Martin

Marketing | prev @nansen_ai @Ronin_Network

[Martin @themlpx]

How to contribute to crypto/web3 without writing a single line of code, along with examples:

[Jarrod Watts @jarrodwatts]

Brain dump of how I'm feeling about crypto:

1/ The value proposition of blockchains as technology feels more clear and well-adopted in the mainstream than ever.

2/ What crypto is actually useful for (payments, financial markets, RWAs) is not as exciting as what most people joined the space for.

3/ We should be proud that we're being recognized and used as superior financial rails - Ethereum, Monad, Polygon, Solana, Base, etc. all recognize this and are working to bring more assets onchain.

4/ There's still a big opportunity for crypto builders to tap into the audience of crypto-natives / crypto twitter and create fun speculative experiences for them.

5/ The most successful apps in this category have all been some variety of intellectual-gambling / money experiments that allow people to strategize in environments with asymmetric upside.

6/ The difficulty with these apps is that it's very difficult to hold people's interest over long periods of time; hence the wave of shutdowns recently.

7/ People naturally lose interest over time and want to go gamble on the new flashy thing that they feel provides more asymmetric upside. Yet, for some reason, when this inevitably happens, it's called a "slow rug" by the last remaining speculators.

8/ There's a very toxic culture on CT when this happens, which sadly prevents smart people and a lot of interesting experiments ever being launched.

9/ This is reflected in the crypto developer activity charts, which are bleeding badly - despite a massive increase in overall developer activity due to AI.

10) If you are here to work on building something crypto rails are actually useful for, (likely: speculation & financial use cases) it might feel depressing rn, but I expect this to turn around, and is likely worth sticking around for.

[Martin @themlpx]

@EricBalchunas Their annual big ideas reports have been pretty spot on since they started publishing them. They essentially got every big theme right but horrible execution.

[Martin @themlpx]

@0xbenito_ @Lukexiao0 @0x1CMC @lclwalter @Jong_bnb @draffilog @nina_rong Congrats Ben!!!

[Martin @themlpx]

Funny how the safe boring path for Singaporeans (engineering undergrad > large manufacturing firm) ends up being one of the best plays anyone from the class of 2020-22 could have made

Hearing stories of folks who just never sold their RSUs over the last 6 years having mid to high 6 figs worth

[Martin @themlpx]

@tomaldertweets Love this! Thanks for sharing it

[Martin @themlpx]

If you’re a struggling D2C company, pivot to AI

[Martin @themlpx]

@yo_itsmatt @SolanaFndn congrats!!!

[Martin @themlpx]

Yes it’s been awhile! Congrats btw on launching and building your own thing. Mad respect for taking the step.

Agree that eventually the chain shouldn’t matter past a certain level of performance and infra maturity. Which was why I initially thought why not just build on Solana despite the competition.

But yea your point on becoming category defining on a fresh eco makes sense in the early days. Helps with the cold start problem. Appreciate you explaining!

[Martin @themlpx]

Proprietary data is becoming increasingly valuable

The value of top tier insight aggregators aka podcasts is 10x what it was pre-AI

[Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan]

Today I'm releasing my entire newsletter archive (350+ posts) and all podcast transcripts (300+ episodes) as AI-friendly Markdown files. Plus an MCP server and GitHub repo.

A few months ago I shared my podcast transcripts on a whim, and y'all built the most amazing things—an RPG game, a parenting wisdom site, infographics, a Twitter bot, and 50+ other projects.

Let's see what happens when I give you even more data.

Grab the data here: https://t.co/xEPCcPiZHO.

Paid subscribers get all of the data (some 350 posts and 300 transcripts). Free subscribers get a subset.

I don’t think anyone’s ever done anything like this before, and I’m excited to give you this excuse to play with that AI tool you've been meaning to try.

Here’s my challenge to you: build something, and let me know about it. I’ll pick my favorite and give you a free 1-year subscription to the newsletter. Just post a link to your project in the comments here: https://t.co/yJDmuCQfOx.

If you’ve already built something, slurp in this new data and submit it, too. I’ll pick a winner on April 15th.

Check out today's newsletter post for inspiration on what you could to build: https://t.co/yJDmuCQfOx

LFG.

[Alex Immerman @aleximm]

Revenue matters more than GMV

[Martin @themlpx]

@sandraleow @KaitoAI congrats Sandra!! Your AI/content creator arc is perhaps your best one yet. You'll only do more amazing things down the line I'm sure!

[Martin @themlpx]

@litocoen Aren’t most of their users crypto folks tho, or at least most of their volumes are coming from crypto people.

They do a ton of ads but I’m not too sure how successful they’ve been at actually attracting sizable volume from non-crypto folks.

[Martin @themlpx]

@_brizal @JupGlobal @JupiterExchange This is cool! Most of SEA and China runs on QR payments

[Martin @themlpx]

@santiagoroel Would be cool to see if this is the moment that takes crypto native trading platforms further up the adoption curve

[Martin @themlpx]

Wouldn’t be surprised to see Hyperliquid gaining more traction amongst non-crypto folks after this

[Markets @Markets_xyz]

24/7/365 trading of commodities $USOIL, $USENERGY, $GOLD & $SILVER

Enabled by @markets_xyz on Hyperliquid

[Martin @themlpx]

Generally don’t think that a lot of these layoffs are due to AI productivity gains (yet).

The main driver is that there’s been a change in the expectation of output per employee.

Most people I know in large tech firms work ~20 hours a week. Senior leaders do headcount planning based on the output they’ve historically gotten per employee.

They’ve always been able to just cut 50% of the employees, get them to work 40 hours and have nothing break. But there’s never been a strong reason for them to do so. In fact as a manager, you’re incentivised to do the opposite - increase the number of people you manage.

But with AI bringing productivity into the spotlight, senior leaders are forced to question their assumptions. Can they do more with less?

They always could but now, there’s a credible and strong tailwind pushing them to do it.

[jack @jack]

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company.

####

today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone.

first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay.

we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.

i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures.

a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers.

we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold.

to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward.

to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow.

jack

[Martin @themlpx]

The underrated thing about AI/vibe coding is that it allows literally everyone to experience that rush and joy of building something on their own.

Be it automating workflows, making videos, building simple apps, websites, etc.

[Martin @themlpx]

@chamath the joy of people creating something on their own and finding ai-enabled workflows is an underrated reason why slow moving SaaS companies are being threatened