Tokens are the best opportunity for users to take back ownership of the internet.

When we eventually become distracted with all the fun we’re having on the socials, network ownership via tokens will protect us from getting rugged. Fixation on token minting without attention to what tokens represent might lead participants to lose sight of the power they have access to. Periods of hype often lead to participants leaving the space with an unclear picture of its inherent utility and resentment due loss of funds.

As we get deeper into the bull market, lets provide some counter balance to the behaviour associated with generic NFT mints and highly speculative memecoin trading. These use cases are all fun and valid for community participation when thoughtfully deployed. For the most part, however, they tend to over-emphasize ownership as a prerequisite to price speculation rather than a tool to leverage for more desirable outcomes in everyday use cases.

The relationship between users and goods has changed over the years, due to users spending overwhelmingly more time on the web. More recently, people are replacing ownership of both physical and digital goods with leasing access to experiences. Examples of this include reduced ownership of cars for more usage of ride-sharing platforms like Uber and less purchasing of music albums for subscriptions to streaming apps like Spotify. These often occur in exchange for convenience, low costs and access to infinitely more options.

We’ve also gotten used to leasing experiences on social media platforms. These gave us convenient access to social engagement via profile pages, activity feeds and interactive posts at no upfront cost. This provided an alternative for us to having to set up and host our own websites, blogs and figuring out all the tooling needed to reproduce the experiences we’d gotten so accustomed to.

These platforms have been responsible for most of the value creation on the internet for the last 15+ years. After a certain user scale is reached, however, the inherent design of these platforms optimize for value extraction rather than creation. Examples of this include unclear algorithm changes that affect user discovery, censorship with unclear guidelines and unreasonable revenue shares, if any, with the creators that are responsible for the revenue generated.

Blockchain based internet networks are designed to optimize for user value creation at any scale, with democratized access to ownership as one of the core features. These networks enable this through the provision of tokens.

Tokens are the interfaces via which users can own things on the internet. They’re underlying design may vary, which had historically meant that different token types had been better suited for different use cases. We've gotten accustomed to the usage of fungible tokens for monetary speculation, as well as in the transaction of goods and services. We’ve used non fungible tokens (NFT’s) for the representation of media, which in turn can be collected, traded and speculated on.

In all cases, users can truly own the thing they hold on the internet, free from the restrictions of intermediaries like banks or brokers. Most importantly, this unlock is a core feature by design. This means that users shouldn’t have to be concerned with how this is implemented, in the same way that users don’t have to be concerned with how to self-host their social media profile page. Tokens in their current form allow for this, and user experiences on top of tokens should make it overwhelmingly easy for users to leverage this when necessary.

Like the token sales that gained attention in 2017 ( the ICO's), the NFT hype of 2021 had similar attention and put emphasis on NFT ownership as the way to participate. Now, fans could support creators by purchasing their NFT backed art, which would also grant them exposure to potential value appreciation. NFT transaction volume flooded the internet, as this new model became gamified and highly speculative.

To be clear, a number of positives came out of this scenario. Creators were able to leverage a new distribution model with built in financial rails. In addition to content received, fans were also granted access to financial markets they would otherwise not have been exposed to. This also, unfortunately, lead to the creation of low quality NFT art in high volumes, in a market of savvy and un-savvy speculators. These were most often pump and dump scenarios similar to the ICO's of 2017.

The convenience unlocked by token minting for democratizing ownership on the internet somehow lead to the rise of the “generic mint”.

Generic mints like these put emphasis on ownership in order to participate instead of emphasis on the benefits of ownership as a new way to participate. This distinction more broadly highlights that we shouldn't necessarily want to own just for the sake of owning. Its no different from scrolling a feed on a traditional social platform and not having to follow, like or repost everything that we see. These are core features of an interactive internet (commonly referred to as Web2/Web 2.0) that enhance this interactivity in a defined context, without having to enforce them as a prerequisite for user participation.

I've observed many cases of things labeled as 'art' with no context, that signal to a broadly targeted audience that they should spend their money and collect, all in the name of ownership. Generic mints were great in the early days as they were used to experiment with this new tech at scale. Participants eventually identify the experiences that they find compelling and don’t stick around if the presented case isn’t very strong.

