Sophon

we build novel consumer experiences in crypto & ai
next up: @paywithpyre

[Sophon @Sophon]

payments are boring: a passive experience that ends at the tap of a card.

what if one of the most repeated actions in your life was also the most fun?

@paywithpyre will bring payments to life.

(entertainment finance)

[Sophon @Sophon]

your bank competes for your deposits while everything else competes for your attention

those two worlds are about to collide, and we call it entertainment finance 👇

[oskari @oskaritem]

https://t.co/o9uiWwptOp

[Sophon @Sophon]

@simpletox26 🔥🔥

[seb @0xsseb]

EntertainmentFi is a brand new sector that @Sophon and @paywithpyre are diving into.

As retail finance becomes increasingly commoditised and accessible, we believe this opens doors to new exciting sub-verticals.

Stay tuned!

[Sophon @Sophon]

@oskaritem ✍🏼✍🏼

[oskari @oskaritem]

https://t.co/o9uiWwptOp

[Sophon @Sophon]

@0xsseb apps > chains 🫡

[seb @0xsseb]

As expected when we announced our pivot a few weeks ago, I think a lot more founders / chains are going to be doing the same thing.

Def takes courage! It's funny because outside of crypto, it's generally celebrated when a founder is hustling and making tough or unpopular decisions to make it happen.

Looking fwd to what @hotpot_dao and @bread_ cook up now.

[Sophon @Sophon]

@oskaritem ”if we’re right, others will follow”

-@0xsseb

[oskari @oskaritem]

inevitable, and good to see teams making the hard calls instead of continuing down a path that clearly isn’t working

our biggest learnings at sophon were:

1) you can’t outsource pmf for a new chain. great founders won’t take on the additional platform risk when building a startup is already hard enough. the best builders gravitate toward established ecosystems where the tech is good enough

2) once you pivot to first-party apps, running your own chain rarely makes economic sense. the engineering effort is better spent focusing on the app vs. maintaining what is mostly commoditized infra

would guess mega eventually reaches the same conclusion on #2. & their stack is more ambitious than ours was, so i’d imagine the roi hurdle is even higher - but happy to be proven wrong

either way, respect for adapting!

see you in the app arena 🫡

[Sophon @Sophon]

@hotpot_dao @megaeth > we're redirecting the energy we were lending to third-party builders into our own first-party applications

sounds familiar 🫡

[Sophon @Sophon]

@oskaritem yes

[oskari @oskaritem]

payments are the highest-frequency financial action in your life, but they're designed to be forgotten. so much to explore in making them a more active experience!

no-loss lotteries were a genuinely novel primitive: they took the most passive financial action there is (depositing into savings) and gave it a shot at upside. payments are still waiting for their version

buy now, pay maybe is the obvious idea, but it's also the weakest one due to passivity (wait for a notification) + structurally it drifts into the gambling classification

the design space i most care about is active, dopamine-driven micromoments that give people real shots at asymmetric upside - funded by underlying cryptoeconomics instead of users having to put up excess capital to play for it

pyre will roll out piece by piece so we can test a bunch of different mechanics with a crypto-native audience first (most risk-on users), finding the right balance on the r/r spectrum for a daily habit like payments, then ramping up mass market distro with more battle-tested gamification

v1 is done btw. compliance clearance just moves slower on a new primitive like this when banking partners haven’t seen such a thing before

dm me if you want in on the beta!

[Pyre @paywithpyre]

We're hiring a Head of Brainrot 🔥

-be the face of Pyre on IG, tiktok & X
-concept, shoot, edit, post videos daily
-terminally online
-hypebeast
-funny & charismatic
-into fashion & thrifting
-NY, LA, London or Miami based

Dms open or send @n_andrea_q a note with your socials.

[doodlifts @doodlifts]

People may dunk on the sophon pivot but I think the buy now pay maybe card originally teased was one of the most exciting aspects.

I'm still bullish on entertainment finance as a whole.

Im going to try @paywithpyre, Use my link and get a boost ⤵️
https://t.co/iAK1atCV5e

[Sophon @Sophon]

@leonabboud Common Leon W take

[Sophon @Sophon]

This first batch of burned SOPH comes from the unutilised staking rewards pool and node buybacks. Read more:

[seb @0xsseb]

https://t.co/0QwXdSznnZ

[Sophon @Sophon]

Today we burned 46.5M SOPH: ~0.5% of total supply.

SOPH's utility is evolving from gas and staking to buybacks and burns funded by product revenue.

More to follow as @paywithpyre launches soon.

[Pyre @paywithpyre]

Not another crypto card.

https://t.co/2w0sGzPQ5e

[Sophon @Sophon]

@walsxbt agree