Hello World!

This blog has been a long time coming. Of course there's been multiple attempts, but none have really stuck. But, now that 2025 is ending, it's time I finally make my blog stick; after all, I had planted the flag back in September!

So here goes another attempt, and for the first post, let's go over the blog itself and few of the projects in the pipeline.

Blog Architecture

The current blog architecture is quite simple. I write in MDX files, which are then rendered using Tailwind Typography and deployed via Vercel. The reason for MDX was simple ~ I wanted to write markdown, and also be able to enable complex functionality via React components. This blog architecture will be replicated for the /projects route, and perhaps for the /pictures route as well. Hence, having the ability to include components was a must.

The MDX is compiled using Next's MDX plugin which has the added advantage of being able to use frontmatter or yaml like syntax to define some metadata. The frontmatter lets me do one more thing, not worry about a database. All the content is part of the repository itself, and there is no overhead of syncing with a database.

Having said that, I do maintain a couple JSON files that store subsets of the full metadata (from the frontmatter) - A "global" content.json that serves as an index, and in the future to enable search; and an "inner" routing.json that helps with slug management. I am not sure if this is the right way to go about this, but for now, it works.

The final piece that ties this whole thing together are a couple of scripts that help with syncing and validating the metadata. The sync script adds timestamps to the frontmatter, and syncs the metadata with the two JSON files. The validate script validates that the metadata is consistent across the three files (the MDX and the two JSON files). These scripts can be run manually, or as a convenience, the sync script is run as a pre-commit hook, while the validate script is run whenever a PR is opened from the draft branch to the master branch as a GitHub Action.

So, for a new post, I do the following:

1. git switch draft & git merge origin/master
2. Create a new MDX file and write
3. git add ... & git commit ... & git push origin draft
4. Open a PR and write some description about the post for future reference, if wanted.
5. Merge, provided there are no issues, and everything is live!

This greatly simplifies the process of writing new posts, which should increase the probability of me keeping up with the posts. To that end, I shall also now commence my series of "What did you get done this week" as a way of keeping myself accountable and to not leave this tweet hanging.

Current Projects

Now, let's talk about the multiple projects I am juggling in parallel. To an extent, these all are related to or a part of khaaliDimaag, so they are not entirely mutually exclusive. All of the projects are blockchain based, and some have actually being in "ideation" for a few years before I actually started building them. The onus to actually build them was seeing the response to a pitch at an AI bootcamp at the start of the year, and since then, there's been no looking back!

The sections below provide a brief overview of the projects along with any links and any potential timelines:

Unhinged

Unhinged came about from a conversation with a friend at a bar, while talking about Tinder, and specifically what it would mean if matches occured on left swipes instead of right; ie, what if we connected two people who were disinterested in each other? This idea was also partly informed by the graphs depicting echo chambers in 2018 by this study. I had always wondered if there can be a mechanism for making bridges between the echo chambers, so to speak. From there, add in incessant posting of "hot takes" on X and inspiration from Surrounded by Jubilee, and Unhinged was born!

So, Unhinged is a social game / app for having debates on "unhinged" takes. I posted a small thread on the idea and its features as a form of documentation for future me. My first attempt at building it was at ETHGlobal New York 2025 in August and then another at Base Batches 002 in September. However, these events served more to refine the idea and elicit feedback, as opposed to actually shipping the project. The current plan is to build it sometime early next year. Ideally, the project can be ready for public release by ETH Conf in June.

Token Tuner

Token Tuner is a fun project that began as a concept after noticing the "Elon candle" in 2021, (a single noticeable candle when Elon posted about Tesla buying $1.5B worth of bitcoin). The concept was, can we trade strategically so as to draw images on the trading charts themselves? And thus, token tuner was born!

So, Token Tuner is a social trading game, where the goal is to draw a certain image on a trading chart by buying and selling the asset at the appropriate time. Initially, I wanted to do any image but the math of that is really hard, especially if I want to keep most things onchain. So, the first version will have a fixed equation based on the unit arch with some tweakable parameters to make the curve pointier or rounder as well as shifting the peak left or right. The curve is refreshed daily, and the "winner" of the previous day gets to decide the curve params of today.

The plan currently is to build Token Tuner and release an alpha version as a part of the x402hackathon.

Semicolon Fingers

Semicolon Fingers holds a special place in my heart. The core idea behind the project is to leverage mechanism design for connecting humans through (personal) stories and perhaps playing a (small) part in addressing the global loneliness epidemic. The idea started forming when I first saw Alan Trotter's website and discovered telescopic text, or expandable text, afforded to us by the internet. At the same time I was learning more about blockchains, and I wondered if each click (to reveal the next chunk of text) could be considered a "mining event". The final addition to this concept was the idea that we see the world not as it is but as we are, a phrase I probably heard while doomscrolling on YouTube.

