Memory, Agency, and the Open Social Future
On skipping the cold start and building apps that remember who you are.
Kei Kreutler recently tweeted that what many mistake for simply "increased agency" is actually something more fundamental: a direct increase in legible memory distributed throughout our environments. This distributed memory creates high-context spaces that feel infinitely more agential. They empower us to take action and do more.
This observation perfectly captures why I'm so excited to be building Tapestry, and why I believe people are underrating open social graphs more broadly. By making social data open, composable, and accessible, we're creating environments rich with distributed memory—environments that naturally enhance human agency.
The Power of Distributed Memory
When memory isn't confined to individual minds but distributed across accessible systems, it creates a fundamentally different relationship between people and their environments. Traditional platforms trap social relationships in walled gardens, fragmenting our digital memories across disconnected systems. This fragmentation diminishes agency by forcing us to constantly rebuild context as we move between spaces – we’re left rebuilding environments instead of asking what we can build on top of existing ones. Our imaginations and ability to build are stunted.
By making social relationships portable and composable, they transform our digital environment into one rich with accessible memory and context.
Tapestry is imagination technology.
Why "Vibe Coding" Needs Distributed Memory
"Vibe coding" platforms—Bolt, Replit, v0, etc.—are severely limited without distributed memory. These platforms promise to democratize creation by making it more intuitive, socially driven, and efficient. However, without access to rich social context, they operate in a vacuum.
Consider what happens when a creator wants to build an experience that resonates with a particular community, like Lore or Opinions.fun.
For example, Lore uses Tapestry to greet users by an existing Tapestry username the moment they connect their wallet. This quick access to global memory enabled Lore to skip username/profile picture/bio onboarding flow entirely and jump their users straight into the core action of funding their wallet and inviting friends, without sacrificing personalization.
Opinions taps into the shared memory of Tapestry to show mutual the social overlap between opinion tokens. Tapping into this shared memory allows the true social nature of the product to shine and was easy to build
Without distributed social memory, they're starting from zero, guessing at what might work rather than building on established relationships and patterns. Their creations exist without context, without the tapestry of connections that give them meaning.
Open social graphs solve this problem by providing the crucial context these platforms need. When creators can access and build upon existing social relationships, they create experiences that feel inherent and meaningful. The "vibe" isn't manufactured, it emerges organically from real relationships and interactions.
For distributed memory to truly enhance agency, it must be:
Open - Available to all creators, not just those with privileged access
Composable - Able to be combined in novel ways to create new forms of value
Accessible - Easy to integrate into diverse applications and experiences
Closed systems ultimately limit what's possible by gatekeeping access to social context. When social memory is monopolized, creators are dependent on those platforms' to operate with goodwill and stability.
Tapestry: Building the Foundation for Open Social Memory
Tapestry is positioned to fill this role as the foundation for distributed social memory for several key reasons:
Built on Solana: Tapestry leverages Solana's sub-second finality and low transaction costs to make social interactions economically viable at global scale. This technical foundation ensures that social data remains consistent and immediately available.
Universal Aggregation: Rather than competing with existing platforms, Tapestry aggregates social signals from everywhere—web2 platforms, Farcaster, other chains, and Solana itself—making them accessible through a single API. This approach recognizes that value comes from making social data more accessible, not less. We don’t own the social graph, we aggregate it to empower you.
Developer Experience: Developers can access deep social context through single API calls. Every new application launches with immediate access to existing relationships, solving the cold start problem that plagues new platforms.
Agency Through Connection
At its core, Tapestry empowers builders and users by connecting them with their people – the right people and information at the right time. Traditional platforms treat users as isolated individuals who must rebuild their identity with each new application. Tapestry recognizes that our digital identities aren't just data, they are years of cultivated connections, interactions, and preferences. Opinions and Lore are just a couple of examples of how agency is empowered, because developers don’t need to start from scratch.
By making relationships portable, Tapestry transforms how people experience new applications. Instead of the frustrating "cold start" of empty feeds and tedious profile setups, users step into environments already populated with connections.
In essence, Tapestry isn't just giving builders access to social data, it's giving them access to their human relationships that give their use of technology meaning.
What is built on those foundations is up to the individual builder, but we know for certain that every builder is better off building on strong, social foundations.