Lore is the shared story, symbolism, and collective memory that binds a community together. It cannot be bought, and for lore to endure, it must have a community that is deeply invested in its evolution. The most powerful lores are an open invitation for communities to co-create their mission and destiny together, and unsung heroes that nurture it all are the lorebuilders. Their motivations may vary; some are just “doing it for the bit,” while others have a strongly rooted mission within them driving their action. No matter the reason, what all lorebuilders have in common is that they see whatever they are lorebuilding as a contribution to something bigger than their selves.

At the same time, there are lorebreakers, the polar opposite of lorebuilders. Lorebreakers are driven by ego and view lore as a reservoir of energy to extract from instead of contribute to. They may appear and act similar to lorebuilders, but with enough time, their true motivations reveal themselves. Instead of seeing themselves as a part of the story, lorebreakers view themselves as the story and will not hesitate to betray the lore if it furthers their personal interests.

Since lorebuilding is a newly coined concept, it is vital that we stay vigilant and set clear lines separating lorebuilders and lorebreakers. By setting these boundaries, it will be much easier to distinguish between the two when the line is crossed, which is the primary motivation in writing this article. Between all the characteristics that make up two diametric forces, what is most important to remember is that successful lorebuilders are guardians who craft a lasting cultural memory while lorebreakers are leeches who cannot see beyond the horizon of their urges and siphon the lore until their is no vitality left.

What Makes a Lorebuilder

A lorebuilder is an individual who listens, embodies, and extends mythos with their community. As I said in my last article, lorebuilders “identify emerging ideas and understand their historical context while taking in collective sentiments, and weaving them into a coherent and compelling narrative that invites others to contribute to. They are the lore’s prophets. Skilled lorebuilders do not dictate a direction; they listen, act as stewards to it while remaining responsive to the lore’s natural evolution.” It’s crucial to emphasize here that lorebuilders are not the loudest in the room or always the most visible; they are intentional with their words and actions, and are often the ones doing the work in the background, keeping the flame alive when no one else is paying attention. What those words and actions are varies, but they share a common thread of characteristics that they are rooted in.

Lorebuilders, by nature, have extreme awareness and intuition. They understand their lore’s historical context and the past forces that make it relevant and powerful. They read the moods and sentiments from the people around them, which informs their next moves, and can discern what inspires them to take meaningful action. Lorebuilders intuitively feel what is mythic and recognize profound moments and actions, both big and small, and amplify them accordingly. Lorebuilder awareness is, at its core, pulled forward by a vision, observing the lore as a living story playing out over the long arc of time.

Lorebuilders are inherently selfless and have high integrity. They suspend their ego and carry themselves as humble stewards of the community, acting in service to the lore rather than the lore serving them. Lorebuilders understand that the lore is a collective endeavor, shaped by many and is constantly shifting based on the tides of broader narratives and moods. They know that their actions speak louder than their words; it’s not essential to be known, they let their contributions talk for them.

Lorebuilders take initiative. They act without being told, and feel a sense of duty to the advancement of the lore. Initiatives can come in all forms and can be symbolic (meme creation, solidifying icons), narrative (writings, canonization of moments, character creation), ideology (public stance, values), or ritual (events, habits, repeated gestures), focused. Skilled lorebuilders are acutely aware when it is time to be active and when it is time to sit back. Initiative doesn’t mean that the lore needs to be forced; it means rising to the occasion when the time is right. The more initiatives created, the more the lore density expands and grows.

Lorebuilders are patient and resilient, recognizing that lore takes time to form and take root in the hearts and minds of the community. Any good lore is molded by bonding experiences, whether it be laughs, struggles, or triumphs. There is no silver bullet to build lore, it’s never done overnight. It must be built brick by brick, initiative by initiative, and with enough time, a fortress forms that can withstand even the most adversarial of conditions.

In the end, no matter what they do or how they carry themselves, lorebuilders see themselves as a part of the lore like a note in a grand symphony or a stitch in the mythic tapestry, unnoticed on it’s own yet essential to the shape of the whole.

Satoshi: The Model Lorebuilder

Satoshi Nakamoto was not just the founder of Bitcoin; he set the standard for all lorebuilders after him. No matter how much of a technical marvel Bitcoin was, it would not have survived without a lore that pulled in a die-hard community of believers into it’s orbit after it’s inception.

