Year of the ZABAL - DAY 158
Week 1: we hit Start
GM ZM, and happy Sunday in the Year of the ZABAL.
Week one is in the books, and what a start. We said ZABAL Gamez would be three months of building in public with The ZAO, and week one we hit Start. Here is the whole week - every session, every builder, every link - because nothing here disappears. It was all recorded, transcribed, and kept.
We went to the Farcaster Agentic Bootcamp. Built ZLANK. Won the Snap category at FarHack 2026. That win funded ZAOstock - and the thread keeps going. Today it becomes ZABAL Gamez: The ZAO's 3-month Build-A-Thon.
ZABAL Gamez - 3 Months of Building With The ZAO
June workshops, July open build month, August Finals. Free to join.
ZABAL Gamez is The ZAO's three-month build event.
June is workshop month, July is the open build, August is the Finals.
It is free, open to anyone, and you can bring any harness.
Three tracks, pick your lane: artist (musical or visual), builder (developer or aspiring), creator (media and distribution).
What you walk away with: a shipped product that gets used, income that keeps flowing, proof you can show, and a crew, not a leaderboard.
The build is the application. Start here: https://zabalgamez.com/info
Day 1 - we hit Start
Three sessions in one day. A real opening.
Yerbearserker opened the whole season on Empire Builder, and set the tone with one line:
"Do not launch a token until you are ready, build the foundation first"
He walked the Triple-A framework - Assemble, Affirm, Ascend - and how leaderboards, boosters, staking, and a little tactical generosity powered an Empire that does not need a token at all. Then he proved it, standing up a tokenless ZABAL Gamez Empire live on the call. Watch Empire Builder V3: https://zabalgamez.com/recordings/1
In Part 2 he went hands-on. Leaderboards score a base component multiplied by boosters - NFT holdings, token thresholds, or staking - and he showed distribution in practice with a live raffle airdrop to the most active DotA NFT holders, then added a $Zabal booster on the spot (10M minimum, 3x), funded from the treasury. If you want to see one built end to end, this is the one. Watch the live build: https://zabalgamez.com/recordings/2
Then Joshua and Plat0x took us into Bonfire and the ZABAL Bonfire bot. Bonfire is the ecosystem's shared memory - the layer bots and builds sit on top of. The big idea: a group grows a knowledge graph just by using its agents, and the curators own it. Curation is the last scarce asset - structured taste and knowledge stay unique and yours. The ZABAL Bonfire bot is live and queryable, so anyone joining mid-season can get caught up in minutes. Watch Bonfire: https://zabalgamez.com/recordings/3
Day 2 - the creator track opens
Ohnahji opened the creator track with how to start and grow your own livestream - how he found his people and built an audience while building everything else. The lesson: consistency beats production value, you grow by showing up. Watch and read: https://zabalgamez.com/recordings/4
All week - Farcaster Batches, with GM Farcaster
We also spent the whole week on GM Farcaster's Farcaster Batches - a week-long builder showcase organized by JubJub, hosted by Adriene and Nounish Prof. GM Farcaster ran the whole week and hosted every episode publicly, and we added a summary and a full transcript for each day. The throughline every builder kept landing on: build the thing you want to see in the world. The whole week, builder by builder: https://zabalgamez.com/farcaster-batches
Day 1 (Jun 1): Chris Dolinsky on Vini App (prompt a working app into existence in minutes), Kenny on POIDH (crowdfund any outcome and verify it actually happened - the $30,000 kickflip world record came through it), Nikki Sapp on Juke (an open-source, audio-native Farcaster client), Jonathan Colton on Founder Check and Fotocaster (where artists keep almost all of every sale), and Dr. Deeks on a slate of mini apps. Watch: https://www.gmfarcaster.com/episodes/Batches1
Excited to host @farcaster_xyz Batches spaces starting Monday June 1 at 1 pm ET/10 am PT with cohosts @ProfWerder @age_shulman and @aquaflanz with amazing founders from the Farcaster ecosystem:
@1dolinski from ViniApp
@kennyistyping from POIDH
@nicky_sap from Juke
@jlcolton
Day 2 (Jun 2): a live Founder Check workshop. Jonathan walked Kenny through validating an idea on four pillars - who you build for, the problem, how you reach them, and ease of sale - on the lesson that everything is downstream of who, and that your circle of friends can masquerade as real demand. Watch: https://www.gmfarcaster.com/episodes/Batches2
Day 3 (Jun 3): I got to bring ZABAL Gamez to the room, alongside Empire Builder, AZ Flynn's Defense of the Agents, Cashless Man's Booster, and Duckfax's Celebration Hub. Watch: https://www.gmfarcaster.com/episodes/Batches3
On Wednesday we'll welcome 6 more founders from the @farcaster_xyz ecosystem for Farcaster Batches:
@bettercallzaal from The ZAO
@Yerbearserker from Empire Builder
@AzFlin from Defense of the Agents
@Cryptobaddie__ from Geroncology
@kashlessman from Boostr
@altagers from
Day 5 (Jun 5): Node on DEKEY (a private, encrypted file marketplace with zero-knowledge proofs), Max on POWER (a link-in-bio page builder), Toady Hawk on betrmint (rewards and distribution for creators), and Darko on Runner (a meme that became a real Strava-connected running app). Watch: https://www.gmfarcaster.com/episodes/Batches5
@join_atlas_xyz building marqui
@0x_noad building DKEY
@Judd515 building LetterLoops
@baseddesigner building Pawr
@toady_hawk building Betrmint
@darkohh
Day 6 - our first fireside
To close the week I sat down with Carlos (Plat0x), the developer behind Bonfires, and it turned into half working session, half vibe-coding masterclass. The lessons, if you are on the builder track:
Plan, then goal. Give your agent a plan plus one goal with a measurable threshold (say, under five seconds of query latency) so it keeps working until it hits the number.
