We’re running the third season of Zeitgeist from October 3rd to December 16th. If you're building a new crypto-native product/protocol, please get in touch by Friday August 26 to participate. We are reviewing submissions on a rolling basis: airtable.com/shrqNUmMtuuxsrvDN

Zeitgeist is a laboratory for building crypto-native products and protocols. We’ve run two seasons to date, and are bringing together a new cohort of teams for season three later this year.

In the upcoming season, we will sync on weekly calls, set a cadence with demos, and dive into the biggest obstacles coming across the group. The small number of teams and the structure facilitates hands-on support from other teams and contributors. As a result, there have been multiple meaningful collaborations based on the relationships built through Zeitgeist to date. Sound.xyz used the 0xSplits protocol to launch Song Splits, a feature which enables artists to set on-chain splits/credits for their tracks. Coordinape and Llama collaborated in building for DAOs, and Quixotic and Conquest collaborated in building on L2s. Macro did security audits for two Zeitgeist teams, and placed a developer on a third. Castle integrated with OpenSea’s Seaport protocol based on input from 0age. And Canvas met their lead investor through Zeitgeist.

Taking a project from 0 to 1 is not easy. We have to navigate a terrain of non-trivial trade-offs and questions, both in technical domains (e.g. mechanism design, building secure smart contract systems) and operational domains (e.g. structuring legal and onchain entities, hiring and managing). Moreover, the ecosystem is young and so the right answer to these questions is evolving over time. Consequently, we believe that the best way to navigate the early stages of a project is to learn from those who have gone through the journey themselves, and have learned what works and what doesn't work through direct experience. And so in ZG03, we'll be relying on input from folks like 0age, Santiago Palladino, Patricio Palladino, Liam Horne, thegostep, alumni like Abram Dawson and Will Minshew, and me.

0age giving a talk on smart contract upgradability patterns.

We see the crypto community’s geographic diversity as one of its unique strengths, so ZG03 will run online and be open to teams located anywhere in the world. We also believe that in-person time can be incredibly effective for building personal relationships, and so ZG03 will kick off with in-person session on Oct 7-10 in Bogota, Colombia before Devcon, and end with an in-person session on Dec 15-16.

We strongly encourage teams to participate in both gatherings. The days will include a combination of self-directed time to do focused work, and workshops/discussions/demos on topics relevant to building a crypto-native product/protocol. We will also have group meals and hangouts with the extended Zeitgeist community.

The season two expo — a gathering for engineers, designers, and operators from the larger Ethereum ecosystem who were interested in learning about and/or contributing to season two teams.

Zeitgeist & friends dinner at Devconnect in Amsterdam.

Lastly, participation in Zeitgeist is free. We are looking to bring together teams who would benefit from participating, and who can in turn become active contributors to the community over time.

We’ve come together as a community to lean into what’s uniquely enabled by crypto as a technological/social substrate and build a future that we’re excited about. We're inspired by the builders who've built the space into what it is today, and hope to play a small part in continuing this tradition. If you’re interested in participating, we’d love to hear from you, and encourage you to get in touch by Friday August 26. We are reviewing submissions on a rolling basis and have limited capacity, so recommend getting in touch as soon as possible: airtable.com/shrqNUmMtuuxsrvDN

Postscript

To learn more about Zeitgeist and some of the builders/projects in the community, you can listen to Sina’s podcast conversations with Tracheopteryx who is building Coordinape David/Matt/Vignesh who are building Sound.xyz, and 0age who is building Seaport at OpenSea. You can also check out teams from ZG01 and ZG02 below, follow Zeitgeist on Twitter, and subscribe to this newsletter for updates in the future.

In season one:

• David, Matt, and Vignesh working on Sound.xyz, a platform to help artists make a living off their music.
• Abram and Will working on 0xSplits, a protocol for splitting onchain income being used by Protocol Guild, Sound, and Songcamp.
• Tracheopetryx, Zach, and Zemm working on Coordinape, a platform for decentralized compensation being used in Yearn, Gitcoin, and Bankless.
• Shreyas and Austin working on Llama - and contributed to treasury diversification proposals across Aave, Gitcoin, and other DAOs.
• Harsh and David working on MacroDAO - they have run multiple cohorts in the Macro web2 to web3 school, and done security audits for major DeFi protocols.
• Wei Jie working on Scalic, a cross-chain NFT bridge using ZKPs under the hood. The first implementation connected Polygon and Arbitrum One.
• Tarun working on Aikido, a product for managing work in open communities.
• Gail and Carlos working on Metaphor, a tool for unlocking participation in DAOs.
• Faraaz and Jonny working on Ape Monitor, a platform for tracking NFTs.
• Jason and Nikita working on Sealcred, a pseudonymous social network using ZKPs.

In season two:

• Mark and Daniel working on Quixotic - the leading onchain NFT marketplace on Optimism.
• Joey, Rapha, and team working on Backdrop - a platform to help people launch and grow community-owned projects.
• Stephen, Ayush, and Mehran working on Castle - a smart wallet that provides multi-factor auth for individuals/groups without compromising on UX.
• Ronan working on Conquest - a fully permissionless, persistent and interoperable onchain game.
• Brenner working on the Metagame - infrastructure for earned NFTs based on onchain/offchain activity.
• Peter, Matt, and Amit working on Yuzu - a protocol for creating composable derivatives and structured products.
• Jake and Regy working on Hook - a protocol for creating NFT-backed derivatives, starting with covered call options.
• Raymond, Joel, and David working on Canvas - a P2P backend for web3 applications.