Applied Cybernetics @branchpointxyz
NYC
Joined December 2019
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Sam H retweeted
all of human history can be thought of as a progressive project to better structure, price, and isolate atomic units of risk
Sam H retweeted
the ultimate hypothetical form of branchmap at the end of time is all events and all assets; any asset potentially able to be conditioned by any event, every outcome potentially its own self-consistent financial universe in which you can assume that an outcome has occurred. which events, assets, and universes exist and potentially can become liquid will hopefully long term be determined by a dynamic market process that learns from market participants which event outcomes cleave which assets. markets for conditioned assets dont open without sufficient interest, perhaps determined by something like attention markets or launchpad dynamics.
this endless splintering will be too much for most traders to manage more than a handful of positions. but agents will be able to take your thesis about the future and form an entire portfolio designed to optimize for that future or set of futures. it could be a combination of hundreds of assets, conditional assets, perps, conditional lending/borrowing positions, and so on.
the design space for new types of instruments in multiverse finance is extremely vast, and we are building the tools to allow others to experiment, while also building our own novel instruments on that scaffolding.
Development of Underlying Infrastructure is Underway
Branchpoint is building Branchmap, a shared namespace that gives events, predicates, and outcomes stable onchain identities. One registered event, like a Fed decision, can be referenced at once by a prediction market, a DEX listing BTC conditioned on the outcome, and a lending protocol accepting that conditioned BTC as collateral, with no one redefining the event or its resolution.
Sam H retweeted
back in the day i covered my home gym walls with blackboard paint and tried to do quantum topology while lifting. the idea was badass but it was not a fruitful multitasking setup
Sam H retweeted
i got a bunch of new followers yesterday. here's a few tidbits about me:
- finished math phd in 2019 on knot theory/quantum topology/quantum computing at georgia tech
- cofounded an artist co-op last year that acts as a 3rd space for local creatives
- main hobbies are art, lifting, running, yoga, hiking, math
- once competed as a strongman in 2019
- cohost, producer, and writer of live late night talk show for the last 7 years toolate.tv/ we've never really had an online presence until very recently, just do it for the love of the game
- worked on urbit for 4 years and nockchain for 3 years.
- this year i cofounded with @HumanizerSequel a new project called branchpoint.xyz bringing multiverse finance to hyperliquid and beyond. more info will be forthcoming in the near future.
- finance is a recent interest for me. it has rekindled my love of math that grad school did a great job of smothering.
later today i'll write about my journey to recover my health last year, where in 6 months i went from being unable to sit or stand for two days to getting ripped, cutting down to 10% body fat, and running my first half marathon.
on the left is me, on the right is @HumanizerSequel
Sam H retweeted
Warning: @Hyperware_ai shill post follows
I stumbled across @urbit some five years ago. I was interested in decentralized systems, having studied Bitcoin and BitTorrent, and dived into Urbit after seeing a @p in a twitter bio
The esoteric docs were a challenge: I worked through the hoon docs of the day, and purchased some vanity planets, selecting ~hosted-fornet for my @p
My timing couldn’t have been better. Work was just being completed on Gall apps that made userspace “real” for the first time. I participated in grants, acquiring some stars, and made some connections in the community, eventually joining Uqbar full time to build a blockchain on Urbit
Those familiar with the history will know that Uqbar eventually pivoted away from Urbit, subsequently rebranding to Kinode and then again to Hyperware, as we are known today. We pivoted away from Urbit because we realized that Urbit core was a rats nest. It was not the solid foundation of the future of computing; it was not diamond perfect; it was not even directionally correct. It was a ball of mud. We pivoted because we found, after a few weeks of research, that we could build a better foundation using @rustlang and Wasm component with a @bytecodeallies runtime
We decided we did not believe that it was important to rebuild the stack from the ground up. The stack is pretty good! What we did and do believe is that personal servers unlock important capabilities for a decentralized network. So we built it in Rust; we built dev tooling to make it easy to use onchain data; we built Hypermap, which is a novel set of smart contracts for deploying protocols that bridge on and offchain. Hyperware is now the premiere platform for developing and deploying Hyperstructures. We have already deployed three: the HNS (our PKI); the App Store, a genuinely decentralized place to publish Wasm userspace apps; Hypergrid, an all-in-one MCP server
If you are feeling disillusioned with Urbit as a result of recent drama but still believe in the decentralized power of personal servers, come check out Hyperware. You won’t find the esoteric. You won’t find a stack rebuilt from scratch. You will find a functional personal server with real performance; real security; real commitment to maintaining backwards compatibility; a real token launching in Q3/Q4 that provides real utility: come check out Hyperware
Sam H retweeted
Very interesting dynamics regarding the Berachain Launch and Airdrop.
At a high level -> A huge airdrop going out, alongside a big initial spike in activity, see -> dune.com/sealaunch/berachain
Berachain is *the most hyped* project by 'Mindshare', yet Price is down only.
Why?
It could just be that market speculators believe it to be overhyped, or, it could also be that, when you have an airdrop of such a calibre, with sophisticated actors, that can't touch it for N amount of days, they may do sophisticated actor type things.
