September 18, 2023: How to Win Friend.Tech and Influence Keyholders 🔏🔑
Mistakes to avoid if you join the hot new social app
Happy one month anniversary to my Fren Tech account!
Last August I was awestruck at Curve’s successful launch onto Base, quickly slotting into second place and continuing to grow.
August 31, 2023: Finally... Based 🧪🧑🔬
Curve is live on Base Chain! Other than launching some basic infrastructure, Curve has historically had a very sedate presence on other chains. It makes some sense when you look at flows of liquidity. Its largest chain outside mainnet is Arbitrum, which accounts for just ~1% of its TVL.
Yet Curve’s presence on Base ($34MM per Curve’s UI) has just been flippened by a social media app, (at $36MM TVL per DefiLlama). It’s not even a big social media giant like Meta (née Facebook) or X (née Twitter), but the remnants of the small and decaying crypto community dumping on each other in microtransactions. Must be some app!
Or maybe I’m just bullish that I’m closing in on earning 1 whole ETH from trading fees since joining the service off my investment of 0.01 ETH.
Taking my initial deposit of 0.01 and reinvesting all trading fees into buying friends has netted me nearly 1 ETH in one month. Compared with staking, where it took several months of running a node and locking 32 ETH to reach the 1 ETH benchmark.
Naturally, my experience sitting closer to the top of the ponzi funnel will certainly be different from yours joining now. Some of the lessons I’ll share may be universal though, so read on if you are thinking of joining.
Note that you should not take social networking advice from an asocial hermit. Consider what follows to be a way for you to laugh with (or at) my younger self and his many mistakes. Possibly you might avoid these mistakes if you join.
Contents:
Wait, How Did You Make 1 ETH?
Mistakes I’ve Made a Few
The Half Life Hypothesis of Social Networks
Benchmarks for Going Forward
In the true spirit of gated content, this article is paywalled for newsletter subscribers (and crossposted to Fren Tech key holders).
For everybody else, check this morning’s Leviathan Livestream, with Dr. Stefanescu