Token distribution has been used to attract initial users and funding for new projects. This gave users early ownership which can be transferred at any point in time for financial gain. This has been historically validated as a good initial bootstrapping mechanism, but a poor standalone method for keeping users interested and active. Progressive ownership (thoughtfully explored in Li Jin and Jesse Walden's "Progressive Ownership: A Model for Application Tokens" here) would be more appropriate for rewarding users with various platform incentives in exchange for contributing to the success of the platform.

The same thing applies for NFT mints for early projects that haven't yet proven product market fit. I remember a project back in 2021 that saw lots of initial hype, allowing early participants to mint the platform's native NFT which offered platform access. The platform then allowed different communities to display their own NFT's and enforce token gating on their community pages. Outside of that premise, there wasn't any additional reason to use it and usage fell soon after, forcing the original platform to pivot.

I could see the generic mint getting placed under the hood of a higher contextual action going forward. Imagine a design editor like Canva, where the user can search and add premium graphics to their design. The users subscription could take care of paying the creator of the graphic in the background as a token mint, while allowing the user to have access to this graphic in perpetuity. Purchases of this graphic by other users would kick back rewards to all the owners as well.

Products that already have a moat are best positioned to attract organic growth. Ownership done right can then be used to allow users to grow with and evangelize the product. This feedback loop may be the biggest force against incumbents, as well as a force to lead the next iteration of how we use the internet.

Right now, we have decentralized applications that feel native to this open internet like Paragraph, which allows bloggers to publish content with built in financial rails in only a few clicks. There's also Warpcast, a social media app alternative to twitter with an algorithm that currently doesn’t optimize for engagement via adversarial behaviour. What brought me to both these apps is that they’re great solutions to use cases I already have a desire for. I don’t care for ownership upfront but I know it will be there when I need it.

Its hard to predict the next set of use cases to emerge from this new open internet. Defined user actions alongside progressive ownership seem like an intuitive step forward. This could be in the form of a distribution model or unique NFT backed content like the ones we see today. Users may treat these tokens as a representation of their social activity, reputation and expression. This might also have further ecosystem value long after they've joined these initial platforms.

A user owned internet is still being realized in real time and I can't wait to see what kinds of new experiences it unlocks.

Tokens are the best opportunity for users to take back ownership of the internet.

When we eventually become distracted with all the fun we’re having on the socials, network ownership via tokens will protect us from getting rugged. Fixation on token minting without attention to what tokens represent might lead participants to lose sight of the power they have access to. Periods of hype often lead to participants leaving the space with an unclear picture of its inherent utility and resentment due loss of funds.

As we get deeper into the bull market, lets provide some counter balance to the behaviour associated with generic NFT mints and highly speculative memecoin trading. These use cases are all fun and valid for community participation when thoughtfully deployed. For the most part, however, they tend to over-emphasize ownership as a prerequisite to price speculation rather than a tool to leverage for more desirable outcomes in everyday use cases.

The relationship between users and goods has changed over the years, due to users spending overwhelmingly more time on the web. More recently, people are replacing ownership of both physical and digital goods with leasing access to experiences. Examples of this include reduced ownership of cars for more usage of ride-sharing platforms like Uber and less purchasing of music albums for subscriptions to streaming apps like Spotify. These often occur in exchange for convenience, low costs and access to infinitely more options.

We’ve also gotten used to leasing experiences on social media platforms. These gave us convenient access to social engagement via profile pages, activity feeds and interactive posts at no upfront cost. This provided an alternative for us to having to set up and host our own websites, blogs and figuring out all the tooling needed to reproduce the experiences we’d gotten so accustomed to.

These platforms have been responsible for most of the value creation on the internet for the last 15+ years. After a certain user scale is reached, however, the inherent design of these platforms optimize for value extraction rather than creation. Examples of this include unclear algorithm changes that affect user discovery, censorship with unclear guidelines and unreasonable revenue shares, if any, with the creators that are responsible for the revenue generated.

Blockchain based internet networks are designed to optimize for user value creation at any scale, with democratized access to ownership as one of the core features. These networks enable this through the provision of tokens.

Tokens are the interfaces via which users can own things on the internet. They’re underlying design may vary, which had historically meant that different token types had been better suited for different use cases. We've gotten accustomed to the usage of fungible tokens for monetary speculation, as well as in the transaction of goods and services. We’ve used non fungible tokens (NFT’s) for the representation of media, which in turn can be collected, traded and speculated on.

