) like Art Blocks often commanding hefty premiums. The minimum price on the historic Art Blocks Fidenzas for instance is ~$500,000 💰.
Over the weekend, we saw the first GAN NFT project hatch on bitclout.com 🐣. The project? @chixels, spearheaded by none other than the omnipresent @mubashariqbal, with a little artistic help from his daughter!
Until DeSo features smart contracts (if ever?), making all this magic happen on-chain wouldn’t be possible the way it is on Ethereum. Hence why @mubashariqbal had to set up the generative features off-chain and subsequently mint the generated images on DeSo and transfer the NFTs.
The community was naturally quite taken with the pioneering and whimsical product. OGs from @artz to @tijn quickly got in on the @chixels:
It’s awesome to see that the absence of smart contracts on DeSo hasn’t stopped artists and programmers alike from figuring out slick work arounds to bring GAN to life on bitclout.com. We love to see it 🔮✨. And other projects are taking note of the example @chixels is setting. Nothin’ like innovation to spur innovation!
#4 Community matters: DeSo discourse heats up 🥵
In case you doubted the DeSo community at this point, you need look no further than at how the community took zero time off after the first-ever DeSo townhall and was already absolutely cookin’ with more questions, discussions, and ideas over the weekend 🔥. Let’s go around the horn and see some of the better discussion points and ideas that circulated over the past 72 hours, shall we? 👇👇👇
To no one’s surprise, one town hall alone wasn’t enough to satiate the community’s hunger to learn more about the near-term plans for DeSo. Here’s a smattering of critical questions we collected that we’d all do well to keep front-of-mind in the coming weeks 🧠.
First off, let’s get some more deets about the foundation’s plans to spend some of that $200M up in this b****!
Further… how good is the tech??? That’s a pretty important q. @Sandirose also wrote an entire thoughtful piece exploring this topic — read it here!
In addition to critical questions posed above, we also saw thoughtful discourse percolating from new community members. One example was the much-shared article from @TPlusZero that compared their experiences as an early adopter of XRP with first impressions of DeSo and the community. This one is well worth a read (find the TplusZero blog here), so much so that @nader offered perhaps his first-ever endorsement of someone else’s writing about DeSo:
For the spark notes, it seems @TPlusZero is a big believer in the DeSo vision. So much so that they also topped up with an eye-watering purchase of $DESO, close to $1M in value 📈:
Whether it’s asking the tough questions or providing thought leadership and putting your $ where your mouth is, all of the above is a good reminder that you don’t need to be able to code to contribute to the DeSo project. Sharing pertinent information, stimulating discussion, and offering a wide variety of perspectives are all valuable ways to grow a cohesive community, educate new users, and to generate new ideas 💡. So… put your thinking caps on and don’t be afraid to speak up … 💪
#5 General absurdity: @artz and FMC command center stage 🎭
ICYMI, there’s been an ongoing saga between @FreeMrktCptlst (“FMC”) and @artz. Well, to be fair, it was a one-sided saga for a while. Despite being a prominent BitClout OG and esteemed community member, and despite the fact that @artz follows many of the other folks that FMC runs with… @artz never ‘followed’ FMC. Was it an oversight? Probably at first 🤷. Did it become a funny meme over time? Almost definitely 😂.
Now that the DeSo news has reenergized the entire bitclout.com platform, the community has rallied around a lot of causes. One of them? Get @artz to follow FMC. And waddyaknow? @artz heard the feedback loud and clear 🗣️. Of course, he also recognized there was a strong opportunity for some beautiful absurdity here, so he presented FMC with an elegant gambit ♟️:
After a tense (and somewhat theatrical 24 hours of deliberation), @FreeMrktCptlst ultimately chose to go with option 1 🎉. But, a showman as he is, he also elected to keep the ball on the fun and games rolling, noting that he’d take the third option @artz presented him with to invest 10 $DESO in anyone and turn it into a contest of his own 💪:
From there? You guessed it, there’s a lot more than just one step to win FMC’s new 10 $DESO challenge. Make sure to follow along on his page to see what comes next 💸🔜…
In closing… why do we focus on “general absurdity” so often in @BitsTODAY? Well, turns out @artz himself summed up our thesis here pretty well over the weekend. It all comes down to the power of the memes 📈:
DJ Khaled voice* ANOTHER ONE. We’ll catch u on the flip 🤙
Much love,