1,000 Nouns DAOs with Tyson Battistella, CTO of Zora Noun O' Talk

Today I sit down with Tyson, the CTO of Zora. With the launch of Nouns Builder, the create-your-own-DAO tool built by the Zora team, I wanted to get Tyson's insights on the project as well as get to know him and his story. We walk through his path from architecture to software engineering and crypto, how Zora came to be, and even how you can get started learning Solidity.

Noun O' Talk is the podcast all about NounsDAO. The host, Christian, interviews members of the DAO and project builders in the ecosystem. We hear about how they came to Nouns, what they're working on, and what they see for the future of Nouns. You can listen to past episodes at nounotalk.com. Noun O' Talk is produced by brileigh.eth & matthewbrooks.eth and the cover art is by Messhup of Nounsense.

Chapters:
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:59 Welcome
00:01:20 Tyson's path to working in tech
00:03:35 Deep learning and machine learning
00:04:28 Software engineering and the value of quick iteration
00:05:31 Tyson's interest in generative art
00:07:50 Why reading is important to Tyson
00:08:39 Haruki Murakami
00:09:25 The role of reading for Tyson
00:11:23 The parallels between Uber and crypto
00:12:32 Innovation and novel solutions to problems
00:13:37 Tyson's path to smart contract development
00:14:55 Tyson's advice for learning Solidity
00:17:03 Simpson's TV script generator
00:18:24 Hackathon project at Coinbase
00:20:18 Why Tyson wanted to work at Coinbase
00:21:32 Tyson's personal growth while at Coinbase
00:23:59 Meeting the co-founders of Zora
00:26:19 How Jacob convinced Tyson to leave Coinbase and help start Zora
00:30:53 Overview of the Zora ecosystem and tools
00:35:30 The bigger picture for Zora
00:36:18 Zora brand and culture
00:38:54 Zora engineering team
00:39:38 Tyson's role at Zora and managing teams
00:40:45 Tyson's transition from dev to manager
00:43:07 The importance of keeping code readable
00:44:19 The Zora Auction House contract and Tyson's introduction to Nouns
00:47:56 Tyson's favourite part of the Nouns ecosystem
00:50:32 What is Nouns Builder?
00:56:00 What does success look like for Nouns Builder?
00:58:14 Wrap-up

Topics Discussed:
Deep learning and machine learning
Tyson's website (tbts.tl)
Generative art
Haruki Murakami
Solidity
Cryptozombies
Coinbase
Zora
Zora API
Zora ZDK
Zora Engineering
Zora Auction House contract
Nouns Builder

Relevant links:
Follow Christian on Twitter @cdt_eth
Listen to past episodes: nounotalk.com
To learn more about Nouns: nouns center

Credits:
Hosted by Christian (cdt_eth)
Produced by brileigh.eth and matthewbrooks.eth
Cover art by Messhup
Music by Oh Jeremiah