ian //

Building TBA. Advisor @ethereumfndn use case lab. Prev @syndicateio @IDEOVC @IDEO @CitiVentures @Citi

[ian // @ianDAOs]

@rrhoover @WillPapper @jpridgely Not me, but @WillPapper and others from the team did!!

[ian // @ianDAOs]

So awesome to see

Congratulations @WillPapper @jpridgely and team 🙌

[Cloudflare @Cloudflare]

Introducing Cloudflare Wallets. They will allow you to store stablecoins, purchase services, and receive funds across the web. https://t.co/ucAaoKMs4Q

[ian // @ianDAOs]

To me Inkling’s combination of voice, chat, vision, and tool calls looks like a model actually designed for real time human interactions

[ian // @ianDAOs]

@SahilDewan great run sahil and team - look forward to what you do next!

[ian // @ianDAOs]

@alive_ @jessewldn am 100% sure DAOs are coming back now with AI agents - AI agents not only aren't bothered by all the painful UX steps of DAOs/multisigs but actually need them, in particular to do the thing most native to AI agents: programmatically creating autonomous swarms with permissions

[Ali Yahya @alive_]

DAOs were a failure in the last era of crypto.

But it may have just been the wrong time for them. Two big things are different now: (1) regulatory clarity and (2) AI agents.

We spent the last 10 years rediscovering the hard way that direct democracy is a bad idea. Turns out, nobody wakes up in the morning eager to adjudicate risk parameters or protocol updates.

It didn't help that it was illegal to experiment with different DAO structures. The vicious hostility of Biden and Gensler toward the space killed all innovation.

But it's a new day.

It is once again legal to experiment. You could choose to play with forms of representative democracy, or multi-cameral systems, or hybrids of permissioned and permissionless participation.

Not to mention, AI agents can now step into many kinds of roles that humans will never want to perform. They may help DAOs live up to their name by making them truly Autonomous.

The design space for new DAOs is infinite, for they are just software. What new experiments are people running?

[ian // @ianDAOs]

@alive_

[ian // @ianDAOs]

@rhackett @alive_ @grok 😂

[ian // @ianDAOs]

@mert ✊

[ian // @ianDAOs]

@jessewldn @variantfund Congrats Jesse! Love the vision and direction

[ian // @ianDAOs]

Agents need DAOs.

[ian // @ianDAOs]

@SantoXBT Thank you!

[ian // @ianDAOs]

Who are the best fund law firms for lower middle market LBO funds?

Asking for a friend starting one.

[ian // @ianDAOs]

Read this post from @WillPapper with a more extensive breakdown of our decision:

https://t.co/PsZMkCPyCt

[Will Papper @WillPapper]

I have some news: After five years, Syndicate Labs is winding down. Unfortunately, our customer traction was not enough to make a viable business or sustain us as a contributor to Syndicate Network. I’m proud of what we contributed to this space over the prior half a decade, from helping Constitution DAO place a bid at Sotheby’s to powering smart contracts for Fortune 100s to providing transaction broadcasting and rollups to hundreds of startups.

Our focus for the past few years has been customizable appchains. To put it bluntly, the rollup market has not been thriving. L2s/L3s have a place for applications that have hit scale, but very few applications meet that threshold. This is especially true as the market has been consolidating around institutional finance, with declining consumer use cases. There have been countless chain wind-downs, often done quietly. I’d estimate that for every one new rollup being created today, several more are winding down. The ones that are thriving are highly custom, with execution environments built completely from scratch (e.g. Hyperliquid). Generalized EVM rollups are struggling, as is everything that’s not effectively a custom backend.

In this market, we only had one option left: pursue an orderly wind-down.

We considered whether we could restructure to wait for a resurgence in the rollup market. Most of the Rollup as a Service providers today are pivoting to a consulting model. (Often called “solutions” or “services” teams, these are deeply custom builds for new chains.) We evaluated our technology to see whether it would be a good fit for this custom rollup market.

In particular, we allow for sequencer customization, so that block building or transaction inclusion can be heavily modified. We do not customize the execution environment, which is an EVM execution environment (+ Rust in WebAssembly via Stylus) on top of Arbitrum Orbit. All of these transactions are sequenced to Syndicate Network. More transactions flowing through our framework = greater network usage.

Most of the customization for chains today is customization of execution environments. This is custom code written into the execution client for different use cases (Hyperliquid for trading, Tempo for stablecoin swaps and transfers, etc). This is so specific to each use case that it’s hard to build into a reusable framework. You either need to build very general primitives (as Commonware and Sovereign do) or you need to have an extensible execution client (as Reth does). Since we build sequencers and do not build execution clients, our rollup framework doesn’t fall into either category. It’s too specific to work as a generic primitive, and not close enough to the execution client to be extended into specific apps.

As such, we decided that we couldn’t hold out for the rollup market to improve. Our framework matters a lot for things like MEV pipelines and permissioned rollups for enterprises. The new customers coming across our radar were not that, and instead wanted consultants to build them a custom app, and they did not want a framework. Our prior work would not be relevant, and it would not use Syndicate Network given that it would not use our tech. At the same time, we’d be competing as consultants with half a dozen other teams that have recently pivoted to being consultants. If the work benefited Syndicate Network, it would have been different, but we didn’t see a path toward this kind of consulting leading to network value.

