A few weeks ago, we made the challenging decision to pivot our energy away from Personae, the company I've been working on for the past couple of years. We pioneered new ground, we failed to build retentive products, and ultimately we decided to return investor money and re-enter the startup idea maze from scratch. Looking back, it's been a classic startup journey of ups and downs. I'd like to take some time here to ramble out some closing thoughts. This may be the first in a multi-part series but it may also not. Candidly, I'm mostly doing this for myself. Being publicly retrospective+vulnerable is therapeutic. But I hope it also serves other founders struggling to bring cutting edge tech to market. It's a unique and lonely journey and the rough edges one picks up by grinding through it might have generalizable learnings. Fwiw I'm not leaving crypto or startups and I only feel better armed and more excited going in for round 2! what was Personae? Personae was founded to innovate on what it means to be pseudonymous online. We saw two trends: 'client-side' zero-knowledge proving becoming cheaper and faster verifiable reputation (i.e. that could fit in a zkSNARK) becoming more relevant online via crypto (and key-based cryptography) adoption We believed that the advancement of both of these trends would mean that soon 'porting' reputation seamlessly between public accounts would be possible and relevant to internet activity very soon. Of course, as is the case with most startup failures, our timing wasn't quite right. Verifiable reputation just didn’t become important as fast as we thought. While we still had conviction, we were taking a two pronged approach: improve the ‘client-side’ zk-proving stack build an explosive, retentive product using 1 In short, we succeeded massively at 1 and failed massively at 2. In startup terms, product/technology risk was never an issue; we had the capabilities to build anything. Distribution/market risk was huge though and we never made a product that stuck. Rather than linking to all of our past work, I'll just link our github (LINK) for now and share a few bullet points on what I'm most proud of: pioneering the idea of 'zk-identity' creating and testing a reputation-bearing pseudonym scheme pushing on the frontier of field-agnostic zk-proving implementing and productizing some of the first zk-based consumer apps on timing As it turns out, the future is really really hard to predict. A huge learning for me is that it's best to build momentum on things that are certain even if you're simultaneously making long-term bets that are speculative. It's hard to keep a team motivated and excited when there isn't real growth and user retention but it's also hard to build something visionary and creative without imagining a future that's different from what exists today. This inherent tension is something that I'm taking very seriously into the next venture. My ideal skeleton of a company needs to hit both criteria out of the park: short-term growth+retention+momentum long-term vision+creativity Lots of the failed or slowly dying crypto companies I see around me satisfy only one of the two. Those satisfying only 1 are doomed to rug their community as soon as the founders have made enough money. Those satisfying only 2 are doomed to build open-source 'art' forever. art vs. technology Have you ever stopped to question why it is that we have so much open-source 'technology' that doesn't have any path to users in crypto? It's an odd thing. Technology, by definition, should be useful (i.e. with usage). When did we decide that something didn't have to be useful to be 'tech'? I think it's worth taking a harder stance on calling all of this what it is: 'art'. This applies to crypto infra just as much as crypto application. There's nothing wrong with making art! I consume a lot of art. This blog post is art. But it's not technology to me unless it’s useful. There are many groups of people building this sort of art with technology market valuations driving expectations. I think this is a huge miscalibration that's yet to cause a lot of heartbreak/disillusionment. In all honesty, Personae was in this bucket and our decision to pivot/change direction came from this realization. We made a lot of great art, but we hadn't signed up to be artists. If you're a fellow founder who's finding him/herself building art, it may be worthwhile to do some soul-searching/introspection on that fact. Is this where you wanted to be? Did you want to build a technology endeavor or an art studio? conviction vs. flexibility Being 'separate' from Personae for a few weeks has given me time/space to re-examine my priors about the industry and the future. Turns out, lots of beliefs I held as 'convictions' necessary to keep the vision strong were worth amending. Enumerating these could be a blog post of its own so I’ll save them for the time being, but I’d like to talk a bit about the conviction-flexibility tradeoff here. I suspect that minding the conviction-flexibility tradeoff is one of the most challenging psychological tasks for founders. It's absolutely necessary to be strong willed and put forth grand vision to create movement, but holding onto a belief when reality has shifted so as to nullify it is startup suicide. Self-serving as it is to say, I think that proficiency in minding this tradeoff can't be taught. There just isn't a pithy synthesis that can be read, understood, and immediately implemented successfully. This seems to be one of those things that you only learn the heuristics for by going through it and having rough times. onwards We're open sourcing all of our tech over the next couple months on github. Art as it may be, I hope the ideas become ones that others build on or at least that stoke other founders' imaginations. I think 'portable reputation' is an incredibly powerful idea and although I don't think it's worth building a company around again, I think it's worth considering how to utilize it as a bootstrapping mechanism for new products. I know I'll be looking for ways to bring these ideas into new things I build. Onwards.

