Chris Dixon wrote an excellent thread on Tokens as a new “digital primitive”, outlining how they enable a new paradigm/era of the web. In this post, I’m trying to riff on his thinking, expanding a bit on how I think Web3 is really different to web 2.0, and what truly novel applications may already be conceivable today, both across “Multi-Player” and “Single Player” Crypto.

First - let’s consider again how Web3 is different to what we’ve come to understand as web 2.0:

If you zoom out far enough (but not too far!), web 2.0 and Web3 both still look like graphs: you'll see nodes (your Twitter handle, or a tweet, OR a to-do list) and edges (the act of liking a tweet, following someone, a message, the act of writing onto a To-Do list).

There are at least 3 key differences that Web3 introduces to how these graphs work:

1. On web 2.0, nodes are centrally owned by companies (you may own the password to your Twitter account, but Twitter ultimately owns the account itself, along with every tweet). On Web3, all these nodes are belong to you, making it possible to take them elsewhere. \n

2. On web 2.0, edges (i. e. the links connecting nodes) carry pure information. On Web3, edges carry both information and value. On web 2.0, adding edges is "free", increasing quantity at the cost of quality - on Web3 adding edges is costly, potentially increasing quality at the cost of quantity.

3. On web 2.0, you outsource responsibility and processing to a company's tech stack and management - the latter will ultimately act in the company’s interest (which may be aligned with yours, but not always). On Web3, you outsource responsibility and processing to an emergent, decentralized, collectively-owned entity that may act autonomously.

Each of these has profound implications. While true crypto-native apps will naturally emerge around these paradigms, it’s an interesting exercise to translate traditional apps into the crypto-paradigm:

Multiplayer Crypto:

Again: in Web 2.0 Social Networks, edges carry information - in Web3 networks, edges carry value.

This is probably considered the most massive paradigm shift, especially with the (re-)emergence of DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), which carry a revolutionary potential on par with the invention of the corporation, and maybe the nation state? Balaji Srinivasan outlines part of this vision aptly here:

As humans, we are in fact already familiar with networks where nodes and edges carry economic value and are governed through a rule of law: today, nation states, churches and companies are the predominant form of organizing humans around a shared cause using links that go beyond casual communication (such as a Facebook group, or friends around a dinner table).

DAOs enable entirely new paradigms here for three reasons:

First, they make it several orders of magnitude easier to form economic collectives (think: the difference between sending postal mail vs email). DAOs combine the ease of using social networks with the impact of economic cooperation.

Secondly, the Autonomous aspect of DAOs is computer-based, enabling an automatic entaglement of rule and execution. This will cause (and has caused!) a lot of headaches in the early days, but eventually allows a more powerful “offshoring” of trust, freeing up organizational cycles for more relevant purposes. Think board games where players are forced to do a lot of “accounting” in order to prevent even accidental cheating, vs games that provide a more natural flow (and are thus more fun to play!)

There is an obvious and potentially dangerous path towards merging/enriching Smart Contracts with AI (effectively replacing human arbitration), but that one deserves a post on its own.

Thirdly, the Decentralized nature of DAOs enables emancipation and independence from legacy organizations, as it’s much harder to just take them out by targeting a small number of individuals (such as a CEO) - a very curious challenge for both The State and traditional Corporations!

Now, consider the following “trad-orgs” and their respective DAO version:

• A labor union may outsource the initiation the organization of strikes to its DAO, making it much harder / impossible to simply bribe its leaders. You either compell the collective to cooperate, or it will strike.

• We’ll see novel form of Insurances emerge through the use of DAOs, in some cases replacing the need for middlemen, in other cases coming up with forms of insurance that are completely new.

• In the Art Market, DAO collectives have emerged as new ways of funding an artist’s work in a model that’s similar to Patreon, but instead of being many-to-one these be many-to-many.

• A social network that transforms into a DAO quickly becomes an economic flashmob that can rally its resources around a shared cause - this is obviously both scary and cool. Just consider replacing angry eyeballs and fist-shaking with millions of micro-contributions that have a real world impact…

• We may see vastly more crypto projects choose to “incorporate” as DAOs, either in parallel to setting up a regular company, or exclusively so, which will beget tremendous insight and exercise into this novel form of human collaboration.

• We will likely see novel forms of cooperatives/collectives emerge that sit somewhere between families and companies in our org stack, and are completely remote.

Single Player Crypto - the “Super Ego” Stack

It is admittedly a little unclear to me how much sense “single player” apps technically make in a blockchain context, but “single player” still makes up a huge and sensible part of our technology stack today. Given this and assuming a crypto-maximalist future, I think it’s conceivable that we will see some type of single player crypto applications emerge.

For example, if we consider that in Web3, edges carry value, that paradigm would enable a range of “Odysseus-style” apps that provide economic incentives for users to adhere to self-imposed goals - this category is basically about outsourcing your super-ego to an external entity.

• A ToDo-List, but you get to externalize control to a (single-player!) DAO that will assign a economic penalty to unfinished tasks.

• Anti-Distraction software (like Freedom), but with economic penalties to disincentivize cheating on your super-ego.

• Assume all financial transactions have moved to crypto, it’s conceivable to lock your spending into a variety of smart self-contracts that align your long term goals against short term impulses.

In theory, all of this is possible with a traditional infrastructure, but who would want to outsource their super-ego to a company? A provably non-human, autonomous, crypto-enabled entity is a completely different partner here.

I’d love to your hear your thoughts, for now: on Twitter.

