The Pareto Funtier

A lot of the early rise of web3 can be seen as the continuation of the trend towards experiences, thrown online in a hurry, but instead of straight spending on experiences and trading money for fun, they’re investing in experiences, increasing money and fun and pushing the Pareto Funtier out.

What if by going to your favorite restaurant enough times, you got to own a table at that restaurant, automatically? What if your club membership was an NFT that you could sell to the next person when you decide to leave instead of giving up your expensive initiation fees?

The most straightforward example here is the play-to-earn gaming movement kicked off by Axie Infinity. Axie is neither the most fun game in the world nor the highest-paying job in the world, but it was able to attract over a million players because it offered more money than the games they were used to playing, and more fun (and often money) than t... See more

You could look at investing in memes as a dumb ponzi that’s bound to lead to disaster, or as a pure distillation of the intersection of money and fun. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

What if some of our most important and culturally-relevant non-profits, which have to spend so much time, energy, and ironically, money fundraising, were owned and governed by DAOs? A treasury backed by real-world assets with a token fueled by narrative upside would be an interesting proposition.

When people talk about web3 merging culture and finance, or “financializing culture,” these are some of the many examples they’re talking about. Financializing sounds like a dirty word, but put another way, it’s giving people a chance to earn money while they do what they find fun.

the Pareto Funtier is the set of options at which you can’t have more fun without making less money or can’t make more money without having less fun.

Granted, that’s a gross oversimplification. I’m using “fun” as a catch-all for a whole lot of things like love, meaning, belonging, enjoyment, challenge, and more, and “money” as some sort of net present value (NPV) of resources acquired as a result of your decisions.

What if sports leagues made it easier for fans to not just own NFTs of highlights, a la Top Shot, but parts of the teams themselves, just for showing up? Attendance is down as the at-home experience keeps getting better, this might be a way to entice people back.

Web3 pushes the Pareto Funtier outwards by baking money into fun things and fun into money things.