Alex White

Your favorite band has just announced their nationwide tour. Should you pay to join their fan club and get in on the pre-sale? No, you decide to wait. But the on-sale date arrives, and the site is jammed. You can’t get on—and the concert is sold out in six minutes. What happened? What now?

This is the great exciting and invigorating puzzle today. How does a successful company leverage decentralized databases, their novel capital structure (token cap table), their different regulation, and fresh ways of acquiring users into a massive business?I don’t know yet, but I do know when it comes, we won’t call it a web3 company.

In a few years, data startups, consumer apps, and software vendors will rise and grow - the same as today.Some of them will employ the four fundamental innovations of web3: permanent ownership, paying customers with “equity,” regulatory arbitrage, and new governance models (DAOs).

“A clear, comprehensive look at a murky business.” —The Wall Street Journal

But it’s also incredibly lonely. And gruelling. And slow.

Inventing the future is the most incredible job I could ever imagine. There is magic and purpose and hope.