Chris Dixon wrote an excellent thread on Tokens as a new “digital primitive”, outlining how they enable a new paradigm/era of the web. In this post, I’m trying to riff on his thinking, expanding a bit on how I think Web3 is really different to web 2.0, and what truly novel applications may already be conceivable today, both across “Multi-Player” and “Single Player” Crypto.

First - let’s consider again how Web3 is different to what we’ve come to understand as web 2.0:

If you zoom out far enough (but not too far!), web 2.0 and Web3 both still look like graphs: you'll see nodes (your Twitter handle, or a tweet, OR a to-do list) and edges (the act of liking a tweet, following someone, a message, the act of writing onto a To-Do list).

There are at least 3 key differences that Web3 introduces to how these graphs work:

1. On web 2.0, nodes are centrally owned by companies (you may own the password to your Twitter account, but Twitter ultimately owns the account itself, along with every tweet). On Web3, all these nodes are belong to you, making it possible to take them elsewhere. \n

2. On web 2.0, edges (i. e. the links connecting nodes) carry pure information. On Web3, edges carry both information and value. On web 2.0, adding edges is "free", increasing quantity at the cost of quality - on Web3 adding edges is costly, potentially increasing quality at the cost of quantity.

3. On web 2.0, you outsource responsibility and processing to a company's tech stack and management - the latter will ultimately act in the company’s interest (which may be aligned with yours, but not always). On Web3, you outsource responsibility and processing to an emergent, decentralized, collectively-owned entity that may act autonomously.

Each of these has profound implications. While true crypto-native apps will naturally emerge around these paradigms, it’s an interesting exercise to translate traditional apps into the crypto-paradigm:

Multiplayer Crypto:

Again: in Web 2.0 Social Networks, edges carry information - in Web3 networks, edges carry value.

This is probably considered the most massive paradigm shift, especially with the (re-)emergence of DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), which carry a revolutionary potential on par with the invention of the corporation, and maybe the nation state? Balaji Srinivasan outlines part of this vision aptly here:

As humans, we are in fact already familiar with networks where nodes and edges carry economic value and are governed through a rule of law: today, nation states, churches and companies are the predominant form of organizing humans around a shared cause using links that go beyond casual communication (such as a Facebook group, or friends around a dinner table).

DAOs enable entirely new paradigms here for three reasons:

First, they make it several orders of magnitude easier to form economic collectives (think: the difference between sending postal mail vs email). DAOs combine the ease of using social networks with the impact of economic cooperation.

Secondly, the Autonomous aspect of DAOs is computer-based, enabling an automatic entaglement of rule and execution. This will cause (and has caused!) a lot of headaches in the early days, but eventually allows a more powerful “offshoring” of trust, freeing up organizational cycles for more relevant purposes. Think board games where players are forced to do a lot of “accounting” in order to prevent even accidental cheating, vs games that provide a more natural flow (and are thus more fun to play!)

There is an obvious and potentially dangerous path towards merging/enriching Smart Contracts with AI (effectively replacing human arbitration), but that one deserves a post on its own.

Thirdly, the Decentralized nature of DAOs enables emancipation and independence from legacy organizations, as it’s much harder to just take them out by targeting a small number of individuals (such as a CEO) - a very curious challenge for both The State and traditional Corporations!

Now, consider the following “trad-orgs” and their respective DAO version:

• A labor union may outsource the initiation the organization of strikes to its DAO, making it much harder / impossible to simply bribe its leaders. You either compell the collective to cooperate, or it will strike.

• We’ll see novel form of Insurances emerge through the use of DAOs, in some cases replacing the need for middlemen, in other cases coming up with forms of insurance that are completely new.

• In the Art Market, DAO collectives have emerged as new ways of funding an artist’s work in a model that’s similar to Patreon, but instead of being many-to-one these be many-to-many.

• A social network that transforms into a DAO quickly becomes an economic flashmob that can rally its resources around a shared cause - this is obviously both scary and cool. Just consider replacing angry eyeballs and fist-shaking with millions of micro-contributions that have a real world impact…

• We may see vastly more crypto projects choose to “incorporate” as DAOs, either in parallel to setting up a regular company, or exclusively so, which will beget tremendous insight and exercise into this novel form of human collaboration.

• We will likely see novel forms of cooperatives/collectives emerge that sit somewhere between families and companies in our org stack, and are completely remote.

Single Player Crypto - the “Super Ego” Stack

It is admittedly a little unclear to me how much sense “single player” apps technically make in a blockchain context, but “single player” still makes up a huge and sensible part of our technology stack today. Given this and assuming a crypto-maximalist future, I think it’s conceivable that we will see some type of single player crypto applications emerge.

For example, if we consider that in Web3, edges carry value, that paradigm would enable a range of “Odysseus-style” apps that provide economic incentives for users to adhere to self-imposed goals - this category is basically about outsourcing your super-ego to an external entity.

• A ToDo-List, but you get to externalize control to a (single-player!) DAO that will assign a economic penalty to unfinished tasks.

• Anti-Distraction software (like Freedom), but with economic penalties to disincentivize cheating on your super-ego.

• Assume all financial transactions have moved to crypto, it’s conceivable to lock your spending into a variety of smart self-contracts that align your long term goals against short term impulses.

In theory, all of this is possible with a traditional infrastructure, but who would want to outsource their super-ego to a company? A provably non-human, autonomous, crypto-enabled entity is a completely different partner here.

I’d love to your hear your thoughts, for now: on Twitter.