Focus too much on utility (get too big), and you kill the signal. Focus too much on signal itself without bolting on utility, then it becomes like Harvard — people know it has no purpose other than the signal and that itself weakens the signal. It becomes a bubble.
To connect the dots, the “iPhone 1.0” of the Web3 ecosystem was Bitcoin, first conceptualized in 2008 as a decentralized, alternative banking system – and then rolled out via the first blockchain in 2009.
I’m thinking out loud about this, but there’s something interesting about the idea that social-media platforms now create this real distance, in part by being text-heavy. And that distance can lead you to say things or do things you’d never do in the physical world. It also lowers the bar for engagement, which means that firing off a shitty tweet... See more
All in all, real positional scarcity businesses take time to develop, especially loyalty businesses that are difficult to get off the ground before a retail or consumption environment is fully understood. But I’ll leave with this thought: as the mobile internet, e-commerce, and the transformation of retail continues onward, I think there’s an... See more
But what does ownership mean in this context? The presence (and control) of a fee switch that can be turned on across the protocol. This creates a dynamic called the "threat of the fee". This means that owners of the Hyperstructure have the right to turn that fee on across the protocol at the base level at any time via a vote. It’s the threat of... See more
Replicating everything AWS or Azure or Google Cloud can do on a blockchain isn’t redundant because the decentralized collective “ownership” and governance of blockchain networks supports security, privacy, stability, and scalability features that Web 2.0 applications running on centralized corporate clouds can’t replicate because they are... See more