GnosisDAO leveraged Centrifuge Prime to create a legal structure to invest in Tokenized Treasury bills through the Anemoy Liquid Treasury Fund (LTF). GnosisDAO’s decision to invest in RWAs is simple: they gain access to diversified yield sources, leverage a legal infrastructure created by Centrifuge to stay compliant, expand asset classes, and benefit from ongoing management and support from Centrifuge via Centrifuge Prime. Why Centrifuge? More and more onchain investors are turning to RWAs to capture high yields that are uncorrelated to crypto volatility. According to RWA.xyz, the tokenized RWA market currently sits at $11.5B and BCG projects it to grow to $16 trillion by 2030. Centrifuge was an early pioneer and visionary for real-world assets and has since developed standards and communities that have shaped the industry as we know it. Centrifuge has financed $640M in assets to date, and currently has a TVL of over $300M. Centrifuge is a creator of the ERC-7540 standard, Tokenized Asset Coalition and RWA Summit. Centrifuge offers the infrastructure and ecosystem to tokenize, manage, and invest in a diversified portfolio of real-world assets, with fully collateralized asset pools, investor legal recourse, and an asset-class agnostic protocol encompassing structured credit, real estate, US treasuries, carbon credits, consumer finance, and more. Beyond its onchain financial infrastructure, Centrifuge’s ecosystem includes a DAO supported by a diverse community of finance professionals and developers. Why Centrifuge Prime? Centrifuge Prime offers an all-in-one package of the functions and services needed to manage a diversified portfolio of real-world assets – one that is resilient, compliant, and easily scales to meet the needs of decentralized organizations. Purpose-built for DeFi native organizations, Centrifuge Prime provides: Resilient and compliant legal infrastructure Robust and capable tokenization platform Expertise in working with DAOs Institutional-grade assets and managers The GnosisDAO investment—part of a larger $10 million initial pledge—represents a key step forward in growing the GnosisDAO treasury through RWA yields. The first investment was into Anemoy LTF, a regulated, fully onchain, and actively managed fund for direct access to U.S. Treasury yield. This allocation is part of an initiative to help diversify GnosisDAO’s treasury management by incorporating RWAs. GnosisDAO uses a DAO-controlled Safe managed by Karpatkey, ensuring full transparency and security. DAO members get full transparent reporting into this portfolio through Centrifuge Prime, with the ability to view and monitor the Safe directly. These investments are facilitated by Centrifuge and backed by its robust legal structure, ensuring safe investment of RWAs that can integrate seamlessly into GnosisDAO’s existing treasury processes while supporting future developments within the DAO. Summary + Look Ahead In summary, there are many benefits from this collaboration, including: Diversified Yield Sources: The allocation provides GnosisDAO with additional and diversified sources of yield. Legal Infrastructure: Centrifuge worked closely with the GnosisDAO to create a legal framework that ensures security and compliance with RWA investments. Ongoing Management + Support: Because Centrifuge Prime provides dedicated access to the Centrifuge ecosystem and community, the team will work to provide ongoing support for the RWA portfolio allocated through Prime. Transparent Reporting: DAO members have full visibility into the portfolio through Centrifuge Prime and can directly monitor the Safe managed by Karpatkey. View the Gnosis investment dashboard on Centrifuge here. "We're proud to support GnosisDAO as they expand their portfolio to include RWAs," said Bhaji Illuminati, CMO, Centrifuge. "We see this initial investment as a small step in a long partnership. We're looking forward to deepening our relationship with Gnosis across their verticals, as we strive to grow these investments, scale RWA access for their entire ecosystem, and deliver greater investment opportunities for their community.”

We’ve redesigned model homepages including usage metrics, transparent source material used for training, and actionable creation. Here’s more on what’s improved for artist-model homepages: Easily see what each model is trained on At TITLES, our protocol creates an onchain mapping and relationship between models, training datasets, and their outputs. Our new model homepages reflect this; making it easy to see what onchain artworks each model is trained on. Model metrics including total creations and users You can now see how popular a model is on TITLES. We display how many times a model has been sampled in a published work and the total number of unique people who’ve used it. Create with any model right from the page We’ve made it easier than ever to create with any model right from its homepage by including a ‘create with model’ button. We’ve included a few homepages to check out below, or you can explore them via our site or mobile app. If you have any feedback, please share with us on Twitter or Farcaster. 'ɱ૯૭ค→қ૯ω੮' model by Guruguruhyena 'Surreal Modules' by Surreal 'P(AI)NTED' by JuuJuuMama 'Probably Abstract Lines and Unknown Words' by Rangga Purnama Aji Much love, \- TITLES

For 11 days, Lineans competed in the Linea Guild Games, entering the world of Unfettered Awakening, killing zombies, and doing their best to stay alive. On this journey, Lineans weren’t alone, accompanied by avatar companions representing the first four guilds: Efrogs, Foxy, FrogwifCat, and Linus. You may have even caught a live stream of our Linea team member and resident LGG legend, Christopher, taking on the Chapter IX Finale. The whole experience was made possible by Linea, Unfettered Ecosystem, Hyperplay, and Game7. Guilds and individuals competed for a total of $100,000 in ETH (to be distributed later this week) from Linea, $SOULS tokens from Unfettered Ecosystem, and various meme tokens supplied by each of the four guilds. By now, you’ve got a bag full of $FOXY, $CROAK, $LINUS, $WEF and $SOULS and if you're a degen you're likely figuring out how to get the best yield. We've got you covered! Here's some of Linea’s top defi dapps where you can exercise those tokens. Lynex, Powered by Clip Finance Users can earn attractive yields on $SOULS by providing liquidity through the SOULS/WETH gauge on Lynex. This gauge is expertly managed by Clip Finance, which simplifies the complexities of concentrated liquidity, allowing LPs to stake and earn passively with ease. Additionally, Lynex supports $LINUS, $FOXY, and $CROAK. Each token has its own dedicated gauge, allowing users to provide liquidity and earn Lynex rewards while benefiting from veLYNX voter engagement. This creates a sustainable and dynamic flywheel between users, protocols, and liquidity providers, fostering long-term growth and collaboration. Maestro The original TG trading bot allows users to swap memes without leaving the comfort of Telegram. Its automatic buy and sell options make trading easier by letting your strategy do the work for you, maximizing your returns while effectively managing risks and unexpected costs. For future meme investments, be sure to take advantage of its snipe capability, which gives degens the ability to buy memes faster than on other markets. Zerolend This lending and borrowing protocol has created unique meme markets exclusively on Linea, allowing users to deposit or borrow against their memes. They currently support $FOXY & $CROAK. \- Stay tuned as Linea’s entertainment multiverse continues to grow and connect with your fellow guild members on X and Discord.