John

Theia CEO

[Nallok | 👾⚙️ @metanallok]

If the creator of the ZKFG proposal would DM me to discuss you can message me on here or on telegram. Wanted to discuss escrow of funds. @zinc_cash

https://t.co/zqt6950O1N

[rinko @mrinko]

@dwarkesh_sp robin hanson

[John @johnfromtheia]

@PaulFrambot Too true

[Turtle @turtledotxyz]

40/40 on the @Blockworks Token Transparency filing.

No DevCo. No equity holders. No mint function.

One token, full alignment.

[John @johnfromtheia]

One by one, the most investable companies are all making the same decision. Excellent post @turtledotxyz

[Turtle @turtledotxyz]

https://t.co/sJyvEU8GqW

[John @johnfromtheia]

@jakelynch has seen it all. Not surprised the next move is thoughtful and interesting. Multi-time founders usually know what they’re doing. Excited to see where this goes

[jake likes sports @jakelynch]

After ten years in crypto, I’m starting something new.

I’m building https://t.co/c4S0JVXYfu with a small team of elite operators that I’ve been hoping to work with for years.

On the surface, it’s a sports pool platform. But to me, it’s something else entirely.

A small window into a possible future: one where money, games, and people are deeply and effortlessly intertwined.

And a business model where the platform succeeds when the user succeeds. Where the ethical decision is also the economically rational decision.

I’ve spent the last decade investing, trading, and helping teams build, mostly in B2B platforms.

Along the way, I’ve met a lot of incredible founders and watched companies like @Morpho @Multisig and @GromaCorp grow from ideas into businesses.

As an investor in both Luna and FTX, I’ve also seen a lot of things go terribly wrong.

You learn a lot watching companies get built.

But eventually, you get tired of cheerleading.

For the last decade I’ve helped other people build their vision.

Now I feel ready to build my own.

[John @johnfromtheia]

Great article from @B3nj4min_ETH. Agree on almost every point. Sounds a lot like my conversations with people outside the industry explaining what we do at Theia.

[B3nj4min @B3nj4min_ETH]

https://t.co/51H1PQSSPK

[shayon @shayonsengupta]

@wassielawyer @arvndalxndr As a current investor, I can tell you that

1) your assessment of our incentives and
2) your sense of how we think about the public sale

are both categorically incorrect.

[Nick Forster | Derive @nickforster]

https://t.co/Vl9MtafETb

[John @johnfromtheia]

Can't speak highly enough about @Ray_L1D and the rest of the @L1D_xyz team. This is a great opportunity

[Ray @Ray_L1D]

Now is the time to put our balance sheet to work. We are actively investing in L1D, growing our team, and warehousing positions. Our conviction in crypto has never been stronger.

[John @johnfromtheia]

@JamesChristoph True but its only been live for 6 months, real success takes time

[Felipe Montealegre @TheiaResearch]

. @johnfromtheia obviously most underrated account on CT only posts gigabangers

[Noah @TraderNoah]

+1, some thoughts:

1. Past crypto cycles elevated many people that should have never been given the outsized voice that they received. It took time to make clear who deserved it and who didn't, but now it's all known.
2. We had too many fast money capital providers, and too few slow money capital providers. The funds that were in a position to move this space forward largely used their position to extract value at the expense of others via negative sum games
3. While the game was shrinking, many of the remaining participants were holding out hope for some last ditch exit opportunity (think dats + 4 year cycle mentality)

For a longer read on the subject, here's an article I wrote about the history of crypto funds and market participants about a year ago (https://t.co/3BiaHm2IEL).

We are now in a position where crypto either dies, or we build something of value. The uncertainty of its death is necessary to dissuade unethical participants from staying in the space, and we need to churn a larger % of "crypto traders" relative to long-term participants so that price action doesn't lead to incorrect conclusions or negative fundamental outcomes.

I'd like to think that the probability of death is low, but I'm aware that it exists.

[John @johnfromtheia]

Bull post from @TraderNoah?! Don’t see this everyday folks

[Noah @TraderNoah]

https://t.co/0JVdN72sFU

[Noah @TraderNoah]

https://t.co/0JVdN72sFU

[John @johnfromtheia]

It is very energizing to bring such a high-quality person to our team. Thank you for joining us @_ThePinkyToe

[Toe @_ThePinkyToe]

Excited to share that I’ve started at Theia, alongside @johnfromtheia @TheiaResearch and @TraderNoah. I couldn’t be more excited to join the team, particularly now, with crypto adoption clearly at an inflection point.

