New thing: short-ish video sharing early internal discussions at Variant, for feedback. Get in the arena and tell us why we're wrong :)
This one is too long to post natively here, but we'll endeavor to make the next one <10m!
Feat @alanadlevin@dbarabanderhttps://x.com/jessewldn/status/1969044686053543998
have been actively spending less time on social last month or so; maybe missing some of the more nuance critiques, but what i saw seemed very mid; this is my take on coining media onchain
https://x.com/jessewldn/status/1914479629835845701?s=46
as far as platform shifts go
-internet/ai reorder/unlock *information*
-blockchains reorder/unlock *value*
there’s been much more freedom to innovative on information because free speech/fair use is generally protected in the west—whereas financial value is heavily regulated.
a perspective on why it’s “still early”
Variant Thesis:
Ownership as keystone of user experience, bootstraps networks bigger faster.
Works best when:
1) There is a moral/normative imperative—a movement that people want to participate in. Skin in the game enhances belief, resulting in a more exciting/engaged experience.
Examples: “chancellor on brink,” “world computer”, “open finance/internet capital markets”, “actually open AI” etc.
2) There is a product that people love and intuitively want to own, where skin in the game of investment enhances the experience of using the product, sometimes with additional utility.
Examples (fewer come to mind because regulatory red tape has made it difficult to distribute ownership to product users, as compared with protocols): Digital Art (NFTs), Tesla, Uniswap, Hyperliquid, etc.
If you’re not leaning into one of these two things, ownership may be a really expensive/ineffective way to scale network effects.
Thoughts?
The intersection of crypto x AI is unique in crypto in that there is a steady stream of very high quality AI talent, flowing from big tech, who are learning crypto because they have discovered it is the *only* way to solve the distributed resource problem, which unlocks truly open AI.
Pluralis is one of those cracked teams (5x ML phds from Amazon) who are here to take a real swing a decentralized training of foundation models, owned by users.
