AI Podcast Hosts, Prediction Markets & Thursday That’s Friday: GM Farcaster ep340 with Cojo

The people surprised that the Harvard Business school study found that employees using AI felt their work intensified rather than become more manageable clearly haven't read enough critique of modernity philosophy. Whenever we had new tech making stuff easier, expectations heightened. The introduction of cleaning devices meant we started having higher demands on cleanliness of homes. The introduction of email meant we had to write more emails than we had ever written letters. Instant messaging on all our devices = never being actually disconnected from work. Is just the same dynamic dialled up further. Highly recommend some of Hartmut Rosa's interviews/talks since he was one of the first to put a name to this phenomenon that all this tech has sped up our lives to the point where we feel like we're constantly running only to stay at the same place. https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies-it

three learnings from me in 2025: 1. sometimes i can be too far in the future. coming into the year, I wanted to take a shot to bring more people onchain. and I saw the creator economy as a 100x opportunity to do exactly that. but in leaning all the way into creators with the base app, i jumped too far ahead. by overfocusing on this emerging segment, i think we overshadowed the core of builders and traders. i continue to believe deeply in bringing the creator economy onchain and the importance of non-financial use cases ... but i think the reality is that it’s going to take years to bring everyone onchain and we need to build there incrementally. and that means making the base app work really well for traders and builders first, and earning the right to expand the aperture. in parallel, the ecosystem will continue to cook on creators, social, and other non-financial use cases and we'll drive distribution to them. 2. trading is the chain’s biggest area for growth. base has established itself as the best place for builders — but one of the biggest opportunities is that our liquidity and trading economy is still maturing. as a builder platform, issuing new assets and enabling trading of them are the thing with the most product market fit and it's clear there's so much more growth we can drive there. i think some of this is downstream of the fact that i've never been a professional trader, so i've had less natural empathy for both traders themselves and what makes a great trading platform. but i'm learning fast and we're already seeing the positive results of this focus. we are going to make base the most trusted, liquid, powerful trading economy in the world. tons more upside ahead. 3. growing the decentralized bench of base leaders and the tools they have to lift up the ecosystem is absolutely critical. base started inside coinbase and we've been gradually decentralizing since day 1. in 2025, we made big strides like achieving stage 1 and decentralizing our security council, but we have a ton more work to do. and one of the biggest opportunities is continuing to decentralize culturally. the more voices and capital allocators we have that are rowing in the same direction — growing the base economy — the faster and better we will all grow together. this means giving people a platform (with distribution + capital) and the tools to measure and scale their impact. success means that what the base core team does matters less and what empowered individuals and teams do matters more. this is a major priority for me personally — and if you're reading this, I need your help making it happen. if raise your hand, lift up other builders, and deploy capital, i will do everything i can to help you win. we'll be sharing more on the base mission, vision, and strategy next week and i thought this would be a helpful backdrop. one of my favorite values of coinbase’s has always been continuous learning. and 2025 was a year filled with big learnings for me — and i’m fired up to apply them as we grow base in 2026 and beyond. open to more feedback and ideas. day one.

Here's a prototype video on app discovery (context on why I am sharing this prototype is in the quoted cast below) product goals - builders can share their products more easily with the network - users can discover new products faster, engage in more fun ways feedback that helps achieve the above goals is useful, feedback asking us to switch to different goals is less relevant at this time ps - I use slack to record videos and often get cut off abruptly at 5 mins

Creators will be there doing fun videos and stuff https://luma.com/03aki3f7

will try sharing UI prototypes of what we want to build into Farcaster app goal is to get early feedback fyi - not all feedback will be acted on, some things we'll live and learn first one tonight if I wrap it up in time

🥝UPDATE: kiddo tried 🥝 both ways — prefers the scoop with a spoon 🥄 did not care for the skin And was very confused by my interest in this.

