Toys, Secrets, and Cycles: Lessons from the 2000s
I started my internet career in the early 2000s during the dot-com bust. It's hard to picture this now, but the internet was a thing that people used only intermittently, to check email or plan travel or do some research. The average internet user spent about 30 minutes a day online, compared to about 7 hours today. To use the internet, you had to sit down in front of a desktop PC and "log on" (most people still had dial-up), nothing like the always-on, high-speed mobile internet we use ...
Toys, Secrets, and Cycles: Lessons from the 2000s
I started my internet career in the early 2000s during the dot-com bust. It's hard to picture this now, but the internet was a thing that people used only intermittently, to check email or plan travel or do some research. The average internet user spent about 30 minutes a day online, compared to about 7 hours today. To use the internet, you had to sit down in front of a desktop PC and "log on" (most people still had dial-up), nothing like the always-on, high-speed mobile internet we use ...
Collected web3 twitter threads
Why web3 matters Chris Dixon @cdixon There’s a lot of talk lately about the possibility of a prolonged financial downturn, reminiscent of 2008. 2008 was a difficult time for many people. 2,951 9:39 AM • Jun 27, 2022 Composability is to software as compounding interest is to financeBlockchains are the new app storesTokens are a new digital primitive, analogous to the websiteGoing from Web 2 to Web 3 - “Your take rate is my opportunity”The web3 playbook: using token incentives to bootstrap new ...
Collected web3 twitter threads
Why web3 matters Chris Dixon @cdixon There’s a lot of talk lately about the possibility of a prolonged financial downturn, reminiscent of 2008. 2008 was a difficult time for many people. 2,951 9:39 AM • Jun 27, 2022 Composability is to software as compounding interest is to financeBlockchains are the new app storesTokens are a new digital primitive, analogous to the websiteGoing from Web 2 to Web 3 - “Your take rate is my opportunity”The web3 playbook: using token incentives to bootstrap new ...
Some reasons to build your startup in web3
Some reasons to build your startup in web3 🧵 I recently had the chance to meet some great web2 founders considering moving into web3. Web3 is trendy now, so it’s important to cut through the noise and highlight the right long-term reasons to start a web3 project. Here are some good reasons to build a web3 project:ProductWikipedia is simply a better encyclopedia than traditional encyclopedias because it harnesses the knowledge and creativity of its community. DAOs are novel web3 constructs th...
Some reasons to build your startup in web3
Some reasons to build your startup in web3 🧵 I recently had the chance to meet some great web2 founders considering moving into web3. Web3 is trendy now, so it’s important to cut through the noise and highlight the right long-term reasons to start a web3 project. Here are some good reasons to build a web3 project:ProductWikipedia is simply a better encyclopedia than traditional encyclopedias because it harnesses the knowledge and creativity of its community. DAOs are novel web3 constructs th...
Embrace and extend
Bill Gates had a very clever tactic for responding to open alternatives to Microsoft proprietary tech. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish He specifically used these tactics against web1 protocols/standards and open source software. Of course the modern equivalent would be web3. It was a far cleverer tactic than trying to dismiss the tech. He saw the momentum and knew it would be smarter to try to co-opt it vs fight it. Plan for internet “Phase 1 (Embrace): all par...
Embrace and extend
Bill Gates had a very clever tactic for responding to open alternatives to Microsoft proprietary tech. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish He specifically used these tactics against web1 protocols/standards and open source software. Of course the modern equivalent would be web3. It was a far cleverer tactic than trying to dismiss the tech. He saw the momentum and knew it would be smarter to try to co-opt it vs fight it. Plan for internet “Phase 1 (Embrace): all par...
Web3 critics misunderstand decentralization
A recent criticism of web3 is that it isn’t actually decentralized, because there are centralized services in the mix, such as NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, and data availability services like Alchemy. 🧵 This criticism is based on a mistaken understanding of what web3 advocates mean by decentralization. I’ll try to explain. There will be centralized services in web3 just as there were in web1. The key question in web3 is whether the network effects accrue as private goods (as they did in we...
Web3 critics misunderstand decentralization
A recent criticism of web3 is that it isn’t actually decentralized, because there are centralized services in the mix, such as NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, and data availability services like Alchemy. 🧵 This criticism is based on a mistaken understanding of what web3 advocates mean by decentralization. I’ll try to explain. There will be centralized services in web3 just as there were in web1. The key question in web3 is whether the network effects accrue as private goods (as they did in we...
