Probably Nothing 152: Welcome to 2025

We're back from the holidays and excited about 2025!

Let's start the year with a new episode of DevNTell and a few job offers. If you feel particularly motivated for 2025, check out the mentorship program!

The first Community win of 2025 goes to @Narb for his constituency in hosting DevNTell. Congratulations!

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​This week's episode of DevNtell will feature how to get started with Hyperlane. Eda Adturk, Developer Advocate at Hyperlane, will present Hyperane on the show. Hyperlane is a permissionless interoperability protocol for cross-chain communication.

​Viewers of this DevNTell will learn about Hyperlane, why it exists, and how to get started building with it. 

Register here to get notified when the show starts. Remember to subscribe to the DevNtell podcast on Spotify and Apple.

We are asking builders, visionaries, and organizers to help us shape the D_D Mentorship Programme for 2025. Our mentorship is about learning together and building with purpose. It connects talent to real needs and opens doors for collaboration, innovation, and impact.

Make your input felt by filling out the survey form before the deadline of January 9.

January:

• @K4y1s became the new DAO Newsletter Editor, replacing Sylva.

• The #30DaysOfText campaign encouraged members to share Web3 insights on Twitter.

• The NEAR x D_D Abstraction Hacks 2024 hackathon awarded a 1,000 USDC prize pool.

• Members rejected a proposal to purchase an Annual NFT Membership.

• Scroll launched the Quill and Scribes competition with $6,200 in prizes for articles on zero-knowledge.

February:

• DAO YouTube channel surpassed 50,000 views.

• Grove provided member perks.

• Hiro x D_D partnership began to teach Bitcoin smart contract development.

• Academy V2 launched.

• Pocket Network x D_D hosted Builder’s Lego Mixer in Denver.

March:

• Hiro hosted a hackathon and a thread competition, announcing winners later that month.

April:

• Founder Nader Dabit appeared on DevNTell to discuss EigenLayer.

• "Meet the Members" show by Billyjitsu debuted.

• AR.IO partnered with the DAO to promote Permaweb decentralization.

• SAGA delegated 7,000,000 tokens to the DAO.

• DAO Bounty Board launched.

• The newsletter transitioned from Substack to Paragraph.

• D_D x AR.IO Thread competition began.

May:

• AR.IO thread competition winners announced.

• 50 free Consensus passes distributed to members.

• TON Open League Hackathon held.

June:

• Arweave tracks launched on D_D Academy.

• DAO's X account reached 100k followers.

July:

• Hosted EthCC hangout in Brussels.

• Aptos x D_D writing competition with $10k in prizes launched.

• Aptos workshops conducted.

August:

• Aptos writing competition winners announced.

• D_D Arweave Gateway went live.

• Arbitrum Collaboration Hackathon featured D_D as a community partner.

September:

• Delegated tIO tokens to the D_D Gateway.

• Writing contest inspired by Vitalik’s essay, offering $1,200 in prizes.

• 100 Decon discount builder passes issued.

October:

• Launched Rootstock course on building Bitcoin apps.

• Rootstock x D_D Grant Program initiated.

November:

• Concluded Aptos writing program.

• Voted and selected winners for Rootstock x D_D small grants.

• Relaunched Vibes Call with a new host.

December:

• Conducted a survey for the mentorship program.

• Hosted Rootstock project showcase.

Last week on DevNTell, Gitroll Co-Founder Jovy Yu and Engineer Ryan Leung were guests in the first show 2025, talking about Gitroll. GitRoll's AI builds data-driven coding portfolios and demonstrates real software skills while eliminating tests, bias, and trivia.

Watch the episode to see Jovy & Ryan showcase how Gitroll highlights developers' skills based on actual code, changing how tech recruitment works today. 

Catch the episode on Spotify.

DevNTell is our longest-running initiative, as old as the DAO itself. 2024 featured a lot of protocols and builders in the show. We have curated our top 10 episodes based on viewership across all of our social media platforms in 2024. 

1. Open SaaS: The free, open-source SaaS boilerplate with superpowers

2. Consensus 2024 by CoinDesk

3. Morph, The Consumer Blockchain 

4. Reown AppKit: an all-in-one toolkit for web3 app

5. Lilypad Network: Serverless Distributed Compute for AI

6. Getting Started with Berachain

7. The decentralized hyper-parallel virtual computer built on Arweave

8. Getting Started with EigenLayer

9. AR.IO: A scalable and modular gateway built for the permaweb

10. Fileverse: privacy-enhancing, on-chain alternative to Google Workspace

Opportunities exist at Orbit for the following roles:

• Full-stack Dev (core frontend)

• Social Media + Community Manager

• DevRel (with technical writing experience)

  Contact @megabyte0x via DM on D_D Discord if you are interested you are interested in any of the roles.

D_D vibes are back with a bang. Every Friday at 6 pm UTC on D_D Discord, the host @rohann06 and members gather on the Developer Voice Channel to yap about nothing and everything as life-changing connections are made during vibes. Drop in and join the conversation if you are free. 

The D_D Academy is a sub-section of Developer DAO tasked with creating educational content for public goods. Are you interested in contributing educational content or development work to the Academy and being rewarded?

Join the Academy sync and find out how you can contribute. Reach out to @piablo.eth or @wolovim to learn how you can contribute as the Academy syncs are back and better. 

Delegate your AR.IO testnet IO tokens (tIO) to our Arweave gateway, as we will share 10% of the rewards with you.

You can delegate your tIO tokens here.

If you don’t have tIO tokens yet, visit the ar.io website to learn how to obtain them.

• A blog post by @bytebot titled Welcome to BuildersArc.

• @megabyte0x hack on learning; watch@megabyte0x record himself while learning about the LUA + SQL template.

How Chinese Lending Firm Cango Became a Bitcoin Mining Powerhouse

Cango, a Chinese auto loan company, made a significant entry into bitcoin mining by acquiring 50 EH/s of mining power for $400 million, making it one of the largest global players in the industry. Partnering with Bitmain for operational support, Cango’s stock surged over 362% in 2024, marking its successful diversification into bitcoin mining and attracting unprecedented market attention.

XRP Overtakes Tether to Become Third-Largest Cryptocurrency

XRP has surpassed Tether (USDT) to become the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, reaching $140 billion after a 13% weekly rally, while USDT's market cap declined amid regulatory challenges in Europe due to MiCA. Experts attribute USDT's decline to competition from yield-bearing stablecoins, secrecy around its reserves, and changing market dynamics, with further shifts in rankings anticipated.