I just had the pleasure of spending a few days in the mountains of Vermont with a very diverse set of builders and creators from the Base ecosystem. I’ll admit that I was hesitant to go, at first. Crypto gatherings have been very hit and miss, for me, and the thought of being isolated somewhere distant, away from my kids and the robots in the lab, was not appealing - but I’m very glad I came.

What’s happening in the Base ecosystem is pretty extraordinary. There’s a real sense of mission alignment, enthusiasm and drive. It was perhaps not the most locked-in environment I’ve been in the last few months, but it was high on vibes, new connections and serendipity.

Central to Base’s current efforts is a revitalizing and re-imagining of social media. The new Base app is ambitiously trying to create a new space and online culture, and while there are many growing pains I was incredibly impressed with their “Roast and Roadmap” session, where Chintan Turakhia (Senior Director of Engineering at Base) encouraged everyone to give their harshest feedback.

It’s not easy to do a startup from inside a big corporation like Coinbase, but the new Base app is a very sincere attempt to do something really audacious. I appreciated how Chintan opened up and put much needed pressure on a team that might otherwise get lost in the comfort of not starving. It was clear they were there to make the very best app possible.

During the open AMA with Base founder Jesse, a Stanford student asked “What decisions did you make early in your career that prepared you for today?” Jesse paused and thought about the question seriously before answering that his early days as a competitive soccer player had taught him to take losses - and that’s important, because startups can often feel like every day is another loss.

Chintan and Jesse, and the attitude of the whole Base team, are why I’m bullish on the Base ecosystem - not the potential network token. A team of motivated builders with a clear vision for the future and the patience and strength to take losses is more important than any tokenomics.

The alpha from Base is that the community is pumped, that the builders and creators are thinking deeply and weirdly enough about the future that the movement can actually change the world.

I’m excited about the x402 standard, in particular, and how Auki’s real world web can be made stronger and more open by integrating with this technology and movement.

It’s time to build.

About Auki

Auki is making the physical world accessible to AI by building the real world web: away for robots and digital devices like smart glasses and phones to browse, navigate, and search physical locations.

70% of the world economy is still tied to physical locations and labor, so making the physical world accessible to AI represents a 3X increase in the TAM of AI in general. Auki's goal is to become the decentralized nervous system of AI in the physical world, providing collaborative spatial reasoning for the next 100bn devices on Earth and beyond.

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