"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!

Philosophy, Guilds and Open Machines — Ven Gist

Ven Gist is a philosopher of networks, designer of worlds. Researcher at The Open Machine which is a publication for the generation of experimental cultural and conceptual compliments to the decentralized web. He's an early member of MetaCartel, an org which funded many projects to develop open source technology and experiment with DAOs. Now working on Guild Guild. A locus of coordination for Creating, Stewarding, Enabling, and Studying Guilds. We talk about the open source movement. The historical context for where we are today. And what's coming up heading into 2025, where Ven is helping to stage Cosmolocal Playground in Amsterdam in the Spring. UFO Sponsor Resources Towns — https://www.towns.com/ ↑ Higher — https://www.aimhigher.net/ 🌐 International Meme Fund — https://imf.bz/ --- @vengist @ufoclub.eth @hollins For more episodes, go to ufo.fm

Hyperactive 14 - crystalspaceshp with Julie Rose

We walk-and-talk with artist and illustrator, Julie Rose. Julie shares her journey from growing up in a cult to discovering art-making, drawing, and design. We discuss her evolving inspirations—from electrical circuits to nautical knots—and how she’s building a tightknit community of passionate collectors on Hypersub.

Art, Music and AI with ORIGIN STØRIES — Sean Bradford

Sean Bradford is an artist, musician and creative technologist. Founder of ORIGIN STØRIES, a creative tech studio producing custom AI-powered tools for co-created experiences. He's lived many lives. As a vocalist and recording artist signed to a major label. Performing on Broadway. A DJ who spent a lot of time in Berlin, before moving to Stockholm and now Amsterdam. A crypto native, deeply immersed in AI and generative systems. Exploring how these creative tools can be used to transform relationships and enable world building between artists and audiences. ___ UFO Sponsor Resources Towns — https://www.towns.com/ ↑ Higher — https://www.aimhigher.net/ 🌐 International Meme Fund — https://imf.bz/ --- @originstory @ufoclub.eth @hollins For more episodes, go to ufo.fm

Hyperactive Episode 13 - We Are The Art with Chris Cocreated

We walk-and-talk with artist and community builder Chris Cocreated. Chris shares his journey from community theater to creating collaborative onchain art. We discuss We Are the Art, his latest project that explores participatory creation and collective expression, as well as the opportunities and challenges of fostering an authentic, engaged community in web3.

Hyperactive Episode 12 - m/branson

We walk-and-talk with artist m/branson. She shares her journey from fighting fires in Antarctica to rediscovering her love of print making, art, and design. We discuss her path to publishing work onchain, building a community of collectors and supporters with hypersub, and embracing a creative practice that spans multiple mediums.

Creating Onchain Media with Pods — Lucas

Lucas is the Founder of Pods. A new way to publish, discover, and own your favourite podcasts. The place for bringing your podcast onchain. He's also a Co-Founder of Fire Eyes DAO, a collective of crypto-natives who designed token economic and governance systems for projects including Optimism, ENS and Gitcoin. And was also an early employee at Bankless. We talk about what we've learned from a few years experimenting with onchain media. How minting works like a broadcast signal. And creators using platforms like Layer3 and Boost to amplify distribution by offering token incentives and rewards for people to collect their content. ___ UFO Sponsor Resources Towns — https://www.towns.com/ ↑ Higher — https://www.aimhigher.net/ 🌐 International Meme Fund — https://imf.bz/ --- @0xl @ufoclub.eth @hollins For more episodes, go to ufo.fm

Hyperactive Episode 11 - Design Everyday with 0xdesigner

We walk-and-talk with anonymous provocateur, 0xdesigner. He shares his journey to becoming a designer, his approach to communicating new ideas, breadth versus depth, building a body of work, inspiring others to action, shaping culture, and the conviction required to continue creating.

Hyperactive Episode 10 - Kaloh's Newsletter and Podcast with Kaloh

We walk-and-talk with writer, podcast host, and renaissance man, Kaloh. Born in Venezuela, his journey began studying computer science, working as a developer by day and mining Bitcoin by night. Originally an escape, Kaloh's writing achieved bestseller status on Substack shortly after leaving the startup world behind. An art collector and community builder at heart, he continues to demystify the onchain frontier through his writing and podcast.