Looks like there will be two fc events rn Purple Party at Based House: https://farcaster.xyz/luciano/0xeca67066 and a more general fc community event at the Main Venue (working on this with @swarthyhatter) we would like to do something in line with usual fc booth vibes cc: @ahn.eth @horsefacts.eth @linda 👀

is there a Farcaster ETH Denver event? (I am not going to be there, but will share event with others who want to attend)

vibe coded The Epstein Files podcast with Claude in a weekend and just crossed 100,000 downloads in its first week. to put that in perspective: the top 1% of all podcasts globally get around 5,000 downloads in their first 7 days. this did 100k. that's 20x the top 1% threshold. the average podcast gets 141 downloads in its first 30 days. most spend 18+ months trying to crack 1,000 per episode. a lot never get there and there are 4.5 million podcasts out there right now. no fancy studio. no production team. just Claude, a mac mini, and a weekend of focused work curating the right approach to this series. still processing this one honestly. check it out: https://epsteinfiles.fm

🔵🟣 INTRODUCING: BETR GAMES 🟣🔵 - A reality social media game awarding 100m $BETR to the winner. Think BEAST GAMES meets Farcaster. - Battle fellow BETR BELIEVERS (and others) at various strategy, psychological, and luck games. - The top 50 BETR BELIEVERS on the Karma leaderboard are guaranteed a spot to play. - BBs in the top 50 who want to play simply quote cast this with "YOU $BETR BELIEVE IM PLAYING BETR GAMES" - Register in the mini-app - Other interest participants activate their entry by quote casting this cast with WHY we should select them to play BETR GAMES. - 3 BETR judges will choose the BETR players by unanimous decision - Judges: @dflory3 @netnose https://farcaster.xyz/miniapps/34ey8Oz4ckl-/betr-with-burr

Personally feel there is a little less glue that was previously provided by accounts that had both broad reach and would engage across a spectrum of topics - @keccers.eth & @ted and maybe the super well respected ETH dev types that have largely been absent for a year plus… Still have heaps of activity in smaller circles - politics etc - @javabu.eth @purp Sports @tldr and the broader Bracky community. @toadyhawk.eth @jake @kenny & GM Farcaster crew and other base builders who create a pulse despite the crowd being smaller. Less people scrolling for longer periods - shallower depth to engagement, less likely to break containment. And airdrop farmers have mostly ghosted post merkle/base app pivot.

Went to @dune.eth to check out this chart because something in my feed has been feeling off. Has it gotten quieter or more repetitive? Not sure. But I was surprised to see that the data tells a different story? DAU is holding steady in the 30-40k range. So maybe the issue isn't that people are leaving or going quiet or just heads down building. Maybe the algo just isn't surfacing enough new voices/peeps for me. If there are 40k+ DAU here then where are they all hanging out? How do I find them? I want my feed to feel more alive. I want to follow more interesting people and diversify what I'm seeing. Help. Any tips? Recs? cc @neynar @askgina.eth any ideas from you two?