Say you're in this position (you have big airdrop bags), you may consider hedging, aka, 'shorting'. Especially if the project is launching straight onto CEXs with Perps. This is what Berachain has done, launching everywhere at one time. (usually exactly what you need to do).
That leads to lots of 'Sell pressure' on the main token, with market participants wanting to guarantee their airdrop at a price they may determine. Eg... 'I price Bera at $7.5'. So, you have an airdrop you know you're going to get, you estimate the price you think it will sit at, you short the same amount of tokens you know you're going to be airdropped.
What happens when the airdrop does drop? Well, those hedging would close their hedges and make a decision on what to do with the token. Only, one can safely say that 100% of tokens being airdropped, won't be held. In fact, a large portion of these tokens will be sold. Still, that short pressure on perps will also be released, meaning the token *could* have a run up, before a sell off.
The issue is, the first week of price discovery is crucial for setting the path of the token, which of course has a direct affect on the project itself.
Further, all of the pre-pre-deposits from their Boyco campaign, all of that mercenary capital are going to want to start to de-risk and take money off the table from all of the incentives that are being given out.
Also important: Bera has noteably timed all of their 'main' marketing collateral; their whitepaper, CEX listings, Mainnet and Airdrop, all at the same time.
ALL AT THE SAME TIME!
For a project that has been building momentum for a couple of years, it's really quite weird for them to try to time it all in one big bang around the main launch. This is what I constantly talk about as the 'flash in the pan' launches, which look great on Kaito, which a lot of the marketers on X think is the holy-grail North Star, yet lead to -ev outcomes.
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Is this a price commentary on what I think will happen to their token? No. It's not.
What I'm commentating on is their TGE structure and how they've tried to tie it all together. Yes, they've got the bera baddies, the funny bears that smoke weed. They've got the 'community', they say things like 'Thoon' and 'Q5' and it's all very charming and cute.
However, they're on Mainnet now.
So all of the kitch actions, cute community activations, humorous projects, will now have to translate into real ongoing value. No longer can the project rely on being cool and attention-maxxing.
They actually have utility, they're no longer a meme.
To put things into perspective, they have roughly the same amount of TVL as Venus, and far less than AAVE: They've already started with the most lucrative part of the incentive distro, so now have an uphill battle (keep in mind they're an L1, not a deFI protocol) in order to keep the TVL flowing in, the sell pressure to stay down, builders to stay active, and users to be using.
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followed their anayltics on dune from launch till now. The TLDR is, a huge amount of people jumped in at the start, then it quickly tailed off. Now the marginal hour on hour transaction rate is around 4% of what it was on launch. With address creation also slowing down.
Builders have already been building for a long time, but they're going to have to actually win. N', as I tell our clients, just like in the real world whereby startups have a 96%+ fail rate, it's even higher in crypto.
The mental model is to think of it such that: You have allllll this momentum around one single event, only, you're simply not ready for that event and the expectations you've laid on will ultimately fail, and there's no amount of marketing you can do to cover it up.
Yet, even after all of that reasoning you've just read above, none of it actually matters. As long as they don't mega fuck up, they've done enough to launch at a 10fig FDV, on every major exchange. Meaning, they will always be in the conversation, even if they turn into another ADA, XRP. On a contemporary level, they're obviously a lot more like Movement Labs, whom also launched at a 10fig, with way less marketing and momentum, and they're doing completely fine.
The founders will net *for sure* 8 figs, lots of insiders will get rich, and it might just be enough for them to constantly reinvest in order for them to keep the convo and momentum going.
My prediction: People stop talking about them pretty soon, some building happens, then it's basically a 50/50 on whether they compete with SOL and BASE for the main chain, for degens go to. If degens do go there, then it's game on. Though they've built their entire L1 around liquidity provision, not trading. It's hard to imagine a real competitor to pumpfun launching on bera, at this time.
After Abstract mega-failed, also with the highly-likely upcoming fail of Monad, and the questionable release of megaETH, they may all just flop at the same time. It's really hard to say. Still, and this is important in crypto, they're going to have massive war chests to sustain themselves for at least the next 5-10 years, bar any black swan event.
It's a really intersting time in our industry, as all of these competing projects launch at roughly the same time. I hope for the sake of all of us, that they end up doing well.
- S
Sam H retweeted
The thinking here, valid if you see a country as a spreadsheet and an economy as an Excel calculation, produces the effects described in QT.
When a nation is seen only through the lens of an expected-value calculation, and a society as a series of GDP inputs: clustering occurs, power laws amplify, variance declines...
You curiously find yourself with no midrange jumpers, and no middle class.
Your hedonism north star has a eudaimonia anchor that won't show up in the econometrics that deceive you more is always more.
Why such blue-collar blues, flyover friends? Don't you guys like your iPhones? Trinket maximalism. Balance of Payments philosophy. The Chinese, such suckers they are.
Midrange Jumpers for the Middle Class
This chart made me sad. It’s the inexorable result of moneyball. When every decision is maximally maximized, when every choice is an expected-value calculation.
It’s also the inevitable result of globalism.
Moneyball kills your midrange jumpers, globalism kills your middle class. Both in a poetically similar way.
