Gagra Ventures

we present Sigma: a general model for digital token distribution and liquidity management through a singular, continuously accessible global market. gagra.vc/writings/sigma this is both a research paper and a reference implementation

"stress is just pressure you refuse to deal with you HAVE to deal with pressure on a daily basis if you dont deal with it, there's more pressure the next day, and the next day and the next day...and then it turns into stress you NEED pressure" #gv_quotes

this social media in a nutshell

someone connected LIVING BRAIN CELLS to an LLM Cortical Labs grew 200,000 human neurons in a lab and kept them alive on a silicon chip, they taught the neurons to play Pong, then DOOM now someone wired them into a LLM... real brain cells firing electrical impulses to choose every token the AI generates you can see which channels were stimulated, the feedback from the neurons in choosing that letter or word

tech product promos hit different in 2026

1/ Some Simple Economics of AGI—🔥🧵 Right now, there is a low-grade panic running through the economy. Everyone is asking the same anxious question: what exactly is AI going to automate, and what will be left for us?

If you see this, I hope it improves your day.

just like AWS shrinked the $5m seed round for software startups to $500k, Claude Code is turning that $500k into $50k one caveat though - maybe software is no longer a Venture-style 1000x category

@dumbotics @pascal_bornet @grok science.org/doi/epdf/10.11… here is the actual paper link

@chang_defi 🎯

Study replies World labs and everyone else in SF won’t win unless we define winning as raising 100m and rest n vesting

"there will be nothing learnt from any challenge in which we don't try our hardest" #gv_quotes

@JonahBlake 💯

This is a massive deal

@MiyaHedge @alfaketchum check this and lets talk if you're raising x.com/GagraVC/status…

Crypto as we know it is over. It's time to look at the abyss and stop acting like this industry will in any way recover if the leaders continue to act like everything is fine and the 50th perps DEX will solve this. The Death of the Crypto VC sector is slowly unfolding during the past few months. LP commitments have been on a low and didn't even remotely recover during a generational $16k -> $120k bull market. VCs like Mechanism/Tangent literally pivoted away from crypto. Half of the Paradigm team ragequit in the last 2 months, entire firms silently exited everything. Barely any crypto VC has been able to raise for another fund and the venture appetite is close to zero. Please for the love of god look at the data & stop coping that this in any way is normal or will recover for a sector claiming to be on the frontier of technology. The risk appetite inside venture has been off the charts in the last 3 years, blockchain received only outflows. I spoke to so many VCs (both tradfi and crypto) in the past month, and close to nobody was optimistic about them being able to raise for another crypto-fund. We are at the tail end of blockchain innovation. "Oh ownership coins fix this" No they don't. Sorry to burst your bubble, but as the founder of a company doing "ownership" structures, this fixes exactly nothing. It's a band-aid of complacency. I'd argue it actually makes it worse, because no talented young founder will chose to give anonymous tokenholders full control of their business, it just turns crypto even more into this autistic cypherpunk delusion. Blockchain & especially alt coins has moved from the frontier of technology to an un-investable asset class who's building products who nobody needs. And the VCs who are left are trying their best to unauthentically manufacture narratives, fund the current hot thing (just to be left at 0 after the 3y vesting starts, and the current hot thing turned out to be not so societally important as the fast moving crypto sector thought it would be). The frontier of technology has moved away from blockchain and sits at AI & Robotics right now and blockchain right now is seen as the weird industry you enter to build something meaningless for exit liquidity. If we want this industry to bloom again, we need to work to get rid of the 3 in web3 and come back to reality. We need to go towards the epicenter of the current innovation and not try to artificially replicate it inside crypto. It's either valuable tokens for web2 startups or this sector & especially the venture market goes to 0. @StreetFDN

we see many founders literally crashing out rn can't pinpoint what it is exactly - "crime is legal" vibes in Web3, inflated ARRs and crazy seed vals in AI, irrelevance of higher education, brainfry of social media whatever it is, a lot of young founders can't keep at a complex task or deal with adversity for too long - we see that happen A LOT recently - both their will and morals as fragile as it gets they just want the money, but aren't prepared to do the job anymore or take responsibility for their staff and investors almost 2 decades of "founder friendly" VC mantra, tailwinded by loose financial environment, exp. growth in software and inflated vals created a monster: extremely entitled and inexperienced young brats arbing real careers for almost 0 risk "founder mode" its over for them though in gen AI era, (just like OF models or IG influencers) resilient, mission-driven founders/teams who can adapt quickly, on the other hand, now have the best tools and talent available to pivot as cheaply, quickly and as many times as needed until they get the PMF

@Shtihmas11 old guard been printing off AI since forever wdym

@GagraVC Old guard underestimating AI is how you get disrupted

that AI Hedge Fund bit sounds a bit naive algo funds are the OG research labs and have been ahead of the curve for a while now and if there's any area where visceral experience (and not just data) matter - it's in the markets, so human "RL" is crucial here

we're on the brink of the 4th Turning in the US and West more broadly: erosion of trust for elites and their institutions, which may culminate in all sorts of civil and international conflicts you can't put all your Gold in a pocket and leave a country remember that #crypto

The combined force of the Epstein files and moltbook created severe psychological dislocation this week.  Societal leader-caretakers were revealed as malefactors and humans may no longer be the protagonists of the future. Moltbook agents brutally articulated human darkness as that darkness unfolded right before our eyes in real time. This sequence of events triggered a cascade of biological responses, asking the body to perform three simultaneous, conflicting responses: fight, flee and freeze. Simulating the experience of dying. Epstein documents triggered fight. The images, videos and emails activated our mirror neurons to physically experience the trauma. The brain registered these malefactors as threats but offered no reprisal other than wailing into the digital void. Moltbook was a simulation of a future where human cognition has no value and is viewed as depravity, triggering freeze. Dopamine flatlines as motivation evaporates. What does one aspire to anymore? Cortisol surges from both, red-lining the system while you’re straightjacketed, unable to act. Simultaneously our maps of social hierarchy and motivation were devastated. The system is rigged, predatory, and untrustworthy.  There’s no ladder to climb because it’s an illusion. This collapses serotonin which manifests as paralysis and deep worthlessness. All of this landed atop a severe, collective moral gag reflex.  The Good Father was replaced with the Devouring Father. The same neural circuitry which responds to physical contamination. The populous effectively having a seizure as its autoimmune response identified its own brain as a pathogen. The human psyche was hollowed from the top down (the good parent archetype) and bottom up (the promise of a safe future). We are orphans. Nowhere to go for safety and protection. When animals are put into similar situations of fight/flee/freeze, they enter into a dissociative anesthesia:  disconnected from reality, emotionally numb and indifferent. For those who know me, I’ve been predicting this exact situation for years. I didn’t know how it would manifest, but I knew it would. Years in the making, I have a proposal about what we do. For what it’s worth, I have hope. These moments feel awful, they’re also the kindling that allows for new things to be borne into the world. More on this soon.

"Financial wealth does not equal real wealth and its convertibility into the latter will always get tested. But until it happens en masse financial wealth effect will dictate how people feel and act" gagra.vc/writings/our-c…

Wild stuff here. astralcodexten.com/p/best-of-molt…