intro & housekeeping

Hi everyone! It's lovely to share the first issue of my newsletter with you all. I've decided to start longer-form writing to fix my attention span and ability to focus, both of which are broken by too much context switching. Each ~month I will pick a couple of topics varying from my or our common interests, current affairs, and short philosophical enquiries and discuss them at some medium length. Since this is my first ever attempt to write semi-publicly, I happily welcome any feedback you may have.

how to unsubscribe

Although I'd love to have each one of you along for the long-term in this project, I understand if you don't derive enough value from the newsletter. At the end of this (and each) email you will find the unsubscribe button if you wish to use it. Yes, I will see if you unsubscribe, and yes, I will cherish you just the same.

years

It's a new year and we were all encouraged by media and tradition to set some goals we will most likely not stick to. I nonetheless did my fair share of reflection on '22 and goal-setting for '23, more so I can have a good laugh at my overly ambitious self later in December. Either way, I found in my reflection that one of the top 5 moments of my past year was attending the City of the Sun concert in Vienna. While maybe not the first, it was a great, immersive showcase of what relentless passion for one's craft and its audience can create. I recall how during one of the songs John, their guitarist, gradually lowered his body followed by many of us while the volume was decreasing. As the volume increased, we would all stand up slowly then let ourselves loose with the beat drop. I'm pretty sure those moments were as close to magic as there is. Those moments are what urge me sometimes to join the hippies and live off-grid for a while through the woods of unnamed cities. If you haven't had a taste of them yet, here are some Spaghetti (heh!) you can listen to on Spotify or YouTube

themes for '23

Back to the main point, I chose a few themes for the next months. This is a new exercise I'm trying to help me keep sight of my vision (heh! #2, although I've seen a similar pun on Twitter before). I found it useful to think in terms of themes because they are more abstract than goals and thus don't pre-define my action space, while setting a general attitude towards these actions. Three of my themes for '23 are:

• ruthless prioritization. Man, do I waste time. Even though more often than not I may be able to explain and excuse time wasted as exploration, I too easily let myself drift away from a defined-enough path. It's high time for the next while to experiment with cross-checking my intentions with my plans and ditch right off the bat anything my gut tells me is not a worthwhile investment.

• commitment. This theme tightly relates to the previous one. Or maybe the other way around, as one first needs commitment to their own plan before prioritizing. Quite self-explanatory, I am attempting to disregard some of the optionality in many aspects of my life so I can build something meaningful eventually. I'm sharing the OG essay on the topic (I only skimmed it since I relied on the author's shorter Twitter thread) if you want some of the arguments yourself (tl;dr compunding comes with commitment). Hugging the X-Axis (by David Perell)

• public learning, building, and documenting. Finally, my favorite challenge. I've been loathing having a public profile and what have you for most of my life. While this attitude comes with its own set of benefits, my intrinsic motivation is limited and I need some form of external accountability and context to commit to my work. My bold take is that the school incentive system is designed for people like me who can complete work when externally motivated, but who would otherwise ditch current projects in favor of more exciting promised ones. Learning in public comes then for me to supplement my motivation by- most importantly- offering me context. I am no longer only learning for myself, but my endeavour may be helpful to others. Same goes for building publicly so that others can see your ups and downs and learn from the process as much- if not more- as from the outcome. One example of learning in public (more like learning from mistakes in public) is the Conference for Failed Approaches and Insightful Losses in Cryptology (CFAIL). Another recent, incidental discovery is Fuckup Nights (FUN), where people around the world gather in their local communities to share and celebrate failures. You can read their manifesto here. I've seen this movement in academia more recently, where "failures" are documented and shared more publicly; nonetheless, I draw most of my inspiration from web3 people who document extensively, build and ship in small increments allowing others to catch up in small batches, and learn and teach in the humblest of ways.

regen web3 news

Bear with me through updates from my favorite topic or skip to the next header! Before getting to two pieces of news I'm terribly excited about, I will briefly go over what regen web3 is about. web3, or crypto or blockchain are all terms referring to the current blockchain-based products, services, and now cultures. I get that the term crypto might raise your inner skeptic's eyebrows, but I promise the whole space has good and bad, and I focus on the good. All three terms (web3, crypto, blockchain) have different nuances and I'm far from the best equipped to clarify them, but as a short overview, web3 relates to a new form of organizing, interacting, working, living, collaborating, etc., made possible thanks to a tool that allows for more transparency and smoother connectivity (peer-to-peer as opposed to intermediaries). The main tools for doing so are blockchains and smart contracts which, in essence, can keep track of every online interaction between two users and enforce deals between them without the need of a middledude.