Satoshi was acutely aware of the historical context that created the conditions for Bitcoin to come into being. The Cypherpunk Moment of the 90s served as the ideological foundation for Bitcoin. It seeded the original dream of freedom through code and the belief that encryption is a personal and collective sovereignty tool. From that era, projects such as b-money and Bit Gold laid the conceptual groundwork for digital money, yet, it was not until later that the double-spend problem was solved that it became computationally and economically feasible for Bitcoin to exist. By combining all these advancements in cryptography and distributed systems while staying true to the cypherpunk ethos, Satoshi had all the ingredients to cook a trustless, self-sustaining protocol of digital value transfer. All he needed next was the right catalyst.

Enter the 2008 Financial Crisis. Governments bailed out financial giants over the average person and printed trillions from quantitative easing. These actions created widespread disillusionment and warped incentives; profits were privatized, yet the losses were socialized. The systematic failure of the financial system and public trust in broader insitutions created the ideal conditions for Satoshi to release his whitepaper on Halloween in 2008.

Satoshi’s Vision was clear: create a peer-to-peer, decentralized alternative to state-controlled money. No banks, governments, or middle men, just people transacting with each other with cryptographic trust securing it all. There was no central server, no one individual to hold accountable, just an open-source network that transcended borders that allowed anyone to participate.

That participation was not limited to the technical work of running a full node or contributing to the code, but to actively participating in the community and social layer of Bitcoin. For example, Bitcoin Talk, Bitcoin’s forum, was ground zero for Satoshi not only to share his thoughts and reasoning but for him to start shepherding the community around him that would collective establish cultural norms and refine Bitcoin’s core tenets.

On the forum, the philosophical underpinnings that Satoshi evangelized and the reception of them by the community were just as important, if not more important, than his code. The hard cap of 21 million Bitcoin to ever be mined ingrained a culture of scarcity that forever protects the community from the tyranny of fiat and the money printing of central banks that was never consented upon by the populace. In addition, the principles of trustlessness, sovereignty, permissionlessness, neutrality, antifragility, and pragmatism were all embedded in Bitcoin’s culture early and set the stage for its evolution in the years to come.

By setting himself to the highest standard, Satoshi was an example for others to follow. Satoshi was anonymous and never sought attention for himself. It is not a coincidence that “we are all Bitcoin” is a common mantra; that’s what Satoshi wanted: for everyone to play a part in its development, and that Bitcoin was bigger than any one person. When they passed on Bitcoin to the community, they opened the floor for new lorebuilders to emerge and advance Bitcoin forward into the future.

The 1 million Bitcoin untouched in Satoshi’s wallet is Satoshi’s most powerful statement; no matter the billions of dollars it is worth, it is irrelevant as it is measured against a fiat currency system that they created an escape hatch to exit. If it were ever sold, it would be antithetical to what Satoshi stood for, would destroy Bitcoin, and make him a lorebreaker.

Since leaving Bitcoin and society without a trace, Satoshi has become a mythical figure to millions worldwide who look towards his actions for guidance, and ultimately, the prime example for all lorebuilders after him to follow.

Lorebreakers and Their Consequences

Lorebreakers are individuals who extract and corrupt lore for their own selfish interests and manipulate the communities that they are apart of to do so. They are the false prophets, posing themselves as saviors and present themselves in an almost mythic fashion, only for them to fall from grace in a manner of biblical proportions. Time and time again, people in crypto have shown themselves to be susceptible to lorebreakers. It’s human nature to look towards a messiah; everyone is looking toward someone to follow, and this tendency is what all too often gets taken advantage of. If we are going to grow and evolve as an industry, we must have a better eye to spot lorebreakers and have the courage to call them out.

Lorebreakers are ego-driven and put themselves first. They are motivated by personal glory and care most about how others perceive them. They think in terms of “my” instead of “our” and are self-referential in their language. For example, they would say things along the lines of “Look at me, I’m a visionary” instead of “Look at what we are building together.”

Lorebreakers are short-term opportunists and toxic mercenaries by nature. They ride the story only as long as it serves them and are quick to betray it if a better opportunity comes along. Lorebreakers have no backbone or set beliefs and will say anything to please the crowd. Rather than building upon myth, they exploit it, hijacking the lore to twist it ultimately for their own personal gain.