Excessive optimization in all things eventually turns the human spirit, sports, and supply chains, gray. Unrelenting pursuit of 1% better margins or 1% greater chance of success in *insert competitive domain* is how the McKinsey consultant sees the world. It’s how the pedigree-touting economist understands every decision.
These are people trained to think unnaturally, inculcated to believe what the Excel sheet spits out is absolute truth. The most noble pursuit to attain is that which maximizes the expected value.
They go to schools that exalt undermining the parochial, viewing their neighbors with disregard, so long as it enhances gross margins. Because, hear me out, if it helps gross margins, it MUST be what's best for everyone. Because it makes the trinkets cheaper. Because we are trinket maximalists. Harvard Business Review is scripture.
Why create your trinkets domestically when China has an underclass that exists on 1,400 calories a day and will do it for a fraction of the cost? The answer to this is obvious, if you assume people only value cheaper trinkets, hedonism, and materialism. The middle class has no desire for eudaimonism, and fulfillment from a life that imbues purpose.
This must be so, because the Excel sheet doesn’t know how to calculate those other things (eudai-what? dude stop making up words and get in on this sale), and my MBA says more is more.
When globocorp’s bottom line is the unwavering guiding light, when the expected value of each basketball position is the only consideration, actions eventually converge on the same expected-value-led strategies. Tedium. Mankind needs variance, otherwise he'll breaks things until the volatility and color he secretly relishes returns.
If you go too long without a life of purpose, without eudaimonism, something inside you begins to chafe. Grayness seeps in.
Life needs color, which is to say that which you can’t always predict. You know what maximizes predictability? Expected-value thinking. Moneyball. Globalism. You can push the grayness beachball underwater, but eventually the volatility tax will be paid.
An expected-value existence is corrosive to the middle. Empirically. Demonstrably. The Excel-sheet mind cannot comprehend this, but the NBA shot chart and the factory worker can.
RELIGION, PRETENDING TO BE ECONOMICS
Just as the priest only knows “Christ is King”, the Trinket Maximalist only knows “open trade open borders good”. It's religious thinking, masquerading as post-hoc, economic-presenting rationale. Because you cannot possibly conceive that the highest-order value for a nation isn’t the cheapest trinkets possible. Unfathomable.
When all your beliefs and motivations can be distilled down to “what gives the best margins?”, you implicitly worship the material. Because explicitly, the material is all you value when you think this way. You project this value onto others, often unwittingly, when you treat global trade as Christ 2.0.
This is the religion of consumption, hedonism. No salutary purpose, eudaimonism. If it doesn’t facilitate profligate intake, I’m going to have to kindly ask that you go to college.
If a couple more basis points of gross margin is the North Star, and one more point on the scoreboard is all the strategy knows, you're left with no midrange jumpers, and no middle class.
Remember Rip Hamilton? Kobe? They lived in the midrange. Jordan did everything, everywhere, all at once. Now you know what you do in the modern NBA? You either get a sniper to shoot a foot behind the 3-point line, or you throw it to the post.
Listen, we ran the numbers, and the Monte Carlo analysis says what it says: no more 15-footers or you’re benched. No more domestic manufacturing, or you’re out of business. Diversity? Lol yeah not that kind. Have you seen the NBA’s ratings? You get what you fucking deserve.
Who cares about all the action in between the 1st quarter and the final buzzer. The sport whose very reason for existence is to entertain and excite. The event we gather in big stadiums for and have our identities tied to. Meh, you see, all that matters is just one. more. point. than the other guys.
Who cares about a population’s sense of identity and esteem. A blue-collar existence of dignity and self-sufficiency. The men who derive their purpose, value, and autonomy from their ability to provide. It’s fine if we rob them of their agency, because the trinkets are that much cheaper for it.
You don’t need a sense of independence, you need a smartphone that folds! A hedonistic worldview like this dominates everything else you believe.
Boy you’re really laying it on thick for those flyover-state peons! All we want is just one. more. point. of gross margin bro. Chill. You clearly don’t read Harvard Business Review.
> "What's the expected value of each possession? What’s the cheapest way possible to build that product?"…
This kind of thinking produces grayness, and disembowels the middle. No midrange jumpers. No middle class.
Blog in profile. If you read this far, you owe me a follow. I think that's fair.
A related essay in QT:
Sam H retweeted
You’re right that of the three you listed, extensibility is the only needle-moving justification for truly decentralized social, but I also think the whole frame of this piece is downstream of an antiquated misconception of the purpose of social media these days. The social graph doesn’t really matter, the point is the content discovery engines (“my feed” “my for you page” “my algorithm” etc). You could probably argue this isn’t even social media anymore, it’s actually a rather solitary experience.
Regardless, the question is “can you improve on that experience by decentralizing it,” and I think the answer is obviously yes. Real, tangible improvements in the already ubiquitous form factor vs the incumbent platforms. We’ve got it in a private alpha over @UncenteredSys, DM me if you want to take a look.
We also get extendability basically for free as a consequence of building on @kinode (I am exaggerating a bit) but I don’t think that will really shine until we nail the core mechanic.