re:envisioning web3 | take 2 — punks, phishers, and whether a founder gets to take the ball home

Jed brought Patron up specifically so he wouldn't be alone: "why the fuck be alone?" Patron talked about the waves hitting him, how cruel the circumstances were, and how much the support from this and other communities has meant. Jed then called for a minute of silence — acknowledging, correctly, that this is a room with an eight-second attention span 17:20. Afterward Patron himself insisted on getting the vibes back up.

Lyss opened with a Quirkies community member who lost a five-year wallet build plus roughly 4K in crypto, and turned it into a checklist: never rush, run unfamiliar companies through an AI, revoke approvals, and if you're tired or tilted, just answer the DM tomorrow. Jed then described the con that nearly got him: a VC-backed film production, working websites, real-seeming CEOs and COOs, a casting-call pipeline, a commission for sourcing seven apes. His friend Browning broke the spell with one question — why borrow $250K of apes on a $100M budget instead of just buying them?

He'd already connected with the scammed holder through Poppy and planned to send tokens and Solana to help him rebuild, noting his grandmother had left him something in her will. His framing: scammers deliberately target the people building for their communities.

Jed killed the secondary-drop speculation and teased performative art on ApeChain instead, built on the free mint where he set the OpenSea cap at 10,000 "as a goof" — and people actually minted 10,000, in their main wallets, as individual NFTs, turning scrolling to the bottom of their portfolio into a morning-to-lunchtime activity. Some were furious, some thought it was hilarious. Both reactions seem correct.

Jed on meeting Wilcox, the number-two minter at 1,280 punks (who stopped because he felt bad), who still holds ~265 plus every Meebit and V2 he was airdropped. The best beat: a 17-punk dinner at De Stefano's, which was the night his Brooklyn-Italian criminal-defense-attorney father finally understood that NFTs were a culture and not just pictures 38:33.

Burningbush discovered Gm lives right around the corner from him in Kentucky and immediately started building a flight plan to New York (Cincinnati, $220 round trip, and a firm policy against budget carriers). Gm, originally from New York, talked about Army years in Germany, retiring south to be near family, pitching baseball cards against a wall in the early '60s, and a Mickey Mantle autograph lost to a burglary. Asked how long she's staying in the game: "I want to hit 110" 46:03.

Jed, inventorying his move, hit a wall trying to name the small plastic men he'd found. Lyss: "You mean action figures?" The collection itself turned out to be genuinely great — '64 Willie Mays cards in an old lunchbox, his first NYSE jacket, a vintage Yankees bomber Lyss wants restored — and Jed's admission that he torched a thousand DVDs on the assumption they were worthless aged poorly in real time 55:47.

First time on a stage, from Prescott, Arizona, came over after trouble at another project. Ghost found a Phoenix connection, Jed offered a free regen for ten space appearances over the next 30 days ("it don't gotta be consecutive"), and SLICK RIC gave the room's thesis: the goal is connection, turning these interactions into IRL, and "whether you got a hundred thousand followers or one follower, that don't even mean nothing" 1:12:17.

The long one. Moon argued that walking away from a project without handing anyone the keys leaves invested holders stranded; Burningbush held that an artist owns their art and nobody is obligated to pump your bags. Patron landed in the middle on accountability 1:25:23, Slick offered the nuclear option ("I expect all my shit to go to zero"), and Jed's own objection was narrower: the timing of a founder exit right after a $3.5M sale 1:25:33. Burningbush put a bow on it afterward — he was being, in his words, a jabroni, and the only part he meant was the part about Mason 1:45:45. Lyss, re-entering the chat: this is why the evening spaces don't get recorded 1:45:25.

His read: most of the anger in web3 is over-leverage wearing a costume. People invested hoping to flip, got embarrassed, and went looking for someone to blame. He also pitched OnCyber — free, immersive, viewable on a phone — and noted that for a space full of self-described NFT people, almost nobody actually curates and displays their collection. Jed, a five-gallery man back in the day, said he's rebuilding one 1:49:35.