ascend

How should we think about social networks as crypto builders 🧵

dev, armchair economist & crypto tea leaves reader - 

/futarchy /network-states

Ascend is an app where Chad (an LLM) helps you grow by leveraging your friends, wallet and ego

There are already so many accountability apps, why build another one?

Each social network fits some basic human needs. It's multi-dimensional but you can often tell "I open this app to learn, work, chill, chat, debate" etc...

We were looking for the place to grind, to ascend, and we couldn't find it

Social network magic comes from people and physics

People interact, create and consume content

Physics define what you can and can't do. It's the tools and constraints, the way content is shaped, displayed, curated, the algo etc ...

Initially builders implement an idea, attract some people, gather feedback, iterate on the product

Founders can nudge the initial conditions but they never control them fully

The first people they attract set a vibe, which influences the next people to join etc ...

Sometimes you get stuck in a local minima, with people from similar background behaving in similar way, pushing off other people.

Sometimes the inflow is high enough that you get out of the local minima and vibe shifts, or multiple groups of people/vibes coexist

Each network is unique because of the way it developed, the path dependancy of who join when and how they behaved

That's why, when Facebook or YouTube copy something, they don't necessarily kill it. 

They can't copy constraint without sacrificing their soul. They can't reproduce the culture, the behaviours and all these non tangible things

We think that's the first place crypto founders go wrong. You can't rebuild Twitter or Reddit today

Their gravitational pull on people who are looking for what they offer is too big. Adding crypto on top won't help

Farcaster deserves multiple threads on its own. Their team, engineering, vision, etc ... is of a quality rarely seen in crypto

We hope they succeed! It's much easier to build there and it gives you more freedom / guarantee as an user

Farcaster deserves multiple threads on its own. Their team, engineering, vision, etc ... is of a quality rarely seen in crypto

We hope they succeed! It's much easier to build there and it gives you more freedom / guarantee as an user

https://farcaster.network
https://dune.com/queries/3024331/5024400

That said, we think they can win this uphill battle. Having build both on blinks and frames, on twitter and farcaster, we can say it's much easier to build there

We are building for & on top of farcaster, with challenges to help people get in the habit of casting more often and we should be frame v2 compatible

The second thing people get wrong is adding incentives way too early or for the wrong reasons. As soon as people join to farm, your metrics are corrupted

Trust them and you'll build something unsustainable

Distrust them and you're in the dark, building without compass

Incentives are the heart of this industry

Chains use them to deploy, run, secure their network. Prediction markets to find the truth, futarchies to determine future actions, defi to bootstrap liquidity etc ...

How should social network think about incentives?

Either you are building smth radical like frientech where ponzinomics are the heart of the innovation

You then have to lean in. No cold start, but harder to undo mistakes. Path dependancy might be fatal to your idea. You can't iterate with equity

Either you are building smth more akin to a web2 app and you use crypto as a tool - cost, immortal api, reg arbitrage - and/or as a distribution hack

If you are in the second category, avoid ponzinomics at all cost, at least until you found some form of pmf

Ascend, at least in its first iteration is in the second category. We could it solely on the web2 stack

Why bother with crypto then? As crypto native, its easier for us to reason about escrows with spl tokens than stripe api, it'll result in less fees for users etc ...

We believe than web3 will become increasingly more efficient and less complex than web2
 
There is some form of nihilism that the only thing worth building today is a casino

We believe than web3 will become increasingly more efficient and less complex than web2
 
There is some form of nihilism that the only thing worth building today is a casino

https://x.com/_ilmoi/status/1894761538767970752

Its fine to use crypto like we use ai, just because it's the best tool for the job

Since we aren't abusing incentives from the start, we expect growth to be harder but more real and sustainable. We won't fear the bear or market momentum shifts

If you ever struggle to meet your objectives, if you've been disappointed by accountability/productivity apps, if you are grinding alone ... send us a dm

Next thread we'll explain what, why and how we build something different from what you can find today on the app stores