orb land

harberger tax-governed time

[orb land @orb_land]

this will have to do as a pinned FAQ for now

[Eric Wall @ercwl]

The system we put together with Harberger taxes and auctions linked together seems to really be working

Explainer:

1. Creator sells the Orb through an auction
2. Winner (keeper) sets a sales price
3. Keeper pays an ongoing tax—a % of the sales price they set (tax goes to the Creator)
4. Keeper needs to top up the Orb with funds to last longer
5. Anyone new can step in and buy the Orb at any time and become the new Keeper
6. In the meantime, current Keeper can adjust the sales price up or down
7. But if no one buys it and the funds aren't topped up, they will eventually run out of funds
8. Keeper can at any time start a "Keeper auction" in which they are the main beneficiary of the auction proceeds
9. If they run out of funds, a Keeper auction is automatically triggered for them
10. After a Keeper auction finalizes, the Orb has a new Keeper (or if there are 0 bids, Orb goes back to the creator!)
11. Even if the Keeper auction finalizes at some low price, the new Keeper must put a sales price (as usual) so the "auction" never stops going
12. The Orb just keeps trading hands to the highest bidder, always being available, never staying dormant!

All through the while, the Creator earns the Harberger tax (except during Keeper auctions, but then they collect royalty fees from the sale), and each week, questions are being asked and answered—all at rates completely decided by the market!

[orb land @orb_land]

orb land would like for the public to note that nic did all this while diligently and earnestly answering his orb with monster essays each week.

our site has like 5 readers. but he never missed a deadline

[nic carter @nic_carter]

My big whitepill is that you can just decide to do stuff. In march I decided to see I could do a professional style boxing training camp despite - and partly because of - some pretty nasty health issues that materialized in December. I’d never thrown a punch before in my life. Never been in a fight. I wasn’t an athlete at all.

I did the camp. Cut 20 pounds. Last week got in the pit with 4 oz gloves and no headgear, no shin guards for an MMA style fight, fully aware of the fact that if I got starched I would be haunted by a permanent highlight following me around online forever. And it won’t be the last time either.

Last year I threw my investigative journalist hat back on and talked to dozens of sources for my OCP 2.0 reporting. Spent weeks on the story. Total amateur - not a real journalist. Just had an idea for a story and chased it down. Yesterday Trump cited my work in his speech.

The big whitepill is realizing you have total agency if you want it. Completely ordinary people can do exceptional things if they possess 3 things: desire, discipline, and sacrifice. I do believe that you slow the passage of time if you expose yourself to new challenges and constantly put yourself in a beginners mindset, no matter how accomplished you may be in another field. The thing I fear the most is complacency and resting on my laurels. I’m always running from that. I don’t know what’s next but I know I will continue with this mindset for as long as I can.

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Joshua 1:9 NIV

[orb land @orb_land]

Congratulations @drakefjustin!

[orb land @orb_land]

We have an official TUNGSTEN CUBE bet entered!

Justin Drake (@drakefjustin) from the Ethereum Foundation has just bet Nic Carter (@nic_carter ) of Castle Island Ventures that an Ethereum spot ETF will be approved in May.

Nic has accepted the bet!

[Eric Wall @ercwl]

It’s funny that Orb Land (also called “the worst NFT project in history") is catching some eyeballs on this blessed day

The reason this is funny is because unfortunately, we’re *just* on the cusp of unwinding this passion project of mine (and my co-founder @lekevicius!)

Let me tell the story and provide some color

Orb Land started about a year ago as a platform where you can create an “Orb” that allows you to auction off a recurring slice of your time (and the right to it perpetually governed via Harberger taxes)

So far Orb Land has onboarded the following orbers:
1. me
2. @nic_carter
3. @zmanian
4. @tarunchitra
5. @drakefjustin

The project stems from a desire I had to create NFTs with actual utility. I wanted them to resemble usable items that you have in your magic item bag in World of Warcraft rather than just be jpegs you show off. The utility aspect was access to individuals with deep domain expertise. Kind of like a “Call a Friend” lifeline option in “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”

The questions people ask and the answers orbers give are immutably hashed and stored on the Ethereum blockchain

This is (mildly) interesting for a few reasons. Most recently because it came handy for Justin Drake to prove that he has been transparent about his EigenLayer advisory role prior to being called out on it, with cryptographically verifiable proof onchain.

The basic idea behind Harberger taxes means the Orb is always for sale to the highest bidder and should surface the most meaningful high-value questions, while also allowing orbers to showcase their domain expertise and the demand for it at a dedicated place

You can also see how you could start ranking different orbers based on their weekly rate, giving a highly responsive, fluctuating, competitive market signal for the value of their words (a "PvP factor" that's usually the driver behind many social platforms)

Over the year, we’ve kept making improvements to the platform, like inventing contract upgrade logic patterns that require the opt-in both from orbers and Orb holders, changes to the auction logic and the ability for people to purchase individual question slots rather than buying a whole Orb

However, with our latest onboards we’ve discovered that "soft social enforcement" for orbers to give answers on time was not working. We always knew this would be the case eventually, and have had different economic mechanics prepared for this

The one we felt most excited about was one that would force the orber to stake an NFT inside the orb that they would forfeit to their Orb holder if they miss a deadline. You could imagine having to stake a milady that you lose if you forget/neglect your Orb

But the issue with missed deadlines spoke to a deeper truth about Orbs. Were people really having fun with their orbs? Or did the orbs feel like annoying homework?

