1,000 Nouns DAOs with Tyson Battistella, CTO of Zora

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 @cd