Timour Kosters

What do we mean by “decentralization,” anyway? It’s a capacious term, and in the past few years it’s been tossed around more freely than ever. Flocks of birds, free-market economies, cities, peer-to-peer computer networks: these are all considered examples of decentralization. Yet so, too, in other contexts, are the American public-school system

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Quotes:

“I’m talking to you,” he began, “because the old shit doesn’t work anymore.”

The established patterns for releasing music, going on tour, and putting work into culture, he explained, were no longer relevant. The infrastructure, the audiences, and the money just weren’t there.

“I don’t know where things are going,” he continued, “But I know the

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Don’t follow the fad:  “We were a bit contrarian. At the time, it was all about the Lean Startup, getting early customer validation and failing fast. This book making the rounds called ‘ The Four Steps to the Epiphany ’ espoused this lean company development model, where you put out a super rough prototype to get to know the customer and quickly

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Companies with poor unit economics found themselves propelled by aggressive venture dollars (which themselves were propelled by a low-interest-rate environment). Those companies then turned those dollars into aggressive customer acquisition. Until recently, the market rewarded growth at all costs.

The last decade showed that questionable business models can subsist for a long time (and even flourish) when capital is abundant. Thirteen years after its founding, Uber is still figuring out how to be profitable: the company’s gross margins actually declined seven percentage points over the past three years, and the net profit margin is -3%.

Digital Object Applications

For the first time in human history, blockchains empower any digital object to enjoy the properties of verifiable scarcity, durability, divisibility, and globally networked markets.

As a result, these internet-optimized objects now have the same or greater potential to become globally networked as a (1) product/service;... See more

What we’re seeing is AI emerge from the infrastructure layer to the application layer—the parts of technology that everyday people interact with.

What role will humans have in this future? - Perhaps when conflict arises - There will be 80/20 for all types of work - 80% of governance decisions will be automated. These will be the non-controversial decisions - We will each likely have personal AIs that represent us in each of the communities that we are a part of - 20% of decisions will get... See more

Andy Bromberg: The wisdom of crowds is giving way to the “wisdom of communities.” In a world of ever-greater complexity, no one person can possibly make sense of all the signals and all the noise — from a single, static vantage point. A networked group is required to adapt to this new world... People are no longer being polled in isolation but... See more