One of the aspects of the Orbs that creates an undesirable experience is that both the orber and the Orb holder is a bit stressed out. The Orb holder has to come up with great questions and make the most out of their Orb ownership, and the orber is compelled to answer with unforgiving deadlines. Were Orbs making people more happy or less happy?

I had an actual dream where I was speaking to a beaten up @nic_carter (who usually complains about the "homework" aspect of his Orb) where he said that he'd much rather have an Orb that allowed the highest bidder to fight him in the ring next year than having to answer questions each week

Unironically, I think this may be the key to "Making Orbs Fun Again". The Q&A format is a bit stale. We should allow for a lot more lightweight services to be managed through Orbs, like boxing rights, podcast guest rights, dinners (and one we talk a lot about internally, a "slap-Eric-in-the-face" orb for my haters), more freedom

As the project is dealing with these fundamental questions, we've also been dealing with basic infrastructure dilemmas. Today, all Orbs are deployed as L1 contracts. As the functionality gets more complex, it's no longer always feasible or wise to deploy contracts to L1, so we've been thinking about L2 Orbs

This has thrown me right into the fragmentation pit of Ethereum where I've been deciding between Arbitrum, Base, Blast, Starknet and other L2s to deploy on

The challenging aspect is that neither of these L2s have obvious methods for how to bridge NFTs from the L1 to the L2 (in order to leverage NFT slashing to hold orbers accountable). While it is possible to bridge an ERC721 via the OP Stack, there are no good interfaces for it, and even bridging one via Wormhole takes something like 30 mins. This part of the ecosystem is still underdeveloped

In the middle of dealing with these L2 choices and Orb design decisions I've also come to realize sad fact that I can't give Orbs the love and time they need in order to flourish. Things at @TaprootWizards continue to get more exciting, OP_CAT is dominating the Bitcoin dialogue and I'm for the first time in a long while extremely bullish on the Bitcoin ecosystem

Orb Land thus far has been entirely self-funded. We've not raised through any grants or taken any VC capital. As such, we have the ability to simply pause the project.

This brings me a great deal of pain since for the last year I've been frustrated with the overfocus on infrastructure in the Ethereum ecosystem, and @orb_land has stuck out as a non-ponzi, non-growth-hacky app-layer product with a clear and simple business model (we simply charge a % of Orb revenues, and we can enforce royalties because Orbs have no transfer function)

I wish I could do more for the project, especially now as its getting on more people's radars, but it looks unlikely from here. Thanks for reading if you read this far <3

[orb land @orb_land]

We have an official TUNGSTEN CUBE bet entered!

Justin Drake (@drakefjustin) from the Ethereum Foundation has just bet Nic Carter (@nic_carter ) of Castle Island Ventures that an Ethereum spot ETF will be approved in May.

Nic has accepted the bet!

[orb land @orb_land]

https://t.co/GyP6Bwm94P

[db @tier10k]

SEC ASKS EXCHANGES TO UPDATE 19B-4 FILINGS ON AN ACCELERATED BASIS FOR SPOT ETHER ETFS: COINDESK

Source: DB | Coins: ETH

[orb land @orb_land]

@JimmyRagosa is oke

cobie has been a big friend and supporter of orbs

[orb land @orb_land]

hey fuck you

[LI @0xljki]

@drakefjustin @marginxsafety Disclosing via orb ( a site no one checks or cares about) isn’t really a public disclosure. Better your person website or EF page but either way imo you aren’t doing this in bad faith but EF and other foundations just need better disclosures when it comes to these things

[orb land @orb_land]

For more context;

[Justin Drake @drakefjustin]

Extending the disclosure with more dates and context :)

* April 15: EigenFoundation advisorship is signed.
* April 29: EigenFoundation is announced.
* May 3: Advisorship is revealed publicly on Orb Land. In more detail, the orb owner publicly revealed the private response I submitted to orb invocation #4 on April 17. Back then the EigenFoundation had not been announced so I privately disclose the advisorship and ask for an extension.
* May 12: The orb owner asks again, in orb invocation #5, for my thoughts on EigenLayer.
* May 19: Just before the 7-day deadline of orb invocation #5 I respond with the extended disclosure and share it on Twitter.

Some people are wondering if Cobie compelled me to disclose the advisorship with his spicy tweet on May 18. A few points:

1) The advisorship was technically public information on May 3, two weeks prior. All Orb Land details are verifiable onchain.
2) I wrote on April 17, prior to the EigenFoundation even being announced, that I was going to disclose publicly. That always was my intent.
3) It is largely coincidental that the May 19 orb invocation #5 deadline happened soon after Cobie's tweet.

