Year of the ZABAL - Day 165
Week 2 Recap: the run
GM ZM, and happy Sunday in the Year of the ZABAL.
Week two went deep. If week one was Insert Coin, week two was the run - more sessions, more range, and every one recorded, transcribed, and kept. Miss something live and you have missed nothing. We went from music to media to protocol to legal structure to AI agents, all in one week.
Week 1 Recap: https://paragraph.com/@thezao/year-of-the-zabal-day-158
New here? ZABAL Gamez is The ZAO's three-month build event:
June is workshop month, July is the open build, August is the Finals.
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).
The build is the application. Start here: https://zabalgamez.com/info
Only have a few minutes? Start here:
Watch: WaveWarz with Hurricane Ike - earn from engagement, not streams (the one with video this week): https://zabalgamez.com/recordings/8
Read, if you build: Cassie on the Farcaster protocol - the deepest technical talk of the season: https://zabalgamez.com/recordings/9
Read, if you create: Will T on building KFMEDIA with no code: https://zabalgamez.com/recordings/7
Day 8 - Sopha, and why curation is the point
Chris took us inside Sopha, a Farcaster client built for depth and high signal - an intentional third place, a coffee shop for the writing and art that scrolls past the main feed. His point: curation is the point, and you are not beholden to the algorithm - you build your own lens. He also showed how building your own client is now a few hours of work. Read it: https://zabalgamez.com/recordings/5
Day 9 - owning your music
Joseph Goats made the case for what he calls digital street music: he plays for free, peer-to-peer, so anyone anywhere can support him directly - a model he built when his country had no music industry to plug into. The artist is the node that connects one community to the next. Read it: https://zabalgamez.com/recordings/6
Day 10 - building a media company with no code
Will T of Web3 walked us through building KFMEDIA, a media company that helps creators distribute their work with no code. The honest throughline: you do not have to be a coder to own your stack - when the tool he relied on was shutting down, he learned to build and rebuilt it himself. He laid out the exact three tools KFMEDIA uses to distribute creator media, and KFM Talks, a program that returns 80 to 85 percent of sales to the creator. Read it:
Day 11 - ZABAL Gamez at the WIP Meetup
I took ZABAL Gamez to the WIP Meetup on Thursday - an ecosystem tour, including the ZAO Fractals, and where this all plugs together for builders.
Day 12 - a doubleheader: the protocol, and legal structure for agents
Cassie of Quilibrium gave the deepest technical talk of the season so far - the Farcaster protocol, ins and outs. What "sufficiently decentralized" really meant, the two centralization problems she sees, her Hypersnap fork, and the five North Stars to a million daily actives. The top one: make it possible to build a real client in a weekend. Dense and worth every minute: https://zabalgamez.com/recordings/9
Adam Miller brought two worlds together. MIDAO is the Marshall Islands framework that lets a group - or now a software agent - become a real legal entity, so the people running it are not personally on the hook. And Beta Briefing is his daily-news tool that runs a multi-stage pipeline over your interests and hands back an editorialized briefing in text and audio. Legal structure meets agentic engineering: https://zabalgamez.com/recordings/10
Day 13 - earn from music battles, not streams
And Hurricane Ike showed a new way for musicians to get paid: WaveWarz, head-to-head music battles where the artist earns from engagement, not streams. One artist earned about half a SOL in minutes of a single battle, and you keep your masters, your work, and your audience. Watch it: https://youtu.be/2GLRrILYoo4
Two new things on the site this week
One: a speakers page - every person who has taught this season and exactly what they delivered, recording, transcript, and video, with their profile one click away. https://zabalgamez.com/speakers . Two: you can now comment and like under any recording, straight from Farcaster - drop a thought, ask a question, and the speaker can answer. The conversation lives with the session now.
Tap in live - this week
The week ahead, free and recorded:
POIDH with Kenny, plus we finalize the Best ZABAL Gamez Ad bounty and launch the next - Mon Jun 15, 4pm EST: https://luma.com/9ylnwvyx
Vini App with Chris Dolinsky - Mon Jun 15, 4:45pm EST: https://luma.com/tip89eq3
Empire Builder V3 with Adrian (diviflyy) - Tue Jun 16, 12pm EST: https://luma.com/kaz6hnm4
Farcaster Batches fireside with Jub Jub - Sat Jun 20, 8am EST: https://luma.com/c621slze
Previbecoding with Ali Tiknazoglu - Sat Jun 20, 11am EST: https://luma.com/nlgib8tl
Eden Fractal and the fractal ecosystem with Dan Singjoy - Sat Jun 20, 12pm EST: https://luma.com/tmcmw3o9
Growth through foundations with Dr. Jake - Tue Jun 23, 6pm EST: https://luma.com/6svi31dy
Building Warpee.eth with Adrienne of GM Farcaster - Tue Jun 30, 11:30am EST: https://luma.com/jlv50mcu
The whole calendar is on Lu.ma: https://luma.com/zao
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.
Get ready now:
The Playbook - the full guide to building and shipping your project: 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: six sessions from music to media to protocol to legal structure to AI agents, five full transcripts and WaveWarz on video, a new speakers page, comments on every recording, eight more sessions on the calendar, and a $500 pool plus collectibles on the line for July.
To everyone who taught, asked, watched, or shared this week - thank you. The build is the application. Two weeks down. See you on the next one.
BetterCallZaal from the ZAO Team