Writing, Podcasts and Minting Base Colors — JAKE

JAKE is a pseudo anonymous internet creator. Going with the classic blue, colour code #0000FF as his pfp. Host at Pod Of Jake where he’s interviewed almost 200 guests over 4 years. Most recently Jacob from Zora and others such as Vitalik Buterin, pplpleasr and Mark Cuban. Writer at Blog of Jake, where he’s published about creativity and writing, documenting his experiences as a podcaster, observing what’s happening on the internet, reviewing crypto news, thinking about how to learn and build. JAKE is also the founder of Base Colors, a new onchain collection where you can mint unique colour codes on Base and give them a name, an interesting primitive which many people are starting to play around and experiment with. We talk about the benefits of writing online. Go behind the scenes experiences of hosting a podcast. Thoughts on the crypto scene, Bitcoin and pseudo anon identities on the internet, decentralized social like Farcaster, and thinking too much about Colors. ___ UFO Sponsor Resources ↑ Higher — https://www.aimhigher.net/ 🌐 International Meme Fund — https://imf.bz/ --- @jake @ufoclub.eth @hollins For more episodes, go to ufo.fm

Electronic Music Scenes — Sound Of Fractures

Jamie Reddington is an electronic music producer, consultant and lecturer from London who recently released his debut album Scenes. His music is shaped by hiphop, UK dance music and soul. Leaning into telling stories, with textures and samples captured from his phone, featuring the sound of his daughter’s heartbeat. The record was released as a co-creation. ‘Over 350 memories were submitted and turned into Scenes, capturing a moment in time. People stopped, took time out of their lives and engaged in a process that connected music and emotions.' We talk about the past, present and future of music on the internet. What's most interesting for artists right now? ___ UFO Sponsor Resources ↑ Higher — https://www.aimhigher.net/ 🌐 International Meme Fund — https://imf.bz/ --- @soundoffractures @ufoclub.eth @hollins For more episodes, go to ufo.fm

Hyperactive Episode 9 - Hyefa with Aoife O'Dwyer

We walk-and-talk with artist, designer, and illustrator Aoife O'Dwyer. She shares her journey from biochemistry, to web design, to independent art-making. We explore and discuss ideas around storytelling, connection and co-creation through art and onchain experiments.

Exploring the Memecoin Supercycle with IMF — Gami, Clouted

Gami and Clouted are core contributors from International Meme Fund (IMF) and $MONEY. Their team believes it is now crucial to have native liquidity and financial infrastructure for the meme sector. They're both from Sydney and have shared interests in defi financial engineering, game theory and the memecoin phenomonen. We talk about financial nihilism. Memes as emergent properties of the internet. Why do some meme assets succeed when the vast majority fail? How do you choose the tokens that go up? (no financial advice). The internet is stranger than you think.

Hyperactive Episode 8 - Muse Studio with Max Jackson

We walk-and-talk with multidisciplinary artist and Hypersub OG, Max Jackson. He shares his journey from driving a pedicab, to discovering calligraphy, printmaking, and design, to minting his work onchain and building a community of passionate creators and collectors.

Hyperactive Episode 7 - Coop Records Club with Cooper Turley

We walk-and-talk with Coop Records Club founder, Cooper Turley. He shares his journey from studying music business in college, his humble beginnings as an eBay reseller and crypto trader, learning about DeFi and decentralized governance, cofounding FWB, and now bringing music onchain. He also talks about what it’s been like building through the bear market, incentivizing mints with meme coins, boosts and quests, sharing upside with his community, and what’s next.

Interpreting Technology with AIxDESIGN — Nadia Piet

Nadia Piet is Founder and Creative Lead of AIxDESIGN, a global community conducting critical AI research for the benefit of people, not profits. She's a designer, researcher, organiser and faculty member at ELISAVA's Design for Responsible AI. We talk about many things artificial intelligence. AlphaGO and Move 37. AI models trained on creative assets without permission. Commodification of digital life. What's causing the rapidly improving visual quality of generative AI such as DALL-E and Midjourney? Big picture, what are constructive ways to be thinking about AI?

Hyperactive Episode 6 - Spacemonkeys with Dalek

We walk-and-talk with artist and illustrator, James Marshall, also known as the legendary street artist, Dalek. James shares his journey from growing up in Maryland as a Navy brat, to discovering punk, skateboarding, and graffiti; moving to Japan as a teenager; and his path to a fine art career. We end on how he got into crypto, and how he’s using Hypersub to build community and earn recurring revenue onchain.