With the amalgamation of these ideas, Semicolon Fingers was born. So, Semicolon Fingers is a platform / network where users share (deeply) personal stories, which get assigned an emotion, mapped to a colour. Other users can read these stories, discovering them by their colour rather than their author and as they read, new tokens are "mined" for the writer of the story. But wait, how does the emotion assignment take place? That's where another dimension gets added and an experiment in decentralized AI comes in! Taking Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions as a base, the network trains a sentiment analysis engine using (incentivized) feedback from the readers!

The first iteration of this project was a proof of concept for telescopic text, using some poems I had written as a part of a Creative Writing course in college. A more serious build happened during ETH Denver 2025 where this was selected as a Top 10 project under the Impact + Public Goods category. Since then the project was somewhat benched until ETHOnline 2025 where a lot of the project was formalized (but not shipped). There are still some open questions around the tokenomics of the project that are a blocker. That being said, the goal is to ship this within a couple of months of 2026!

Here's also an old preview of the project, if interested. About 80% of the content will remain the same.

dApp Ideas

dApp Ideas is more DeSci focused. The motivation behind this project is to enable tracking self experiments in a scientifically "useful" manner. I often find myself performing small experiments all the time, with anything really, be it food, technology, music, etc., but not in a rigorous manner. dApp Ideas exists to solve this problem. After all, the only difference between doing science and fucking around, is writing it down! So, dApp Ideas is the project to help me "write it down".

With that humble seed, dApp Ideas hopes to grow into an ambitious tree. The core mechanism that I believe will drive its growth is its integration with Story Protocol and its Programmable IP License. The "trial" data from the self experiments becomes IP that researchers can request for large scale studies. The studies themselves are a [derivative] IP asset, of all the data it includes. When this study becomes commercially useful, royalty flows back to the original participants of the study!

What if there is no commercial use? Well, the study becomes public regardless and fosters a culture of open science and shared knowledge. I firmly believe that ideas and knowledge should be and remain free. And what if there is no trial data available? Well, that's where the dApp part of the project comes in. Researchers are urged to adapt their theory into a dApp and distribute it to the network. The core mechanism design of the network should ensure sufficient participation.

Finally, a desire behind this project is also to study the claims of ancient "wisdom" and contextualize the bygone learnings in a modern era. A small proof of concept is currently in development for Story Protocol's Surreal World Assets Hackathon but a full scale alpha version is planned for the PL Genesis Hackathon in January.

Dash Mon[k]ey

Now Dash Mon[k]ey is another fun project. The objective of this project is to create an onchain embodiment of your financial health. This project was born from a desire to externalize my monkey brain and to get some control on my finances across multiple accounts and wallets. Another inspiration was the tamagotchi craze of the late 90s; and a final desire was to explore algorithmic trading.

The central piece in Dash Mon[k]ey is a monkey that is affected by your financial data. So, if the monkey notices that you are ordering a lot of food delivery from fast food joints, the monkey would get fat; or if you have too many club visits, the monkey gets some liver damage. Conversely, if you eat healthy, the monkey starts glowing! Effectively, the monkey is you, but a few steps down on the path you are taking. If you do not like where you're headed, you should probably change direction and reverse course. Or going back to the tamagotchi inspiration, what this project is trying to convery is, you want to take care of the tamagotchi, but the only way to do so, is to build better habits yourself. Here is a very early preview of the project from back in May.

There are a few other experiments I am trying with this project, that of decentralized ocr, and an agentic ui; details of which are perhaps best suited elsewhere. I have been pitching the idea at various times over the year ~ here is the original pitch from Agent Camp in February and here is a more recent pitch from November. I have also tried to build components of this project over various hackathons in the past year such as Alliance's MVP3 (same as the early preview above), the inaugral PL Genesis hackathon and encode club's Denver hackathon.

Not sure when this will be built finally, but likely after the projects listed above.

khaaliDimaag

Finally, all these projects are interoperable, and I have decided to call the meta layer khaaliDimaag, from the two hindi words khaali and Dimaag. khaaliDimaag is also a larger concept / brand / project defined as operating between the two ends of the spectrum ~ from only the brain, to the empty brain. If interested, you can see more on the naming choice here.

A small note about the interoperability: One final state of this idea is the combination of the three projects ~ Dash Mon[k]ey, Semicolon Fingers, and dApp Ideas. Dash Mon[k]ey provides the embodiment and financial+lifestyle data, Semicolon Fingers provides the thoughts and inner workings of the mind, and dApp Ideas provides the tangible, real world data; and when all these components combine, we can ask questions like "With this lifestyle, situation, and thinking, this is my health; why?". This composabilty of blockchains (along with other things) is what makes me hella bullish about crypto!

There are some other aspects to khaaliDimaag as well, and I am currently working on an initial master plan which describes the motivations, goals, and a little bit of the technical side of things, loosely modelled after the (in)famous Tesla Secret Master Plan.