this will have to do as a pinned FAQ for now

orb land would like for the public to note that nic did all this while diligently and earnestly answering his orb with monster essays each week. our site has like 5 readers. but he never missed a deadline

Congratulations @drakefjustin!

It’s funny that Orb Land (also called “the worst NFT project in history") is catching some eyeballs on this blessed day The reason this is funny is because unfortunately, we’re *just* on the cusp of unwinding this passion project of mine (and my co-founder @lekevicius!) Let me tell the story and provide some color Orb Land started about a year ago as a platform where you can create an “Orb” that allows you to auction off a recurring slice of your time (and the right to it perpetually governed via Harberger taxes) So far Orb Land has onboarded the following orbers: 1. me 2. @nic_carter 3. @zmanian 4. @tarunchitra 5. @drakefjustin The project stems from a desire I had to create NFTs with actual utility. I wanted them to resemble usable items that you have in your magic item bag in World of Warcraft rather than just be jpegs you show off. The utility aspect was access to individuals with deep domain expertise. Kind of like a “Call a Friend” lifeline option in “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” The questions people ask and the answers orbers give are immutably hashed and stored on the Ethereum blockchain This is (mildly) interesting for a few reasons. Most recently because it came handy for Justin Drake to prove that he has been transparent about his EigenLayer advisory role prior to being called out on it, with cryptographically verifiable proof onchain. The basic idea behind Harberger taxes means the Orb is always for sale to the highest bidder and should surface the most meaningful high-value questions, while also allowing orbers to showcase their domain expertise and the demand for it at a dedicated place You can also see how you could start ranking different orbers based on their weekly rate, giving a highly responsive, fluctuating, competitive market signal for the value of their words (a "PvP factor" that's usually the driver behind many social platforms) Over the year, we’ve kept making improvements to the platform, like inventing contract upgrade logic patterns that require the opt-in both from orbers and Orb holders, changes to the auction logic and the ability for people to purchase individual question slots rather than buying a whole Orb However, with our latest onboards we’ve discovered that "soft social enforcement" for orbers to give answers on time was not working. We always knew this would be the case eventually, and have had different economic mechanics prepared for this The one we felt most excited about was one that would force the orber to stake an NFT inside the orb that they would forfeit to their Orb holder if they miss a deadline. You could imagine having to stake a milady that you lose if you forget/neglect your Orb But the issue with missed deadlines spoke to a deeper truth about Orbs. Were people really having fun with their orbs? Or did the orbs feel like annoying homework? One of the aspects of the Orbs that creates an undesirable experience is that both the orber and the Orb holder is a bit stressed out. The Orb holder has to come up with great questions and make the most out of their Orb ownership, and the orber is compelled to answer with unforgiving deadlines. Were Orbs making people more happy or less happy? I had an actual dream where I was speaking to a beaten up @nic_carter (who usually complains about the "homework" aspect of his Orb) where he said that he'd much rather have an Orb that allowed the highest bidder to fight him in the ring next year than having to answer questions each week Unironically, I think this may be the key to "Making Orbs Fun Again". The Q&A format is a bit stale. We should allow for a lot more lightweight services to be managed through Orbs, like boxing rights, podcast guest rights, dinners (and one we talk a lot about internally, a "slap-Eric-in-the-face" orb for my haters), more freedom As the project is dealing with these fundamental questions, we've also been dealing with basic infrastructure dilemmas. Today, all Orbs are deployed as L1 contracts. As the functionality gets more complex, it's no longer always feasible or wise to deploy contracts to L1, so we've been thinking about L2 Orbs This has thrown me right into the fragmentation pit of Ethereum where I've been deciding between Arbitrum, Base, Blast, Starknet and other L2s to deploy on The challenging aspect is that neither of these L2s have obvious methods for how to bridge NFTs from the L1 to the L2 (in order to leverage NFT slashing to hold orbers accountable). While it is possible to bridge an ERC721 via the OP Stack, there are no good interfaces for it, and even bridging one via Wormhole takes something like 30 mins. This part of the ecosystem is still underdeveloped In the middle of dealing with these L2 choices and Orb design decisions I've also come to realize sad fact that I can't give Orbs the love and time they need in order to flourish. Things at @TaprootWizards continue to get more exciting, OP_CAT is dominating the Bitcoin dialogue and I'm for the first time in a long while extremely bullish on the Bitcoin ecosystem Orb Land thus far has been entirely self-funded. We've not raised through any grants or taken any VC capital. As such, we have the ability to simply pause the project. This brings me a great deal of pain since for the last year I've been frustrated with the overfocus on infrastructure in the Ethereum ecosystem, and @orb_land has stuck out as a non-ponzi, non-growth-hacky app-layer product with a clear and simple business model (we simply charge a % of Orb revenues, and we can enforce royalties because Orbs have no transfer function) I wish I could do more for the project, especially now as its getting on more people's radars, but it looks unlikely from here. Thanks for reading if you read this far <3

hey fuck you

Justin Drake just provided his thoughts and disclosures on EigenLayer in the form of an Orb response. Did you know you can always ask Justin a question about anything? See the link at the bottom of his tweet.

Justin Drake goes in-depth on Ethereum’s fragmentation issues.

@drakefjustin just posted a good answer to this on @orb_land! justin.orb.land/invocation/3