Hedgey RPGF grants final project updates

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Tell us about yourself, what you are building, and why you chose to work on it. (feel free to include a loom video)

I want to help accelerate the expansion of consciousness.

Culture Blocks is building tools to co-create memes that can be linked together and grow into complex cultures and social graphs.

The first piece of the project - built for this grant - is a method for co-creating a Block/meme which is called a Swirl. To expand:

  • Gather, Focus, and Merge Perspectives
    • A Swirl can be created by anyone as a Farcaster Frame.
      • It can optionally include a theme comment which sets the context, and a modifier comment which directs AI’s output.
    • Once created, the Frame collects comments from six users on a first come first serve basis.
      • All existing comments are displayed before a user can add a new one.
      • This keeps comments related without censoring or restricting input - if I say “taco” the first thing you think of is probably not “polar bear”.
    • The complete collection of responses is fed to AI to generate the Block content.
      • Currently it only generates text, image generation should be up within a month.
  • Balancing and Feedback
    • Everyone has the same character limit and can reply only once.
    • Ratings of 1-4 can be applied to Blocks by anyone.
    • Average ratings for participants and everyone else are displayed.
    • Blocks should be mintable within a month.
      • Together this data allows crowds to iterate memes towards interesting/useful and away from boring/useless.
      • Minting blocks also creates a graph that opens up more complex analysis and opportunities for autonomous connection and meme/culture formation.

How has the last month been? What did you learn? How has your idea evolved?

  • The last month has been intense. I hadn’t touched typescript or react until this month and have learned a ton. I really like the Frame format for a Swirl, I’ve managed to cut it down to two buttons plus text inputs and feel like it matches my vision well.
  • I was originally inspired by the field of memetics - digital memes can address some major weak points with the theory - but have steered away from the term thus far. Decided it’s a good time to try and play with it. The Swirl concept was already quite developed otherwise, and this was mostly learning Farcaster and expanding my coding skills.

What does the product/idea look like today? Share videos, images, demos, and anything else that helps people see what you are working on.

Tell us about any traction / adoption you’ve had over the last month.

  • I haven’t had any yet, the Frame was 95% built about 10 days ago but I hit a bug that made it unusable and had to trace out a lot of code to figure out why it was happening. Finally got it sorted today.

Is your product Optimism/Superchain native and will it continue to be?

  • Yes

How will your product/idea move the Optimism ecosystem forward?

  • Culture Blocks aims to provide an engaging way for people to share what matters to them, be heard, connect with others, and evolve ideas together. It is designed to work at the base level of society - culture, communication, connection - so hopefully it can move many things forward, including Optimism.

What’s the big vision of your product/idea beyond what it is today?"
I want to build a Macro UI structure as a Farcaster App. These are the core design features I’m considering:

  • Accounts
    • Proof of Individuality to create a bot free user base.
    • ZKproofs may be implemented for anonymity
  • Soulbound voice tokens
    • Designed to counter centralized influencers and app addiction
    • Required for all in app actions
    • Daily base rate dripped to all users
    • App controlled market for dynamism
      • Users can buy more voice at slowly, but exponentially increasing, cost.
      • Profits support a base sell rate and are distributed evenly to all sellers as available.
  • Find a Swirl
    • Swiping (Tinder style) will make engagement random-ish and easy
    • Bird’s eye graph view will offer greater depth and control
  • Cultures
    • An unlinked Genesis Block is the start of a Culture
    • New Blocks grow the Culture as a directed acyclic graph
    • Swirls can only be started at existing Blocks which contextually links them
  • Mintable Block NFT’s
    • Access - Owning more Block NFTs in a specific Culture will unlock discounts, abilities, connections
    • Autonomous growth - Mint data will be used to create new Cultures and connections autonomously where significant overlaps exist (if 10 people own the same six Blocks from different Cultures, make a new Culture).
  • Survival of the Attended
    • Daily token allotment is use it or lose it
    • Maintenance fees for Blocks and connections will naturally trim low value content

If you win, how will you use the funding?

  • Twelve months cost of living to get the app live
  • Handful of business expenses (AI, VPS mainly) which will probably grow.
  • Crypto event if it would catalyze the project.

If you win, what are you focused on over the next three months? What do you want to accomplish?

  • Ugly MVP with the components listed above. Intention is to cover ground fast, not look good or work well.

Share links to any updates, forum posts, tweets, etc. that document your active work over the last month.

Share any links to your website, socials, etc.

Anything else we should know? Share it here.

  • Tacos are tasty.
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