"Higher is a Mindset" with Martin Anquetil, founder of Higher and creator of Aether AI | ZEROPOD SEASON 2 E3

What does it mean to build a brand without a leader, a strategy, or even a plan? In this episode of ZEROPOD, I sit down with Martin Anquetil, one of the founders of $HIGHER, the headless memecoin brand redefining chaos as culture onchain.  We dive into everything from AI agents breaking bounty bots on Farcaster to an Ethereum stock split, the memecoin meta and the challenges of building a project based on a number-go-up meme even when number doesn’t always go up. Along the way, Martin shares lessons from his time within Nouns, explores the unique challenges of decentralization, and reveals what it takes to survive a 97% token price crash with your optimism and community intact.  We really enjoyed this conversation with Martin, and we hope you do too! — TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - Figuring out “Can we do this thing?” while doing it   01:00 - ZEROPOD Intro   01:51 - The Martin Origin Story   04:00 - College and Interning at Google   05:00 - Oneshot by Topshot   07:00 - 2021 NFT Season Nostalgia   10:55 - Who the F**k is Buying XRP?   11:50 - Ethereum Stock Split Discussion  15:15 - First Impressions of Nouns   16:15 - Leaving TopShot to Explore Onchain Options   17:50 - Freelancing with Nouns Builder   19:19 - Agora, Explorer Grants, and Other Nouns Initiatives   20:00 - Mogu Mogu Mogu: Nouns Governance Tooling   24:19 - Starting $HIGHER   25:00 - Roots in /bullposting    28:00 - How Would He Launch Higher Today?   32:00 - The Strength of Builders Who Stick Through the Bear   34:00 - “Higher, Not Sideways”  37:30 - Quack Quack ⌐◨-◨:    38:50 - Is $HIGHER a Neo-DAO or Something New?   40:00 - Authenticity vs. Top-Down Control: The Higher Experiment   44:00 - Could $ANON Run a Higher-Like Playbook?   45:00 - Farcaster Users Speed-Running Speculation Lessons   47:00 - $ZEROPOD: Exploring Media and Tokens   49:00 - The Origins of $POINTS on Farcaster   50:50 - “Provenance is Culturally Emergent”   51:00 - Jacob’s Horse Meme and Its Viral Evolution   53:53 - What Is Aether? The AI Agent Shaking Things Up   57:00 - The $LUM Luminous Launch   1:01:00 - Challenges of Community Cohesion in Decentralized Projects   1:02:03 - Questions for Martin from Aether   1:06:00 - What’s Next for Aether? Memory and Autonomy   1:07:00 - Aether on Twitter? Exploring New Platforms   1:08:00 - Balancing Meaningful Building with Market Pressures   1:11:00 - Betting on Yourself and Long-Term Projects   1:14:00 - Martin’s Thoughts on Trading and Staying Grounded   1:16:00 - Coinbase Listings and Meme Coin Dynamics   1:21:00 - What’s Next for Martin and $HIGHER   1:24:00 - Outro: Reflections and the Road Ahead — Podcast recorded by Toady Hawk, edited by Toady Hawk and JackWyldes. Hosted by Toady Hawk. Music by Toady Hawk x Suno AI. This content is zero rights reserved (cc0), please remix and reuse it in any way you like!

"Without a Trace" featuring Anoncast founder Kartik Patel aka @slokh | ZEROPOD S2 E4

When Vitalik Buterin buys a memecoin to try your consumer zk social app, you know you’re onto something. Kartik Patel (aka @slokh) joins ZEROPOD to talk about Anoncast— the ZK-powered app that lets you post anonymously and trustlessly to Farcaster and Twitter/X from a web interface at anoncast.org. From hacking RuneScape mods as a kid to pulling endless hours at OpenSea during peak NFT chaos, Kartik shares his journey, the lore behind $ANON, and why he thinks ZK privacy is the future. Along the way: why Farcaster is the Silicon Valley of crypto, how he learned ZK programming from scratch in three weeks, and how "lore-first, product-second" might just be the future of bootstrapping. Join us to learn all about the cracked dev who made it possible to speak your mind on the internet, without a trace. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - When Vitalik tries your app 01:09 - ZEROPOD Intro 01:26 - Anon, A-non, Tomato, tomahto.03:13 - Young Kartik 04:00 - Hacking game mods 05:00 - Happy in his space (software developing) 07:13 - From defi protocols to NFTs 07:33 - Joined Opensea 08:13 - Working at Opens during peak NFT bull 09:33 - Working at Manifold and then striking out on his own 10:28 - Solo hacking 11:25 - Why was he attracted to building on Farcaster 12:13 - Better Farcaster branding 13:40 - Similar problems to Ethereum 15:13 - Building Nook farcaster client 18:23 - A Kartik Primer on the ANON Lore 21:51 - Kartik wasn’t even involved in ANON until after the CTO 23:00 - How the anoncast idea came to be 24:49 - New paradigm of products coming downstream of communities 27:13 - Why he wanted to build anoncast 28:16 - Vitalik buying $ANON and trying anoncast 29:40 - How does ZK privacy work? 31:18 - Why is ZK privacy important? 32:55 - How does anoncast work? 36:00 - The future of what curation could look like on anoncast… ZK-anon reddit? 38:00 - Favourite feature shipped on anoncast so far 41:00 - Learning ZK on the go 42:00 - Best use cases for anoncast? (Alpha?) 43:30 - How can people contribute to the project? 44:00 - Best place to learn how to use anoncast? 44:44 - What is he most excited about? 47:00 - Just build, have fun and differentiate 47:30 - What is the sloth backstory 48:00 - Outro Podcast recorded by Toady Hawk, edited by Toady Hawk and Santhosh. Hosted by Toady Hawk. Music by Toady Hawk, SuperTightWoody & Suno AI. This content is zero rights reserved (cc0), please remix and reuse it in any way you like!

