Anonymity and trustlessness are central to the crypto world. People don’t have to attach real-world identities to crypto wallets, and communities at least nominally try to avoid placing trust into institutions like governments or big tech companies. But with the crypto world increasingly trying to move beyond simple payments and NFT trades, they are...
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A man sits at his computer and types out the story he has fabricated for the Fame Lady Squad NFT project: “we wanted to create an image of a strong and independent woman of the NFT community.” The project draws in $1.5 million from buyers, who talk of their excitement when they found a project they felt was bringing diversity to an overwhelmingly male...
May 2022
The "Team" section of the Fame Lady Squad website, as it appeared before the project was revealed to be led by three men. A man sits at his computer and types out the story he has fabricated for the Fame Lady Squad NFT project: “we wanted to create an image of a strong and independent woman of the NFT community.” The project draws in $1.5 million...
May 2022
Some digital artists who create NFTs, particularly those who were already trying to earn a living in digital art before NFTs came along, have described their interest in its “post-bubble” potential as the future of digital art. They see the NFT explosion of 2021 into 2022 for what it is: speculative mania more driven by get-rich-quick mentality rather...
May 2022
Some digital artists who create NFTs, particularly those who were already trying to earn a living in digital art before NFTs came along, have described their interest in its “post-bubble” potential as the future of digital art. They see the NFT explosion of 2021 into 2022 for what it is: speculative mania more driven by get-rich-quick mentality rather...
May 2022
An artist creates a piece of digital artwork. To create their first ever NFT, they have to pick a blockchain. Let’s go with Ethereum—it’s the most popular. Now which platform? OpenSea, I guess. Also the most popular. They open the site and go to create an account. “You need an Ethereum wallet to use OpenSea.” Right. They don’t have a digital wallet,...
May 2022
Some of the more ideological people who are advocating for cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based technologies are asking a lot of the right questions. Despite crypto’s unquestionably right-libertarian roots, and the continuing prevalence of those politics in crypto today, we’re also seeing people asking questions like: How can we create a more equitable...
Apr 2022
On March 23, cryptocurrency priced at around $625 million was stolen from the Ronin network, which is the blockchain that powers the game Axie Infinity. Contents What is Axie Infinity? How does it work? Bridges The hack My thoughts Notes What is Axie Infinity? Axie illustration copyright Axie Infinity Limited Axie...
Mar 2022
On March 20, 2022, the New York Times published a 14,000-word puff piece on cryptocurrencies, both online and as an entire section of the Sunday print edition. Though its author, Kevin Roose, wrote that it aimed to be a “sober, dispassionate explanation of what crypto actually is”, it was a thinly-veiled advertisement for cryptocurrency that appeared...
Mar 2022
This is a transcript of a guest lecture I gave at Stanford University on March 7, 2022. This lecture was for two courses that run in parallel—POLISCI 243C: The Politics of Internet Abuse, and CS 152: Trust and Safety Engineering. There is also a Q&A portion at the end. The recording is available on YouTube. The Google Slides are also publicly...
Mar 2022
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