3rd Weekly Twitter Space covering the Optimism ecosystem.

**Collect and own this episode as an NFT!

• 0.005 ETH mint, limited collection of 10 NFTs.
• Proceeds are re-invested to grow the podcast and expand crypto education.

Listen to the Recording:

Show Notes

Key Takeaways:

• Optimism is decentralizing, taking token live, OP will give out OP tokens for people building public goods on optimism.
• Lens Protocol is the next iteration of decentralized social media.
• “NFTs have never really made sense to me, you need utility, it needs to do something”
• The younger generation will understand crypto. This will be the generation not talking about it, but using it. And it will be embedded in everything.
• Stories (via Cryptovania) could be a positive externality for the world.
• Talent: The people who really know what they’re doing are going to be working on the most decentralized, secure, and strong places. During the next cycle, when the masses of people come back to the crypto space, the usable applications will be on the strongest chains because the developers have built things here.
• People don’t care about security from a marketing standpoint, but if you’re selling someone something, you better make sure that you are being secure with how you store their data.
• You are not a customer, you are a sovereign individual entity.
• Web2 is what you use, web3 is what you own.
• Decentralization is a must, anonymity is a choice.

Intros:

Abraxas, Jrocki, and Espresso kick off the call talking surfing, nomad life, travel, building roots, and more.

Vision: cover the user side of web3 and various dapps and users coming onboard to the blockchain space.

Quick Takes:

• Opportunities in public goods funding. Optimism is decentralizing, taking token live, OP will give out OP tokens for people building public goods on optimism.
• OP wants to give out their token to people who are building things. You need to submit a proposal. The token house votes on the proposals to approve or deny is.

Lyra protocol (options protocol on Optimism) submitted a proposal to give tokens to builders, liquidity providers, and traders.

• A portion will go to non-technical things such as education, podcasts, newsletters, educational videos, etc.
• Liquidity providers - providing liquidity to the protocol Lyra, for traders, so that users can trade for free.
• 10% of these will be retroactive funding, for anyone who has built things on top of lyra or supported lyra in some way.
• Opportunities for both technical as well as non-technical users.

Lens Protocol: Lens is the next iteration of decentralized social media.

• Lens is the first attempt that looks very promising “user owned content and social relationships”
• With Lens, you can own your own data.
• Whereas on Facebook or Twitter, they own your data and the ad revenue.
• Decentralized social media gives creators the ability to monetize and participate in revenue sharing.
• Unfortunately Lens is still in private launch, hoping for a public launch soon.
• Follow espresso.lens.

Abraxas: Teacher, formerly a coordinator for adult literacy. Involved in both teaching as well as web3 projects.

• Cares about education, equality, and how a lack of education can limit opportunities.
• Got into public education with a master’s degree.
• Took out retirement funds and started investing.
• Heard about “Invest like the Best” with Patrick O’Shaunessy.
• Listened to Justin Drake’s episode on this podcast, and went down the rabbit hole of crypto.
• Setup a Metamask wallet after experimenting with centralized exchanges.
• Came over to Optimism last summer.
• Was still pretty expensive last summer
• Got into Polygon, and things like Fantom. Ended up losing some money
• The OP token launch sparked his interest as well
• Loved the idea of democratizing access to financial tools.
• Wanted to find a reason to be involved, which for Abraxas, was public goods funding initiatives.
• “NFTs have never really made sense to me, you need utility, it needs to do something”
• The quickest way to get involved was to buy or mint something.
• Got involved with Dragonia project on Optimism. Crowley from the Dragonia team likes Abraxas’s participation on Discord, and asked him to be a community manager.
• As a teacher, do you ask your students about web3?
  • A little bit, but Roblox: every kid plays roblox.
  • It is a game as well as a social network, where you can talk to friends etc.
  • The younger generation will understand crypto. This will be the generation not talking about it, but using it. And it will be embedded in everything.
  • You could in theory take your roblox skin and go play Fortnite, for example.
  • This is probably how games will look in the future.. like Metaverses.
• Dragonia is an entire ecosystem.
  • The trainers are the focus and the utility.
  • Like a less complex magic the gathering game, similar to rock paper scissors.
  • There will be 9999 3 different rarities, give you access to the whole ecosystem, play to earn.
  • Trainer NFTs allow you to earn passive income.
  • Portions of the fees are distributed to holders.
  • You earn experience which can be exchanged for rewards.
  • Also whitelist spots on partner projects.
  • Wen mint? June timeframe.
  • All earnings will be distributed in ETH.
  • People can use their trainer to vote for changes.
  • Abraxas also spent time explaining how the game works. Portion will go to public goods.

