Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp

Venkatesh Rao ☀️

@vgr

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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Zero knowledge conclave
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
One of the things about field-building I didn’t quite appreciate when we started the summer of protocols is that there is a natural window in the evolution of the protocol field when it makes sense. For example 1600 would have been too early to start the field of astrodynamics. You need newtons laws to compute orbits. 1850 would have been too early for space rocketry. Rockets and Newtonian mechanics existed but sufficiently capable metallurgy, rocket fuel, radio communication, and guidance and control capability wouldn’t exist for a century. Protocols are a bit meta because they in fact model the conditions under which other fields can mature (you could say spaceflight as a field was ready for protocolization by 1950). But as a subject in its own right, it was ready to be created only after 2000 or so, when internet protocols made protocol patterns legible. Crypto added the last 10% for the field to become well-defined.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
A good measure of how hungry and driven you are is how hard you try to fight serious jet lag. The measure is more useful the older you are, since the older you get, the harder jet lag hits
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
My icecream example here is a bit misleading, since it only applies after you've at least decided you want icecream, and are only dealing with flavor-choice overwhelm. It is hard to see human desire outside the frame of an established goal/preference/value etc that products can orient towards. But if you keep working upstream of a specific decision, through a "5 whys" heuristic for eg., you eventually rise above the level of instrumental choices offered by products and get to existential angst. Eg. 1. Which flavor of icecream? 2. Icecream or french fries? 3. Eat something or not? 4. Leave TV/devices on or off? 5. Nap or stay awake? 6. What am I living for? By the time you get to questions 5 and 6, you're in a place where product value propositions can't reach you. Not even random stimulations/temptations can hook you (because you've dulled even the basic novelty seeking bootstrapping process to the point you've turned it off). Life itself reboots in those 5/6 moments of angst.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Your miniapp needs users, that's tautological, but did anyone find/share any interesting answers to "what do users need?"
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Purple doesn’t exist, it’s made up. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a64393667/purple-is-fake/
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Why do people on tv have bigger hair than normal people 🤔
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
All these builders telling me I now have the power to do what I want when all I want is to figure out what I should want 🤔 These true believers of builderology vastly overestimate the ability of us non-building users to make choices of any sort, even random ones. Let alone tasteful ones shaped by clear goals and preferences. Even for a decision as simple as what flavor of icecream to get, you can reduce me to terminal robotic indecision stasis by removing chocolate and pistachio from the menu. Most of us are Buridan's asses under a thin veneer of agentic human.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
What are good resources/readings/communities about tokenomics right now, esp for serious equity compensation models, not memecoins. Any pointers? @cmcdragonkai is looking for information/advice
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Quality protocol humor right here
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Talk on swarm-like AI alignment protocols by Emmett Shear in 11 minutes. Future of AI unfolding on the protocol town hall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBc7IxHT38M
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
I have coinbase wallet installed but don’t do anything in it. I suspect the DAU/MAU of wallets in general is in the low single digits. Not sure overloading wallets is a meaningful growth vector for protocol socials. I don’t touch my banking and credit card apps very often either. Retail payment rails feel like an important but not everyday use infrastructure in crypto for now. I suspect things like UPI in India will beat things like Base in the medium term of a few decades. I suspect social sinks or swims on its own. It’s a first class category, not a feature of another category. Wallets feel the same way. It’s nice to have an integrated wallet here but it’s probably not going to end up as a primary wallet.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
👀https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0w7xx0kk5o
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Whoever is running this editorial desk has a sense of humor https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/18/india/nagpur-violence-aurangzeb-muslims-intl-hnk-dst/index.html
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Latest daredevil episode punisher vs punisher fan club is A+ drama
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
I'll be chatting with @sreeramkannan about intersubjective consensus and other esoterica on the protocol town hall in 5 minutes. We'll try to get to the bottom of what the heck eigenlayer is, and why it matters. https://www.youtube.com/live/2OyZt4gbUNA?si=CPA3Ts9V2vbwwcJr
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
A 2x2 degeneracy right vs wrong (I’m both truth and morality sense) asshole vs nice People will consistently choose asshole or nice, regardless of right or wrong Because the meaning of your life is almost entirely a function of consistency in asshole vs nice choice. If you track rightness (or perversely, wrongness) consistently life will feel random and meaningless
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
I am once again asking you to watch Bosch: Legacy. Reliably stellar storytelling with in all departments. 3 seasons into the second series too. No mean achievement.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
I now have 7 essays in my sloptraptions section. I don’t think I’ve been on such a steep learning curve in years. I’m improving by double digit % with each experiment. ChatGPT upgrades throw me off my game a bit but not too much. https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/s/sloptraptions
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Final weekend to enter the Terminological Twists protocol sci-fi contest. Deadline April 14. https://protocolized.summerofprotocols.com/p/terminological-twists Select a term for a technical or procedural concept with protocolish connotations and write a short story that explores some unexpected and startling implication of the concept. Examples to consider: packet switching, boot sequence, cap-and-trade, chain of custody, kill-chain, zero-knowledge proof, multisig, social distancing, fuel partitioning, priority boarding, self-checkout, vampire sneeze, 5-second rule, first-in-first-out.
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