Diagram Bob and Alice before you write a line of code. Define the exchange and the sequence first, language last.
Prompt types first, and use a protocol or adapter contract so you can swap the database later without a rewrite.
Documentation as code: strip out all the code and the docs alone should rebuild it one to one.
Watch the fireside: https://zabalgamez.com/recordings/fireside/1
We built a home for all of it
Missing a session live should never mean missing the knowledge. So this week we shipped the place it all lives - for people and for agents:
The recordings hub - every session, newest first, one tap to watch or read the transcript: https://zabalgamez.com/recordings
A dedicated page for each session with the video, a summary, the key takeaways, and the full transcript - start with Empire Builder V3:
A plain-text feed and a structured index for the agents, because the build is the application: https://zabalgamez.com/recordings.txt
The data streams feed - the full chronological record across the workshops, Farcaster Batches, the agentic bootcamp, and BCZ YapZ: https://zabalgamez.com/streams
Ask the ZABAL Bonfire - put a question to the whole record and get an answer from the memory layer the season runs on: https://zabalgamez.com/graph
The Dream Leads board - the builders we would love to see teach. Nominate someone, or vote one up: https://zabalgamez.com/dream-leads
Next week - the schedule keeps rolling
Three more sessions, free and recorded:
Tue Jun 9, 5pm EST - Jose Cabrera opens the artist track: owning your music as an independent artist. RSVP: https://luma.com/nxfm7edg
Wed Jun 10, 7:30pm EST - Will T
Fri Jun 12, 6pm EST - Adam Miller
And I am presenting ZABAL Gamez at the WIP meetup on Thursday Jun 11, 3pm EST. More workshops are landing all month - the full schedule: https://zabalgamez.com/#schedule
What is next - July is the open build
June is the warm-up. July is the open build: anyone ships something real for the ZAO ecosystem, in public, and the build is the application. Three tracks, no waitlist, any harness. How it pays out: the top 8 finalists share a $500 USDC pool, the top 16 get $ZABAL token rewards, the top 3 take a Champion commemorative collectible, and every finalist who ships keeps a Finisher collectible. The strongest builds get curated into the August Finals, each paired with a ZAO mentor.
We spent this week getting the build path ready so you can start the moment July opens:
The Playbook - the full guide to building and shipping your project, start to finish: https://zabalgamez.com/playbook
How to enter, then register your build and watch the live builds board fill: https://zabalgamez.com/enter
Projects to adopt - more than 40 real, started repos that just need a builder: https://zabalgamez.com/projects
The Finals and how the prize pool settles: https://zabalgamez.com/finals
The June schedule, with more workshops landing all month: https://zabalgamez.com/#schedule
Get involved this week
Built something worth teaching? Lead a workshop: https://zabalgamez.com/lead
Want to back a builder? We are recruiting mentors for the August Finals: https://zabalgamez.com/mentor
Know someone who should teach? Nominate them: https://zabalgamez.com/dream-leads
Looking for something to build? Adopt a started project: https://zabalgamez.com/projects
Come hang in the /zabal channel: https://farcaster.xyz/~/channel/zabal
Insert Coin and grab the season collectible: https://collect.zabalgamez.com
The week at a glance: five sessions recorded and transcribed, the whole Farcaster Batches week captured, more than 40 projects waiting to be adopted, a $500 pool plus collectibles on the line, three tracks, one open door.
And if you make things: we have an open POIDH bounty for the best ZABAL Gamez ad. Make one, claim the bounty, and we will run it. https://poidh.xyz/base/bounty/1180
To everyone who showed up, taught, asked a question, or just listened in - thank you. That is the whole thing. One week down. Insert Coin.
BetterCallZaal from the ZAO Team