If we create a world of more exclusive groups based on even more exclusive assets what have we really done for humanity?
Is this what we are calling decentralization?
Unlike Spotify, it lacks a payment system, so it has no mechanism to enrich those who participate in its ecosystem. It relies on one single source of income — advertising, whose growth is showing signs of fatigue as monetizable daily usage is starting to plateau.
OK, that makes sense, but there’s a big open question for me. When I read “tokengated commerce” or “x-gated commerce,” the first thing that comes to mind is, “Why in the world would you want to gate your commerce? If you’re selling something, why not reach the widest audience you can? Why not just one-click check out?”
When I worked in machine learning every day, I found a close analogue of this to be very true. A slightly better architecture tended to matter much less than getting better data. Or, at least, once I hit on a reasonable model architecture, I tended to do much better by cleaning and gathering more data than by optimizing the architecture.
By reducing the cost of monitoring and enforcement, royalties and micro-payments can be applied to many other products and industries, no just to songs by famous artists. Suddenly, we can compensate people for their specific contribution to other types of tasks and projects.