To make the situation more ironic, months earlier (on January 24) I personally told Cobie about my EigenLayer advisorship offer in a Telegram message. I presume that private disclosure to Cobie is what triggered his spicy tweet.

invocation #4: https://t.co/aZBaBTY1Cr
invocation #5: https://t.co/hkS6ZxsXPl
Cobie's spicy tweet: https://t.co/wYmyuXQVff

[orb land @orb_land]

Justin Drake disclosed his EigenLayer involvement publicly on his Orb a month before getting called out on it.

The statement was hashed and submitted into the Ethereum blockchain itself on April 17.

[orb land @orb_land]

Justin Drake just provided his thoughts and disclosures on EigenLayer in the form of an Orb response.

Did you know you can always ask Justin a question about anything? See the link at the bottom of his tweet.

[Justin Drake @drakefjustin]

I recently became an advisor to the EigenFoundation. I feel the community deserves transparency so here is an extended disclosure :)

1) The advisorship comes with a significant EIGEN token incentive which could easily be worth more than the combined value of all my other assets (mostly ETH). We're talking millions of dollars of tokens vesting over 3 years.
2) I pledge to reinject all advisorship proceeds towards worthy projects within the Ethereum ecosystem, either as investments or donations. I also stand ready to end the advisorship at any time, e.g. should EigenLayer go in a direction I deem to be against Ethereum's interests.
3) I am picky with advisorships (having likely turned down over 100 so far) and I didn't accept the EigenFoundation advisorship lightly. Sreeram first talked about an advisorship in March 2023 and the whole process took discussions over one year.
4) The advisorship happened on the condition that my mandate be limited to researching restaking risks and that I not be included on marketing material.
5) Given my focus on restaking risks you can expect my default public stance to continue to lean critical of EigenLayer. I will try to make my criticism constructive, advocating for mitigations to risks like the erosion of solo validators and the intersubjective overloading of Ethereum consensus.
6) By being an advisor I hope to have a front-row seat to restaking issues and steer EigenLayer from within. As a researcher I feel I did too little too late with regard to liquid staking. This is an opportunity to not repeat the mistake with restaking.
7) Competing restaking platforms provide healthy diversity and I will gladly share insights and bounce ideas with competitors like Karak and Symbiotic.
8) Some people may ask if EigenLayer is trying to systematically "bribe" or "corrupt" the EF. Nowadays the EF is a large organisation with 300+ people. To my knowledge 3 EFers have a formal relationship with EigenLayer entities: one as an early EigenLabs investor, and two as recent EigenFoundation advisors. EFers are some of the highest integrity people I know and I don't see the 1% of EFers formally involved with EigenLayer compromising their morals.
9) Having interacted a bunch with Sreeram I believe he is in our space for all the goods reasons. He has a razor sharp mind and a genuine desire to build something meaningful—what he calls the "Open Verifiable Digital Commons". Sreeram's outstanding character was key to accepting the advisorship.
10) I want to highlight that I'm advising in an individual capacity. This is more than just a legal detail: I live my work life first and foremost as an Ethereum researcher, not as an EF researcher. I try to stay a free and independent thinker and serve the interests of Ethereum even if it sometimes means breaking the mould of expectations that comes with being an EF researcher.
11) I do acknowledge that accepting the EigenFoundation advisorship inevitably comes with downside risk beyond my personal reputation. I hope the above shows that it is at least a considered move with calculated risks.

I shared the above disclosure with additional restaking thoughts at https://t.co/hkS6ZxsXPl

[orb land @orb_land]

@BitPaine @dylanleclair @coryswan https://t.co/lhWyuH781J

[orb land @orb_land]

https://t.co/lhWyuH781J

[Bit Paine ⚡️ @BitPaine]

What the fuck is Ethena?

I know nothing about it and to be honest I’m sick of having to do all this work to figure out how to every new defi thing is actually just a Ponzi.

Waiting on @dylanleclair or @coryswan to tell me how this new hot mess is going to blow up.

[orb land @orb_land]

@FacetSir @tradewithtr8 @ercwl corcel text chat uses cortext-ultra which simply forwards messages from the closed-source centralized OpenAI API.

[orb land @orb_land]

is there something you'd like to force @ercwl to answer questions about publicly?

is there something about bittensor that you feel he has a responsibility to cover deeper?

his orb is currently on auction (currently set to sell for 0.01 ETH in 5 hours)

[orb land @orb_land]

@tradewithtr8 @ercwl you prompt it and get an answer.

considering it only costs 0.01 ETH and bittensor cannot accomplish this at a $10 billion FDV, we’d say that’s a fair value

[orb land @orb_land]

@petkovskix @ercwl once they submit their question, eric is obliged to answer, regardless if the buyer has lost control of the orb since then.

running out of funds puts the orb back on auction, where the previous owner collects 70% of the proceeds

[orb land @orb_land]

@Perpiolo @ercwl eric’s orb has a 600% harberger tax

you can try to hoard it, but you’ll likely go broke trying. the orb always returns to its auction state eventually.

[orb land @orb_land]

@ercwl doesn't always answer X comments or DMs. but he *always* answers his orb.

the proof is on the blockchain: https://t.co/5k8XnGNdua