"Without a Trace" featuring Anoncast founder Kartik Patel aka @slokh | ZEROPOD S2 E4

When Vitalik Buterin buys a memecoin to try your consumer zk social app, you know you’re onto something. Kartik Patel (aka @slokh) joins ZEROPOD to talk about Anoncast— the ZK-powered app that lets you post anonymously and trustlessly to Farcaster and Twitter/X from a web interface at anoncast.org. From hacking RuneScape mods as a kid to pulling endless hours at OpenSea during peak NFT chaos, Kartik shares his journey, the lore behind $ANON, and why he thinks ZK privacy is the future. Along the way: why Farcaster is the Silicon Valley of crypto, how he learned ZK programming from scratch in three weeks, and how "lore-first, product-second" might just be the future of bootstrapping. Join us to learn all about the cracked dev who made it possible to speak your mind on the internet, without a trace. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - When Vitalik tries your app 01:09 - ZEROPOD Intro 01:26 - Anon, A-non, Tomato, tomahto.03:13 - Young Kartik 04:00 - Hacking game mods 05:00 - Happy in his space (software developing) 07:13 - From defi protocols to NFTs 07:33 - Joined Opensea 08:13 - Working at Opens during peak NFT bull 09:33 - Working at Manifold and then striking out on his own 10:28 - Solo hacking 11:25 - Why was he attracted to building on Farcaster 12:13 - Better Farcaster branding 13:40 - Similar problems to Ethereum 15:13 - Building Nook farcaster client 18:23 - A Kartik Primer on the ANON Lore 21:51 - Kartik wasn’t even involved in ANON until after the CTO 23:00 - How the anoncast idea came to be 24:49 - New paradigm of products coming downstream of communities 27:13 - Why he wanted to build anoncast 28:16 - Vitalik buying $ANON and trying anoncast 29:40 - How does ZK privacy work? 31:18 - Why is ZK privacy important? 32:55 - How does anoncast work? 36:00 - The future of what curation could look like on anoncast… ZK-anon reddit? 38:00 - Favourite feature shipped on anoncast so far 41:00 - Learning ZK on the go 42:00 - Best use cases for anoncast? (Alpha?) 43:30 - How can people contribute to the project? 44:00 - Best place to learn how to use anoncast? 44:44 - What is he most excited about? 47:00 - Just build, have fun and differentiate 47:30 - What is the sloth backstory 48:00 - Outro Podcast recorded by Toady Hawk, edited by Toady Hawk and Santhosh. Hosted by Toady Hawk. Music by Toady Hawk, SuperTightWoody & Suno AI. This content is zero rights reserved (cc0), please remix and reuse it in any way you like!

"Without a Trace" featuring Anoncast founder Kartik Patel aka @slokh | ZEROPOD S2 E4

When Vitalik Buterin buys a memecoin to try your consumer zk social app, you know you’re onto something. Kartik Patel (aka @slokh) joins ZEROPOD to talk about Anoncast— the ZK-powered app that lets you post anonymously and trustlessly to Farcaster and Twitter/X from a web interface at anoncast.org. From hacking RuneScape mods as a kid to pulling endless hours at OpenSea during peak NFT chaos, Kartik shares his journey, the lore behind $ANON, and why he thinks ZK privacy is the future. Along the way: why Farcaster is the Silicon Valley of crypto, how he learned ZK programming from scratch in three weeks, and how "lore-first, product-second" might just be the future of bootstrapping. Join us to learn all about the cracked dev who made it possible to speak your mind on the internet, without a trace. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - When Vitalik tries your app 01:09 - ZEROPOD Intro 01:26 - Anon, A-non, Tomato, tomahto.03:13 - Young Kartik 04:00 - Hacking game mods 05:00 - Happy in his space (software developing) 07:13 - From defi protocols to NFTs 07:33 - Joined Opensea 08:13 - Working at Opens during peak NFT bull 09:33 - Working at Manifold and then striking out on his own 10:28 - Solo hacking 11:25 - Why was he attracted to building on Farcaster 12:13 - Better Farcaster branding 13:40 - Similar problems to Ethereum 15:13 - Building Nook farcaster client 18:23 - A Kartik Primer on the ANON Lore 21:51 - Kartik wasn’t even involved in ANON until after the CTO 23:00 - How the anoncast idea came to be 24:49 - New paradigm of products coming downstream of communities 27:13 - Why he wanted to build anoncast 28:16 - Vitalik buying $ANON and trying anoncast 29:40 - How does ZK privacy work? 31:18 - Why is ZK privacy important? 32:55 - How does anoncast work? 36:00 - The future of what curation could look like on anoncast… ZK-anon reddit? 38:00 - Favourite feature shipped on anoncast so far 41:00 - Learning ZK on the go 42:00 - Best use cases for anoncast? (Alpha?) 43:30 - How can people contribute to the project? 44:00 - Best place to learn how to use anoncast? 44:44 - What is he most excited about? 47:00 - Just build, have fun and differentiate 47:30 - What is the sloth backstory 48:00 - Outro Podcast recorded by Toady Hawk, edited by Toady Hawk and Santhosh. Hosted by Toady Hawk. Music by Toady Hawk, SuperTightWoody & Suno AI. This content is zero rights reserved (cc0), please remix and reuse it in any way you like!