Full steam ahead!
Last week really felt like we were hitting a stride in both our work, and our discussions as a company. Digging in and thinking through our hiring process, as well as some of the technical discussions, are showing some positive early indicators of our communication and decision-making process. It's encouraging that almost all of the hiring discussion happened asynchronously, with lots of thoughtful…no pun intended…discourse along the way.
We're three weeks away from NFT.NYC so it will be great to have a good sense by EOW on how we're feeling about it all. Exciting times ahead.
Last week at XMTP
- @shanemac posted our first pass at our team values
- It's ready for feedback and discussion (please do so!)
- A number of great candidates rolling through the pipeline
- Maybe looking at ‘2-3 offers extended this week?
- Also reiterating the $5k internal bonus for personal referrals
- Great partner discussions, here's a sampling:
Crypto industry news
- Not exactly crypto news, but Facebook's downtime feels important to call out
- Showed the world just how problematic it is for a single entity to wield so much control over the internet
- WhatsApp being down in countries where it's used for 90%+ of communication illustrates the positive impact a decentralized solution would have
- TikTok announced they're releasing NFTs (Link)
- Notably the experience will be powered by ImmutableX, whose NFT-focused zk rollup is powered by Starkware, one of XMTP's investors.
- Dapper Labs (founder is an investor of ours) acquired Brud (founder is also an investor of ours lol) to lead efforts around DAOs with their Flow blockchain (Link)
- It's interesting being close to both of these parties, and we've struck up a chat with them to discuss what communication might mean in this context in the future
- Biden administration is reportedly considering an executive action on some part of the crypto industry (Link)
- Note: Any politically related info we share here will be purely crypto-industry focused
What we are reading / listening to
- Bankless' podcast on "modular blockchains" (Link)
- Fascinating listen about how Ethereum's "modular" scaling approach might be the winning one
- Also another one from Bankless, an interview with OpenSea co-founder (Link)
A week in the life with NAME
- @darick @petermdenton @snormore would any of you like to take it this week? First to edit wins.