Lorebreakers come off as sterilized and inauthentic. They are robotic in their prose, coming off as hollow and superficial rather than offering anything of substance. They over-optimize for metrics and theatrics instead of substance and naturally listening to where the lore pulls itself towards.

Ultimately, lorebreakers try to extract from myth as quickly as possible and leave communities in ruin and disarray. At the same time, lorebuilders build upon the myth over epochs, allowing those patient enough in the community to rise and ascend together.

SBF: The Ultimate Lorebreaker

One of the most notorious lorebreakers in recent memory was none other than Sam Bankman-Fried, or SBF for short. From a lorebuilding framework, he did many things correctly to build up the lore for himself and FTX/Alameda. He came from a prestigious background, MIT and Jane Street, and originally got into crypto arbitraging Bitcoin in Asia. He presented himself as the disheveled genius founder who slept on a beanbag and lived frugally, but it was all a calculated performance. SBF’s philosophical framework of Effective Altruism emphasized doing the most good by any means put him and his actions on a moral high ground. Following him and the lore he built were copypastas and canon events that he was a part of, whether it be him coming in to “save” Sushiswap from Chef Nomi, or him declaring that “he would buy all the SOL he wants for $3” just to name a few.

SBF solidified outside recognition, raising hundreds of millions for FTX from VCs such as SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, Temasek, BlackRock, etc., and established himself as a voice of legitimacy to institutions of power. He met with regulators, testified in front of Congress, and positioned himself as an “acceptable face” for crypto. Crypto Twitter was hypnotized by the myth with accounts like Autism Capital and others glamorizing his image and efforts for years.

Yet the signs of lorebreaking were all there. First off, SBF between his business and political endeavors was rebuilding the system that Bitcoin and crypto were supposed to disrupt and replace it with him as the cult of personality. Ironincally, he cozied up to the very institutions that Satoshi tried to break away from but many chose to ignore it whether they were charmed or if it was in their interest to do so. SBF was opaque in his dealings and structure, especially with the relationship between Alameda and FTX, which were essentially the same entity.

From arena right names in Miami to plastering his face all over SF ads saying that he is “in on crypto to make a global impact for good”, SBF mimicked legitimacy while undermining the mythos crypto was built on. He wrapped himself in the language of altruism, decentralization, and ethics as a facade to further his own personal and political goals.

As a lorebreaker, SBF saw crypto as an industry to be extracted from rather than a space to build upon. He fed off the lore to empower himself and his cronies while leaving many in ruin when his empire came crashing down in November 2022, when FTX filed for bankruptcy. SBF was found guilty of numerous crimes and is currently serving a 25-year federal prison sentence and was ordered to forfeit over $11 billion in assets for misappropriating billions of dollars in FTX customer deposits to support Alameda, purchase real estate, make political contributions, and more. We were lucky he was caught; if SBF had gone further, he could have been the Trojan horse that unraveled everything this space was built on.

Conclusion

Communities live and die by their lore, and the lore lives and dies by the lorebuilders who pick up the mantle to drive it forward. Lorebuilding has always been around; it is only now that we have come to define it and are still distinguishing between lorebuilders and lorebreakers. Lore is the lifeblood of the community, and while lorebuilders are the sages that supercharge it, lorebreakers are the vampires that suck it dry.

Lore is never neutral and is in a constant state of being shaped and molded by the community. If good lorebuilders are not there to defend the lore, then it makes it susceptible to exploitation. The future of any project is not driven by the code or how much it raises, but by empowering those who tend to build its myth.

Today, being a founder is romanticized in the same way being an athlete is. But we don’t need any more founders raising massive rounds or more VCs trying to fund them. What we need are more stewards and loreweavers, mythkeepers and humble shepherds doing their part in keeping the lore alive, defneding it from outside forces that seek to expropriate from it. To do this, you don’t have to come in the flashiest way, I would discourage that; to be a lorebuilder, all you have to do is care and step into your role accordingly.

Ultimately, every lore lives on not because it was loudly told, but because enough people quietly chose to carry it forward and protect it from lorebreakers. And like a pulse, the lore continues to beat on through its community, memes, icons, symbols, and canons into the future.

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