The Ownership Economy: Crypto & the Next Frontier of Consumer Software – Variant

This is the Ownership Economy, and beyond being a positive social endeavor, the platforms building it are able to leverage the strongest form of market incentives to grow network effects.

As user participation becomes evermore mainstream and complex, the next step is platforms that are not only built, operated, and funded by users—but owned by users too.

Just as BitTorrent allowed us to exchange packets of information instantly and without an intermediary, crypto tokens let us distribute value in the same way.

Ownership, via employee stock option plans, has been a powerful tool for incentivizing talented people to dedicate their skills to building startups in Silicon Valley. While this model has been extremely successful, it hasn’t been accessible to all, constrained by geography and legacy financial infrastructure, among other factors. One result is tha... See more