America Onchain: "You've Got Scale?"

So it’s interesting to consider what the Steve Case, Ted Leonsis and Jan Brandt of today would build on the blockchain. To begin with, we can be fairly confident that it would focus on NFTs. Why? Because even though we’re early in its development, it is already evident that collecting and trading ‘things’ is more compelling to mainstream users and ... See more

In the early 1990s, adventurous internet hobbyists were faced with the challenges of setting up modems, installing socket drivers, and finding and navigating servers with unique and obscure commands. Each of these steps required self motivation and was in itself a hurdle. Each step, offered with minimal support, was a barrier to adoption. Like toda... See more

It’s difficult now to remember how confusing computers, let alone the Internet, were for most users in the mid-90s. Even by 1997, only 35% of US households had a computer. For many of those early adopters, the value proposition of the Internet, most importantly email, was compelling, but ‘getting online’ was so time-consuming and complicated that i... See more

For decades we’ve assumed that online items were less valuable than physical ones, and internet participation was more about connecting the physical to the digital and managing your physical life online. With NFTs, that responsibility has changed. Not only has the digital world been completely untethered from the physical world, but we are now able... See more

For consumers, the difficulty of participating in crypto services is certainly similar to the Internet of the early 90s. Two exceptional companies stand out as being easy enough to recommend to non-crypto friends: Dapper and Coinbase. But we are very much still in a pre-consumer phase of Web3. While there are games emerging (see: Axie), and pockets... See more

From this perspective, it doesn’t matter how easy you make accessing ‘the blockchain,’ if for most people there’s no imminent imperative to do so. On the other side, enthusiasts might argue that onboarding problems are being slowly but surely solved by the crypto community, and that no dramatic simplification, no ‘dumbing down’ from outsiders, woul... See more