Personally, I joined this scene when the "sure, best email" days had gone, just after a fifth digit was added to the FIDs, but before permissionless - I guess I can say: I helped shape the protocol. In these pre-degen days, one thing was clear already: this place is something special: artists, builders, founders, degens, memers - providing content liquidity working to manifest the protocol. Amidst permissionless and Twitter's death, the rise of the degen-tipping giants, farmers and scammers entering the stage, we stayed the course, did what we did: heads down, OG NFTs held high: we crafted the next phase of our much loved protocol. When the allowances went down, the activity did, too. The KOLs from CT who risked the jump fell flat on their faces and questions were raised whether sufficiently decentralised was actually suffciently decentralised enough. But we kept building, kept cooking, kept meeting irl - sometimes even on Fridays - with the friends we made on the protocol. Somewhere between two Farcons, we started losing our ways. We clanked to fund dinners, content coined everything, while the airdrop-lands were exhausted from over-farming, artists who too clumsily shilled their art were labelled spammers and coinbase added their everything-app to the protocol. We we're welcomed to the trough of disillusionment, by departing qDAUs and ever more quiet feeds. But if you looked closer, the scenius was still there. The poets and artists. The builders building mini apps. That little big dog guarding his toys and his garden, perfect metaphor for our beloved protocol. Look at us, now. Here we are. In Rome. Gladiators. All 37 of us. Guardians of the protocol.
