I’m not one to make big annual predictions, but one thing that seems likely to me is that 2024 will mark the emergence of mainstream apps powered by crypto that are less “crypto-native” and more “crypto-enabled”.

By “crypto-native”, I mean apps & experiences where the crypto is the main point, and where a large part of what’s going on is the road-testing of crypto-economic and decentralized computing primitives. You could characterize most of what has gone on over the last 10 years as largely “crypto-native” explorations: defi, mining/validating, DAOs, MEV, minting & trading NFTs, various hacks, exploits and shenanigans. Basically a decade of exploring the adjacent possible now that we have an ability to build trustless, permissionless, autonomous computing systems with native assets. This has been incredibly important because these systems are both powerful and complex, with tremendous possibility but also many new failure modes.

I believe we will now begin to see more “crypto-enabled” applications. These are applications that not only built on crypto, but could only be built because of crypto. And also where the crypto plays a supporting rather than a leading role. Crypto-enabled applications will, on the surface, look and feel like traditional web 2 applications, but they will have super powers. Examples of this will include international payments on stablecoin rails, marketplaces of all sorts (lending, ride sharing, crowdfunding, etc) where the financial mechanics are on-chain, transparent and open to all, loyalty w digital assets & financial rails baked in, and web3-native media & social applications where users have more control over and economics in their digital output. Given the recent advances in scaling (fast and cheap L1s and L2s), security (transaction scanning, insurance), and user experience (cloud wallets, account abstraction), it’s now possible to build these kinds of applications.

I’m excited to see what will be built in the “crypto-enabled” area. I think these applications have the potential to both re-architect digital experiences in ways that provide new benefits to all participants, and also to help advance a more positive narrative about what crypto can make possible.

Many years ago, when I had just started working at USV, I remember there was kind of a complicated situation that unfolded in a seemingly bad way, and I'll never forget what Brad said in response. He said:

you never know when you've had a good day

I didn't really understand what that meant, so he told me a story that went something like: back around the year 2000 at the height of the dot-com boom, there was a guy who was a senior exec at a successful startup. That person had a falling out with leadership and was called into the office and asked to leave. He was surprised and upset, but there wasn't much he could do; they had decided. As part of the exit package, the company also agreed to buy out his vested shares, I believe at some discount to the current price at that time. It felt like cold comfort but of course he went along with it. But mostly he was out of a job and upset that it didn't work out.

Then fast forward a few months, the bubble popped and the stock tanked. I'm not sure what happened to the company, but I think the idea is that it essentially went to zero.

So in hindsight, that "bad day" turned out to be an amazing day.

I think about that story a lot, especially when markets are volatile, as they are starting to be again now.

I've written a lot over the years about this idea of "the slow hunch" -- my favorite idea from Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From. The idea is basically that big ideas don't come in a single "aha" moment, but rather, accrete over time. And many of the great thinkers / doers of the world have kept various forms of notebooks that they continuously re-read to piece together insights that gradually emerge.

The practice of doing this in a digital age has actually gotten harder, not easier, as one's digital thought process tends to be fragmented across many sources (email, google docs, social media, text files, blogs, etc). Speaking personally, it's a hot mess -- I have not been at all consistent about keeping these things in any kind of manageable place, such that the goal -- the ability to go back and reference prior ideas easily -- has been manageable. Things get lost, platforms change, links break, etc.

There are two innovations today that I think have the ability to help with that:

1/ the permaweb. This post will be forever stored on arweave, which means that no matter what happens (for instance losing control of my domain name, ugh) this content will be archived and accessible.

2/ AI language tools including LLMs -- the ability that these give us to synthesize text from disparate sources is incredible. I can imagine a point in the near future where I have an AI bot of some kind that has read all of my email, notes from various platforms, archives, etc etc etc and drawn it into one queryable place that can really help de-frag and synthesize my own thinking.

I am excited about a world where new digital technologies make it easier to turn fragments of thought into more coherent and durable ideas. Sadly, the last 15 years or so has perhaps made this worse. But I'm hopeful that the tools in front of us now have some potential to make it better.