Modeo

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I quit my job at @Uber in April of this year to go full-time in web3 with @InterlaceApp. In other words, I left a rewarding tech career I had built over the years to start from nothing. Meanwhile, web3 has continued to be in a prolonged bear market with VC funding at some of the lowest levels since 2010. The broader downturn in web3 sectors—like defi, NFTs, and gaming—has compounded the difficulty of gaining traction for our tech. But, despite all of that, I am still having the most fun I have ever had in my entire life. Yes, it's hard. Yes, it sometimes sucks. Yes, I am technically unemployed. But, I wake up every day doing something I love and that feeling always felt unreachable until I quit my job. That being said, I am looking forward to our moment. The sacrifices might be invisible to others, but they're invaluable to me. Cheers to building in the bear!

Two years ago I dropped out of Berkeley to build @playduper at @0xcurio full-time, one of the most fun and memorable projects of my life, with @0x1plus and @kzdagoof. Today, it’s time to say farewell. I’m leaving Duper. We started by building fully onchain games and infrastructure. Our first project was Treaty, still one of the sexiest concepts in my mind. Anyone could deploy a contract that “hooked” into the main game contract (basically what Uniswap did with v4 a year later). It was the first onchain game that let players modify the main game itself and craft “laws and alliances” onchain. Huge shoutout to the @0xCitadel crew for supporting us since day one. But we learned quickly: a sexy idea alone doesn’t make a great game. To build something innovative and fun, the core game loop has to be addictive. That realization became the start of Duper. Building an original game instead of copying existing mechanics was the most exciting part. For people who don’t know, the earliest playtests literally happened on a Figma sheet. One person always played “the backend,” manually calculating battles every time someone wanted to make a move. We iterated endlessly. We learned which mechanics worked, which didn’t, and how even a tiny change could shift the entire experience. Once we locked the core loop, we brought in the beautiful art from our art director and launched on iOS, Android, and web. As a real-money strategy game with no existing blueprint to follow, we went through plenty of misses, resets, and learnings. I’m really proud that Duper has already grown to where it is today. Some players literally play Duper full-time and make a living from it. And it’s still early. Duper is just starting to reach a wider audience. For me, it feels like the right moment to take everything I’ve learned and pour it into my next project I’ve been building: @pokerfi_gg . I’ll share more soon. For now, I want this post to be an appreciation of the journey so far. I’m leaving Duper with gratitude and two lifelong friends, @kzdagoof and @0x1plus. I also want to thank our incredible team and community for bringing Duper to where it is today. There are too many names to tag, but you know who you are. I’ll always be part of the Duper community, and I genuinely hope it grows into the popular, truly innovative game it already has the foundation to be.