Token holder rights are steadily improving, protocols are generating durable, sustainable, and accelerating cash flows, and regulatory tailwinds remain firmly at our backs.

I’m fortunate to work alongside such an exceptional team to marshal the next growth phase. The setup hasn’t looked this good in years. Let’s get to work.

[John @johnfromtheia]

How can you not love @TraderNoah ?

[Noah @TraderNoah]

If we're all doing end of year predictions for egotistical reasons, shouldn't we be standardizing for brier/edge?

Need to start asking for probabilities and assumed consensus to be reported next to each prediction.

cc: @TheiaResearch

[John @johnfromtheia]

Excited to support the next chapter at Layer3. Brandon has proven to be one of the best operators we have worked with.

[Brandon @brandonkumar]

Today we released the beta for Ample, a new savings protocol we built at Layer3.

Ample is inspired by the UK’s Premium Bond system and rebuilt using onchain financial infrastructure. Users deposit supported assets, retain full ownership of principal, and the yield generated across all deposits is pooled to fund recurring, randomized payouts. In each period, a small number of participants receive outsized outcomes, funded by the same underlying yield that would otherwise be distributed evenly.

As I’ve written about before, there are several structural reasons why I believe this product is well timed.

For most of the post-2008 period, savings products built around pooled yield faced a core limitation of insufficient and unstable yield. In low-rate environments, it was difficult to fund meaningful upside without introducing leverage, principal risk, or opaque balance sheet mechanics. Today, onchain money markets now provide consistent, programmatic yield that can sustainably support payout mechanisms at scale.

Distribution has also changed. Historically, premium bond-style savings products were constrained by local deposit bases and national banking systems. Today, stablecoins and USD balances held in fintech wallets function as a global, dollar-denominated liability layer. This allows a protocol like Ample to aggregate deposits and yield across partners and geographies, enabling payout pools and expected outcomes that no single institution could realistically offer on its own.

Transparency was another historical limitation. Prior attempts relied on opaque payout logic that was difficult for users, and often regulators, to verify. With smart contracts and verifiable randomness, payout rules can now be codified onchain. Users can see exactly how yield is accrued, how payouts are calculated, and how the payout budget is allocated. The system is auditable by design.

The underlying infrastructure has matured as well. The onchain stack today looks materially different than it did in previous cycles. Smart wallets abstract away key management and gas complexity. Layer 2 networks have reduced settlement costs. On and off ramps have expanded to the point where users can move between local currency and stablecoins with minimal friction. Taken together, this creates a UX environment where an onchain savings product can operate with the same, or better, usability as a traditional fintech application.

From a user behavior perspective, the appeal of this type of savings structure is well established. Humans consistently prefer variable outcomes over fixed yield, even when the expected return is identical. This preference has driven adoption of regulated savings products globally, including in the United States and the United Kingdom, where Premium Bonds alone represent approximately $150 billion in deposits. The mechanism works because it changes how yield is experienced, not how it is generated.

From an integrator perspective, this savings model offers a way to increase asset retention without increasing risk. Assets remain deposited longer because the experience is more engaging than static APY. Ample turns this structure into a reusable primitive. If successful, wallets, exchanges, and fintechs should be able to offer this savings model for idle assets such as USDC, BTC, ETH, SOL, and tokenized equities. Over time, a meaningful share of onchain yield could route through pooled savings structures rather than traditional yield products.

The beta release is focused on validating a small number of variables: initial asset selection, user behavior and retention, payout cadence, partner integration surfaces, and jurisdictional posture. Ample takes a small fee on yield before payouts are distributed. Ample is built entirely within Layer3, and any protocol revenue generated flows directly to the L3 treasury.

The beta is intentionally limited in scope. The objective is to test whether the structural assumptions outlined above translate into real usage and durable behavior. If they do, Ample becomes less of a consumer-facing application and more a financial primitive that others embed.

Follow along @AmpleHQ

[John @johnfromtheia]

@MetaDAOProject's launchpad is far more of a compliment than a threat to early-stage VC investing. Anyone funding early-stage companies should be thrilled.

[Felipe Montealegre @TheiaResearch]

I have received pushback on my MetaDAO posts from a few VCs. I believe most of this is good faith pushback so I want to address these points to the best of my ability.

