Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet

Token rewards can boost the income of creators.

They are most useful when they are not just multiplayer but massively multiplayer—in broad use across the internet.

Early delivery and ride-sharing apps hooked into Google Maps.

Interoperability still persists in some categories of internet services. It thrives, notably, in video games where users create “mods”: game remixes or DIY components that can consist of altered art, modified gameplay, randomized game elements, add-ons such as new weapons or tools, and other custom bits.

Collaborative storytelling combines the lessons of Wikipedia with the power of credibly neutral, low take-rate blockchain networks that reward fans with ownership over their creations. The way this works most commonly in practice is that users receive tokens in proportion to their contribution to the narrative corpus. The resulting intellectual pro

The collective set of code repositories make up a branching tree of billions of interconnected ideas created by millions of people, most of whom have never met, yet who work collaboratively to advance the global store of knowledge.

Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, calls this idea “fantasy Hollywood,” drawing an analogy to fantasy football. The model turns fans into active participants, and in this case they are actually in the game, not imagining it.

Harnessing fandom is a powerful way to market new story universes without spending millions on advertising.

Building on a corporate network was like building on a broken foundation. The term of art to describe this hazard of the new era: platform risk.

A better description is that blockchains are a new class of computer, one you can’t put in your pocket or on your desk, as you might with a smartphone or laptop. Nevertheless, blockchains fit the classic definition of computers. They store information and run rules encoded in software that can manipulate that information.