Odysseus: Soon to drop a collection on Optimism, Silly Seals.

• A portion goes to public goods.
• Odysseus is a budding dev, working with a web2 company now.
• Using solidity for the NFT project, and also Synthetix
• Why layer 2, why Optimism?
  • As a synthetix guy, he is very committed to decentralization.
  • Loves the Optimism vision for things like public goods and paying teachers what they are worth for example.
• What is synthetix? It is a protocol that provides a pool of capital for things like trades.
  • Dividends are paid out based on profits to stakers.

Fractal Visions: Runs a fine art printing business on canvas.

• Got into the NFT space in the last year and a half.
• Sold 3 pieces for an artist with health troubles in Peru on Rarible for 1 eth each.
• The NFT space has been empowering for artists.
• Enrolled in a Dapp university course to learn.
• Loves the Quixotic vision and the digital revolution of art that NFTs is creating.
• So many people in the real world who collect art are still not a part of the NFT space yet.
• Runs the Ganland NFT projects.
• Artists should be paid for their work.

Cryptovania: Lexx and Mark

• Giving away mint passes
• Today, metaverses are centrally developed, hard to deliver on, and hard to access.
• They are building a “Storyverse” with Cryptovania
• Cryptovania is an NFT project centered around storytelling.
• Stored on IPFS, which is decentralized. Plain text stories.
• Stories could be a positive externality for the world.
• Cryptovania is a return to the fundamentals of storytelling.
• Bottom-up approach: You could build an entire metaverse around these stories in the future.
• Proceeds from the mint will go towards a bounty system, where whoever has the most upvoted stories will be paid for writing a good story.

Why web3?

• The value does not accrue back to people in the communities.
• Impact = Profit, in theory on Optimism.
• If you write a good story, you can benefit from that In web1 and web2, the only people who benefitted were those with a really big following.
• There was not a lot of value accrual back to the creator.
• Quixotic is also working on an NFT bridge.
• Badge style NFTs: things earned rather than bought. Transferable or non-transferrable. Dark Forest issued friendship cards, for example.

Why Optimism? Why not fantom or avalanche where gas fees are lower?

• Other chains don’t scale as well.
• On high usage, fees still go high.
• A lot of volume could crash the network.
• Optimism is more robust, you won’t have that problem because it inherits its security and uptime from Ethereum.
• Over time, talent is the only thing that will survive. The people who are really invested in the space and know what they’re doing are going to be working on the most decentralized, secure, and strong places like Optimism or Arbitrum or Ethereum. So during the next cycle, when the masses of people come back to the crypto space, the usable applications will be on the strongest chains because the developers have built things here.
• You don’t care about security until you need it, and then you care about it a whole lot.
• Terra ecosystem did not thing about this until it was too late, for example.
• As more crazy stuff happens, some of these alternative layer 1’s could have similar token or security concerns.
• On Optimism, as more people trade, it gets cheaper because they can compress the date on each block more effectively.
• Decentralization is an important pre-requisite for blockchain. Instead of decentralization, we can use the word “security”.
• Layer 2’s share security fundamentals with Ethereum.
• Decentralization and Security will never be big selling points from a consumer perspective, although it is extremely important.
• People don’t care about security from a marketing standpoint, but if you’re selling someone something, you better make sure that you are being secure with how you store their data.
• You are not a customer, you are a sovereign individual entity.
• Web2 is what you use, web3 is what you own.
• Decentralization is a must, anonymity is a choice.
• 1 token 1 vote - positives and negatives about this. We want to be careful about power games.