Instead, we decided on an orderly wind-down. This helps us:

1. Ensure that we can handle all obligations to our customers
2. Make our work widely accessible for those who want to continue building on Syndicate Network

On the first point, we are helping customers migrate after a recent bridge compromise. They can set up a new bridge and self-host on Syndicate Network (which was unaffected) or they can migrate to a third-party hosting provider and optionally back up their data to Syndicate Network. We are working with them right now on the options that they want to pursue. (This wind-down decision was separate from the compromise and reimbursement. We have sufficient buffer that it was not a factor in deciding between these two paths.)

On the second point, we have created a toolkit for anyone who wants to carry our work forward with Syndicate Network. If someone does step up, all of our code and tooling is open source and available for them to pick up our work. We will also advocate for them to receive generous token allocations to support their efforts. If no one steps up, we will proceed with an orderly wind-down of the DUNA and our current hosting for Syndicate Network, which is our current projected path. The SYND token is a smart contract that will always exist, and it can be plugged into any future hosting provider for Syndicate Network. We expect the wind-down process to finish before the end of the year.

I wish that we had a different outcome after five years. We sought every single path that could continue to provide value to Syndicate Network. Ultimately, the rollup market did not support paths that would lead to usage of SYND. Team members and investors remain locked, and no team member or investor affiliated with us has been able to access their token allocations. We set up our vesting to align us with long-term incentives, and I do want to reassure community members that there have been zero short-term benefits for any team member or investor. All of our efforts have been focused on helping Syndicate Labs continue to support Syndicate Network, and I wish that we had paths that allowed us to do this.

I’ll have more on what’s next for me soon. The contributors to Syndicate and I are staying in the industry and will contribute to it for the long term. In the meantime, my priority is our team, customers, and community members. We will continue to work on a smooth and orderly wind-down process.

[ian // @ianDAOs]

An update: After five hard-fought years, Syndicate Labs is winding down. We gave it everything we had through multiple market cycles. We explored every path. But in the end, we were unable to build a sustainable development company. I wish we had reached a different outcome. But now the right thing to do is pursue an orderly wind down of the company.

The most important thing I want to express is my immense gratitude to everyone who helped bring the shared vision of community ownership into the world with us. Everyone who joined our team, used our products and technology, built alongside us, invested in us, advised us, challenged us, contributed to the network, or simply gave us your time. The opportunity to work alongside so many talented, high-integrity, thoughtful people on this mission has been the privilege of a lifetime. I'm proud of what we've built and accomplished together over the years.

I still believe deeply in the mission of community ownership and economic empowerment that formed the foundation of Syndicate and brought me into this space 12 years ago. It remains as important to me today as it was when I first started. If anything, I believe the need is greater than ever.

So while this chapter is coming to a close, I'm not going anywhere. I'm excited to continue pushing this mission forward in new ways. The work continues. Onward. 🙏

[Syndicate @syndicateio]

Syndicate Labs is winding down.

After five years building onchain developer infrastructure, the rollup market has fundamentally shifted, making this decision necessary.

Here's what this means for the network, token holders, and developers building with Syndicate.

[ian // @ianDAOs]

@MaxxingBattle for emerging manager, $50m fund 1

looking for a specialist firm that punches above their rate and is deeply experienced in lower-middle market LBO transactions and funds - highly competent and respected among people in the industry but not a brand that charges a premium for it

[ian // @ianDAOs]

Congrats @rrhoover @vedikaja_in! So excited for you to back the next wave of founders.

It has been a joy getting to work with you over the years.

[Ryan Hoover @rrhoover]

Announcing Weekend Fund IV, backed by operators and founders (and maybe you).

When we raised Weekend Fund III, we did something different.

Toward the end of our raise, we announced the fund in public and accepted applications from LPs.

Our goal was to make early-stage venture more accessible and align ourselves with an army of operators and founders to help us and the startups we back.

Over 1,000 people expressed interest to join and hundreds did, but there was a problem. Legally, only accredited investors could participate as an LP. Accreditation laws are well-meaning but limit access to the majority of consumers.

With WF IV, @vedikaja_in and I are doing something different.

Like before, we’re onboarding engineers, designers, researchers, data scientists, salespeople, and other domain experts as LPs in the fund. But this time at a larger scale with USVC.

AngelList recently announced USVC, a new kind of fund that’s accessible to everyone, including the non-accredited. It holds positions in private late-stage companies like xAI, Anthropic, OpenAI, Sierra, and Vercel. I personally invested.

Today, they just announced their investment in Weekend Fund IV, one of the first early-stage funds added to their portfolio.

If you’re interested in being a part of Weekend Fund and getting exposure to generational startups mentioned above, visit usvc [dot] com.

Of course, don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose.

Investing in startups is risky and you may lose all your money. USVC shares are illiquid with no guarantee of repurchase.
Consider investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses carefully before investing. Read the prospectus: usvc [dot] com/prospectus.

Also, USVC is currently limited to US citizens. They’re working to open the fund to other geographies.

Lastly, my DMs are open. :)

[ian // @ianDAOs]

@alive_ @chainyoda ❤️

[ian // @ianDAOs]

@kylobtc You use and build your own agents?

[ian // @ianDAOs]

Who has been building personal agents with Claude Code, Codex, and/or OpenClaw for their personal lives or families?

Would love a quick chat and to share what I'm working on.