Hyperactive Episode 5 - Red with Antimo FM

We walk-and-talk with freelance product designer, Antimo FM. Antimo shares his journey from growing up in Italy with a passion for comic books and illustration, his path to design, crypto, and Farcaster, and how he’s using Hypersub to build community and earn recurring revenue onchain.

Hyperactive Episode 4 - Narisofka's Gang with Sofia Komarenko

We walk-and-talk with artist, illustrator, and designer Sofia Komarenko. Sophia shares her journey from growing up in Siberia and Kaliningrad to becoming a professional artist. She discusses her influences from cartoons and games, her entry into the NFT space, and the challenges of the crypto winter. Sophia highlights the importance of physical representations of digital art and how she’s using Hypersub to earn recurring revenue, and build a community of supporters that help sustain her artistic practice.

Terminally Onchain with YB

We discuss the past, present, and future of YB's work, and how he's using Hypersub to earn recurring revenue onchain with Terminally Onchain.

The Yon Experience with Yon Frula

We discuss the past, present, and future of Yan's work, and how he's using Hypersub to earn recurring revenue onchain with The Yon Experience.

Rolling Forever with Skateboarding and Art — Dave Bachinsky

Dave Bachinsky is a professional skateboarder, woodworker, and visual artist based in Carlsbad, California. In 2020, he launched a visual collection called Roll Forever featuring videos filmed with a drone from a bird's-eye view, observing a skaters' line in a pool or skate spot and edited to loop indefinitely, as if the line never ends. His new project Changing Tides was minted on Highlight. Dave is super early bringing skateboarding to the crypto, NFTs and new internet scene. We talk about life as a pro skater, kickflipping El Toro 20 stair and competing in Street League Skateboarding (SLS). How the industry, scene and culture has evolved over the years. And how things look in 2024 with skateboarding returning in the Paris Olympics.

Building Something Different with Therapy — Simona Pop

Simona Pop is joyfully subverting the status quo. Host of /therapy on Farcaster. Writing and giving talks around building with intention and how existing trauma and socio-economic conditioning can hinder our ability to build something different. She's an advisor at Optimism helping to build the Superchain. Public Goods Steward at ENS DAO and one of the first people I met in crypto attending Ethereal Summit in Brooklyn in 2018. Simona's been a member of the UFO network since the very beginning. We hear something about an upcoming radio show? Sponsors: Higher is a lifestyle — aimhigher.net Where group chats make more money — lore.xyz

Art, Music and Festival Culture with Refraction — Malcolm, Raf, Greg

Malcolm Levy, Raf Katigbak and Greg Liburd are co-founders of Refraction. An artist-owned community leading the next wave of digital art, music and culture — online, onchain and IRL. They all have extensive backgrounds in media, culture, festivals, films, brands. As artists, designers, writers, producers and creative people. Raf was early at VICE. Greg did a bunch with Jordan. Malcolm was the Director of the New Forms Festival 2001-16, and Curator of CODE Live during the 2010 Olympics Games. Today we reveal that Refraction and UFO are teaming up via our radio station. And exclusive alpha is shared for the future of Refraction for the first time on this show. Sponsors: Your crypto wallet for everything onchain — zerion.io Create, distribute and monetize on your own terms — paragraph.xyz Higher is a lifestyle — aimhigher.net Home of onchain ticketing — onopen.xyz Where group chats make more money — lore.xyz

A Collective Signal with UFO — Alex Guy, aiio, LGHT

Nick Hollins, Alex Guy, aiio and LGHT are hosts of the first shows on the UFO network. Alex is head of Growth at Zerion and recently launched Still Here. A show to explore his curiosity talking with people who are active web3 citizens. Through all the ups and downs of crypto. Answering the question of what motivates and inspires them. Why they’re still here. aiio is a researcher, community builder and writer bridging across web3 and the underground electronic music and arts communities in Copenhagen. Soon bringing a podcast to UFO. She writes about the concept of space, linking it to human culture, existence, and the need for adaptive ecosystems. LGHT is an artist, designer, writer, and technologist based in the Eastern United States. Creator of the Hypercultures essay series as well as co-founding Based Management. His work mainly focuses on protocol design, the science of digital language/memetics, and zero to one acceleration of tech primitives and adoption. We talk about UFO as a collective signal. Building a radio station. Sharing ideas for how we see this going forward into 2024.