Pushback) MetaDAO isn't going to fully replace VCs.
Response) Correct. MetaDAO isn't going to fully replace the funding mechanism that built the entire Internet economy. Venture Capital is a modern miracle. If MetaDAO can take 1% market share from VC (or even expand the market by 1%) then it is a >1,000x idea you should be excited about. I believe MetaDAO can expand the market by much more than 1%.

P) Getting money from good VCs like Paradigm and Multicoin is a huge asset for founders.
R) I completely agree. MetaDAO's current mechanism doesn't support investor discrimination (so founders cannot decide to give allocation to value-added VCs) but I expect this to change over time. There needs to be a way to give the best investors cap table access in order to maximize the project's probability of success.

P) If a project sells 50% of supply for a few million dollars at inception, how can it raise money in the future? It will need those resources to build a real business.
R) MetaDAO ownership coins *do not* have fixed token supplies. They can continue to raise fresh funds through MetaDAO's futarchy mechanism which guarantees that projects will raise when they have an accretive use for the funds. This is essentially analogous to how both VCs and public markets work — teams can continue to raise but investors have protections to ensure raises are accretive.

P) Companies need to pivot many times during lifecycle. Under MetaDAO, they will just get liquidated.
R) It's not that simple. A company can continue to build as long as (i) market cap > USDC in treasury or (ii) there is still at least one large capital allocator who believes in the company's vision.
How many companies have traded below USDC on treasury and not had a single large investor who believed in them for a prolonged period of time and come back to build something meaningful?
The vast majority of cases like this go on to 0, and that has a real cost in terms of capital formation and even the time & effort of the entrepreneurs involved. It's better to fail fast and pivot. MetaDAO's mechanism is more forgiving in the sense that you can always raise again for a new idea (and we are actually about to see an instance of this soon).

P) You are trusting the fate of your project to momentum chasing retail traders that don't do any diligence.
R) That's actually not how the mechanism works. MetaDAO has an N=1 rationality assumption so a single sophisticated investor (even one who does not own the token in question prior to the vote) can determine the outcome of the vote if he is willing to 'own the outcome'. It's a bit like prediction markets where a single informed actor can change the market price even if the other 10,000 market participants have no idea what is going on.
I find that this is the main disconnect for people who don't quite get it yet so if this is you please give this post (and the MetaDAO docs) a read: https://t.co/e4oOQkg5dX

P) It's hard to build a project with a live token.
R) I complete agree. I have made a big deal about this for a long time as you can see in my 'Tokens are Broken' discussion at dba research day:
https://t.co/KYuDHX0rua
I believe many of the typical token problems are solved by the MetaDAO structure. You can continue to mint tokens to raise funds and teams can create new management incentive plans as needed. The management team is paid in options not tokens so they only get compensated for creating value (like private equity and public company teams). Futarchy makes it really hard to rug investors (which is actually one of the main failure modes for token teams). You can see a much longer discussion of MetaDAO and the token problem below:
https://t.co/RuALlolqQL
However, I do agree that a live token is and will always be a distraction for teams. I don't have a good objection to that except to say that public markets have created more value than any other asset class in human history and hopefully we can set up incentives for them to work at an earlier stage. There is a world where tokens just don't work and companies should be private until they are at >>$100M of recurring revenue (we just don't get Internet Capital Markets at all in that world).

Overall, I would say that I am pretty surprised by how jumpy people got about my post. MetaDAO is doing amazing work for founders. Solomon's raise is >7x oversubscribed after 3 days on the market during the worst market weekend in the past ~2 years.
Founders *should* consider MetaDAO as an alternative to the traditional VC process. If you are a VC fund, that shouldn't upset you because (i) VC funds can participate in MetaDAO raises at incredible terms (we buy all of them) and (ii) good VC funds have a lot to offer most founders.
The most likely outcome in my mind is that MetaDAO takes a few founders away from VC markets (It's a huge pool, you won't even feel it) but mostly that MetaDAO expands the market for fundraising. This system will give more entrepreneurs a chance. We have a hidden cost right now of entrepreneurs who cannot raise due to geography // market conditions // VC narrative cycle etc. Many of these people can build big companies under the MetaDAO model.

[John @johnfromtheia]

@tushar_jain Praetorian Capital quantified this take on the current AI market. I loved it

https://t.co/2yvZK480CM