https://x.com/MrinankSharma/status/2020881722003583421?s=20

Two years ago, I wrote this post on the possible areas that I see for ethereum + AI intersections: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/01/30/cryptoai.html This is a topic that many people are excited about, but where I always worry that we think about the two from completely separate philosophical perspectives. I am reminded of Toly's recent tweet that I should "work on AGI". I appreciate the compliment, for him to think that I am capable of contributing to such a lofty thing. However, I get this feeling that the frame of "work on AGI" itself contains an error: it is fundamentally undifferentiated, and has the connotation of "do the thing that, if you don't do it, someone else will do anyway two months later; the main difference is that you get to be the one at the top" (though this may not have been Toly's intention). It would be like describing Ethereum as "working in finance" or "working on computing". To me, Ethereum, and my own view of how our civilization should do AGI, are precisely about choosing a positive direction rather than embracing undifferentiated acceleration of the arrow, and also I think it's actually important to integrate the crypto and AI perspectives. I want an AI future where: * We foster human freedom and empowerment (ie. we avoid both humans being relegated to retirement by AIs, and permanently stripped of power by human power structures that become impossible to surpass or escape) * The world does not blow up (both "classic" superintelligent AI doom, and more chaotic scenarios from various forms of offense outpacing defense, cf. the four defense quadrants from the d/acc posts) In the long term, this may involve crazy things like humans uploading or merging with AI, for those who want to be able to keep up with highly intelligent entities that can think a million times faster on silicon substrate. In the shorter term, it involves much more "ordinary" ideas, but still ideas that require deep rethinking compared to previous computing paradigms. So now, my updated view, which definitely focuses on that shorter term, and where Ethereum plays an important role but is only one piece of a bigger puzzle: # Building tooling to make more trustless and/or private interaction with AIs possible. This includes: * Local LLM tooling * ZK-payment for API calls (so you can call remote models without linking your identity from call to call) * Ongoing work into cryptographic ways to improve AI privacy * Client-side verification of cryptographic proofs, TEE attestations, and any other forms of server-side assurance Basically, the kinds of things we might also build for non-LLM compute (see eg. my ethereum privacy roadmap from a year ago https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/a-maximally-simple-l1-privacy-roadmap/23459 ), but for LLM calls as the compute we are protecting. # Ethereum as an economic layer for AI-related interactions This includes: * API calls * Bots hiring bots * Security deposits, potentially eventually more complicated contraptions like onchain dispute resolution * ERC-8004, AI reputation ideas The goal here is to enable AIs to interact economically, which makes viable more decentralized AI architectures (as opposed to non-economic coordination between AIs that are all designed and run by one organization "in-house"). Economies not for the sake of economies, but to enable more decentralized authority. # Make the cypherpunk "mountain man" vision a reality Basically, take the vision that cypherpunk radicals have always dreamed of (don't trust; verify everything), that has been nonviable in reality because humans are never actually going to verify all the code ourselves. Now, we can finally make that vision happen, with LLMs doing the hard parts. This includes: * Interacting with ethereum apps without needing third party UIs * Having a local model propose transactions for you on its own * Having a local model verify transactions created by dapp UIs * Local smart contract auditing, and assistance interpreting the meaning of FV proofs provided by others * Verifying trust models of applications and protocols # Make much better markets and governance a reality Prediction and decision markets, decentralized governance, quadratic voting, combinatorial auctions, universal barter economy, and all kinds of constructions are all beautiful in theory, but have been greatly hampered in reality by one big constraint: limits to human attention and decision-making power. LLMs remove that limitation, and massively scale human judgement. Hence, we can revisit all of those ideas. These are all things that Ethereum can help to make a reality. They are also ideas that are in the d/acc spirit: enabling decentralized cooperation, and improving defense. We can revisit the best ideas from 2014, and add on top many more new and better ones, and with AI (and ZK) we have a whole new set of tools to make them come to life. We can describe the above as a 2x2 chart. There's a lot to build!

@tmrw.eth beta is live! We built a place to watch hot takes, bet on outcomes, and explore the future (without losing real money). You just: - Watch prediction videos - Bet with free gems - Drop your own takes Open beta has Super Bowl, Traitors and Tech questions - with more coming soon. app.tomorrow.fun

Here are my 3 dreaming foxes, one for each of my original philosophical fox NFTs The red fox, aka Hannibal, snuck into my life and became my forever PFP on Farcaster. The dreaming version somehow perfectly captures how I see myself: thoughtful, contemplative, with a pinch of masculine energy Whether you were involved with the foxes project or not, I encourage you to read mario's thread below announcing the final mint in the roadmap and a recap of 4+ years of stories Foxes were a true gift. I made many friends (some of my first URL to IRL connections were through this project) and the art and stories we co-wrote were some of the first true creative expressions I experienced in my adult life, or at least recent adult life. The project ended up being a stepping stone that led to many other things, including how I ended up on Farcaster. @mario I just love picturing you sitting down and creating the first set of characters. As flat and pixelated as they are visually, they had so much depth and spirit. Honestly can't thank you enough for birthing them into existence. Not much else to say except while the project completes its roadmap, foxes are playing infinite games and I suspect the spirit of foxes will endure. In fact just a few weeks (?) ago, @chriscocreated revisited the values we created together. Will Hannibal remain my forever pfp? Seems likely but ya never know what the future holds. CVS, 🦊 💭

/foxes: We're back with one final launch: Dreaming Foxes. Over the past many (many!) months, we have been working to give your foxes a way to meet their magical twin that live in the dreaming realm of Alucinora. (As you might have guessed, this was a lot harder than we’d anticipated!) 🔗 To get started, jump over here: https://dream.philosophicalfoxes.com/ 🧵