Now, a short history of civilization will tell you that the same tool can be used for good and bad. regen or regenerative refers to a way of doing all those activities from above that has a positive effect towards you or others, the planet or the society. regen is the good. Putting it all together, regen web3 is the good place in crypto, assuming a common, broad definition of good. Feel free to challenge me on moral subjectivity grounds, though.

to the news:

• The Gitcoin Alpha Round is here, as of January 17! This round is focused on three topics: climate solutions, open source software, and Ethereum infrastructure. Gitcoin is by far one of the most popular organizations within regen web3. It was founded in 2017 by Kevin Owocki and Scott Moore with the goal of financially supporting open source software development and are currently running their 16th grant round. In short, teams (or individuals) submit their applications to Gitcoin where they pass an eligibility test; if they qualify for funding, anyone can donate whatever amount they so wish, which will later be matched via quadratic funding (QF) with funds from the matching pool which consists of $1M for this round only. Quadratic funding is a mechanism proposed by Buterin, Hitzig, and Weyl in their paper A Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods, where small, but many contributions outweigh large, but few contributions. As a result, more of the matching funds go towards community-supported projects, instead of projects supported by a few wealthy donors. You can play around with QF here or run a quadratic voting (QV, the voting equivalent to QF) session here.

  Coming back, what makes this Gitcoin grants different this round (it's called Alpha instead of 16) is its implementation of a new protocol, initially tested in partnership with UNICEF, where grantees were selected by UNICEF instead of Gitcoin. In short and based on my incomplete overview of the massive development, the centralized Gitcoin grants (cGrants) from before had grantees use the Gitcoin infrastructure all throughout the funding allocation process, from registering and validating a project, to the distribution of funds. While this approach worked well, it did not allow for customization, meaning that if an organization wanted to run a funding round on [insert topic], selected projects would compete against projects perhaps more aligned with the Gitcoin mission of funding open source software. More details are available in the Introduction to Grants Protocol. Gitcoin is massive. In mission, scope, and positive output. I encourage you all to follow their work, donate if you have the means, and maybe one day even register your own project for a grant.

• One of my recent projects of interest is Cabin. Cabin is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) with the mission of creating a network city, with neighborhoods around the world, challenging the idea of what a city means. Its neighborhoods can be located anywhere in the world and members coordinate primarily online and build, co-live, and co-work on-site. To see practically how they build a neighborhood You should watch this video (ONE YEAR of Building a Neighborhood from Scratch), regardless of your interests or background. There's nothing quite as inspiring that I've watched in years, maybe.

  As for the news, they are launching two new residence programs in Colombia and Portugal, expanding the city with new locations, houses, and neighbors. I kind of sadly messed up my interview for Portugal, but it's a good opportunity to learn more about their work and contribute online before I hopefully join any co-living session. One curious aspect about being part of decentralized cities is that you can be part of as many of them as your time, attention, or emotional bandwidth permit, including having decision-making power (unlike the cities we immigrate to today).

poem

Apart from this time, I commit to writing a new poem with every issue of the newsletter. This time I'll share a half-year old one about how preparing for one's dream may distract them from living any other version of it.

when I go to Vermont
I’ll pack my oversized pumpkin-shade plaid jacket
I need to buy one first
I’ve never been to Vermont
so I never dressed for it

but when I do
honeycrisp in one hand
the other out sensing the breeze
I will realize I have been to Vermont
for decades, every fall

(the full experience)

the mandatory chatGPT mention while it's still a hot topic

I was trying to see if my poems end up being too obscure, but chatGPT turned out to interpret each of the tested ones intimidatingly impeccably. then I went on and tested it with one of my tweets, and here's the result. On. Point.

outro & a few resources

I'm leaving you with a preview of and promise to share my extended reflections on DeSci London next time (around mid-February) as well as a draft of one of the projects I'm currently working on, a new poem, and more news. Again, I welcome all feedback or thoughts you might have after reading through mine above.

DeSci London preview

On January 15-16, I attended the Decentralized Science (DeSci) conference in London. I left the place deeply inspired by ideas on how to make science better for all of the stakeholders involved, but particularly for scientists and their communities. Most of the projects within the DeSci space focus on biotech (e.g., VitaDAO on longevity research), or meta-research efforts such as improving the peer review process and the reputation system. The reputation system, for example, is currently limited to criteria such as the h-index or the prestige of one's affiliation, disregarding other factors that might have led to a scientist's positioning in the community. What should then the rest of the scientists who simply chose not to compromise on location or to dedicate more of their time to mentoring or to public outreach do? Mhm.

a few resources/tools I found useful in my work

• Connected Papers, for researchers to visualize their literature reviews

• Excalidraw, collaborative drawing; just share your session and invite anyone to brainstorm or design with you

• PlayPhrase, search through movie phrases; one of my favs!

p.s.

I woke up to this the morning I had scheduled the welcome issue to go out and had to make this little insert. I feel a bit personally attacked, but I promise my reasons are different.

until next time
lots of love & drink water,

raluca

for any feedback, email me at: nctzn101@gmail.com
or just reach out on any of the platforms we normally communicate through