In all cases, users can truly own the thing they hold on the internet, free from the restrictions of intermediaries like banks or brokers. Most importantly, this unlock is a core feature by design. This means that users shouldn’t have to be concerned with how this is implemented, in the same way that users don’t have to be concerned with how to self-host their social media profile page. Tokens in their current form allow for this, and user experiences on top of tokens should make it overwhelmingly easy for users to leverage this when necessary.

Like the token sales that gained attention in 2017 ( the ICO's), the NFT hype of 2021 had similar attention and put emphasis on NFT ownership as the way to participate. Now, fans could support creators by purchasing their NFT backed art, which would also grant them exposure to potential value appreciation. NFT transaction volume flooded the internet, as this new model became gamified and highly speculative.

To be clear, a number of positives came out of this scenario. Creators were able to leverage a new distribution model with built in financial rails. In addition to content received, fans were also granted access to financial markets they would otherwise not have been exposed to. This also, unfortunately, lead to the creation of low quality NFT art in high volumes, in a market of savvy and un-savvy speculators. These were most often pump and dump scenarios similar to the ICO's of 2017.

The convenience unlocked by token minting for democratizing ownership on the internet somehow lead to the rise of the “generic mint”.

Generic mints like these put emphasis on ownership in order to participate instead of emphasis on the benefits of ownership as a new way to participate. This distinction more broadly highlights that we shouldn't necessarily want to own just for the sake of owning. Its no different from scrolling a feed on a traditional social platform and not having to follow, like or repost everything that we see. These are core features of an interactive internet (commonly referred to as Web2/Web 2.0) that enhance this interactivity in a defined context, without having to enforce them as a prerequisite for user participation.

I've observed many cases of things labeled as 'art' with no context, that signal to a broadly targeted audience that they should spend their money and collect, all in the name of ownership. Generic mints were great in the early days as they were used to experiment with this new tech at scale. Participants eventually identify the experiences that they find compelling and don’t stick around if the presented case isn’t very strong.

Token distribution has been used to attract initial users and funding for new projects. This gave users early ownership which can be transferred at any point in time for financial gain. This has been historically validated as a good initial bootstrapping mechanism, but a poor standalone method for keeping users interested and active. Progressive ownership (thoughtfully explored in Li Jin and Jesse Walden's "Progressive Ownership: A Model for Application Tokens" here) would be more appropriate for rewarding users with various platform incentives in exchange for contributing to the success of the platform.

The same thing applies for NFT mints for early projects that haven't yet proven product market fit. I remember a project back in 2021 that saw lots of initial hype, allowing early participants to mint the platform's native NFT which offered platform access. The platform then allowed different communities to display their own NFT's and enforce token gating on their community pages. Outside of that premise, there wasn't any additional reason to use it and usage fell soon after, forcing the original platform to pivot.

I could see the generic mint getting placed under the hood of a higher contextual action going forward. Imagine a design editor like Canva, where the user can search and add premium graphics to their design. The users subscription could take care of paying the creator of the graphic in the background as a token mint, while allowing the user to have access to this graphic in perpetuity. Purchases of this graphic by other users would kick back rewards to all the owners as well.

Products that already have a moat are best positioned to attract organic growth. Ownership done right can then be used to allow users to grow with and evangelize the product. This feedback loop may be the biggest force against incumbents, as well as a force to lead the next iteration of how we use the internet.

Right now, we have decentralized applications that feel native to this open internet like Paragraph, which allows bloggers to publish content with built in financial rails in only a few clicks. There's also Warpcast, a social media app alternative to twitter with an algorithm that currently doesn’t optimize for engagement via adversarial behaviour. What brought me to both these apps is that they’re great solutions to use cases I already have a desire for. I don’t care for ownership upfront but I know it will be there when I need it.

Its hard to predict the next set of use cases to emerge from this new open internet. Defined user actions alongside progressive ownership seem like an intuitive step forward. This could be in the form of a distribution model or unique NFT backed content like the ones we see today. Users may treat these tokens as a representation of their social activity, reputation and expression. This might also have further ecosystem value long after they've joined these initial platforms.

A user owned internet is still being realized in real time and I can't wait to see what kinds of new experiences it unlocks.