A short rant about the state of the internet and why I still think the core ethos of web3 is the future.

At the beginning of the year, I made a decision to gradually shift the way I work and what I do. In short, I want to embrace my roots around play more, and as part of this, do something I've wanted to do for a long time: publish a book. For now, it's simply called "We Lost Play" — my play thesis.

The plan is straightforward: continue project work with startups as I do now, but become more selective about the work I take on to gradually move toward the kind of work I hope to do more of. I'm in no rush. My goal is to publish something in the fall, primarily for myself. There's something legitimizing about having an ISBN number (I'm kind of kidding, but not really). Publishing something in print is a bucket list item for me. Beyond that, I'll launch a website by the end of the year to highlight my focus and hopes for future business, starting with a blog.

Why a Blog?

What's my aspiration for this blog? I find it's a great way to keep myself accountable when others subscribe. It allows me to consolidate my thoughts in one place while enabling others to reach out. From experience with my existing writing, it's also an excellent way to attract work in the future. In essence, I want to establish my thinking.

So here we are. This post isn't about my thesis (I'll link to my future blog for that). Instead, it's about the challenge of deciding on a tool or platform for this endeavor.

Platform Dilemma

Option one: code something myself. I'm an advanced beginner in coding, so I could probably make it work. But the reality is it's easy to dismiss all the small quality-of-life features that existing tools have — features I might not even be aware of, wouldn't include, or simply couldn't implement.

I could also use something like Ghost or other self-publishing platforms. I like having full control. But from experience, when I lean toward options like this (similar to coding it myself), I often find myself (a) uncertain about what I actually want and need, and (b) overengineering things due to having some skills that aren't my core capabilities, ultimately abandoning the project after the second post.

So that leads me to existing platforms: Substack, Paragraph, or something else. The challenge is that you essentially need to make a decision before you even publish. I have this probably misguided feeling that you shouldn't post in multiple places, and I'm not a fan of cross-posting. It feels strange to copy and paste across multiple feeds just to reach more eyes, though I'm surely guilty of doing this.

Which Platform?

I'm still a fan of the Lens ecosystem and I love giving newcomers a chance, so I tried Fountain.ink. Being new means it's super early-stage, but content is stored on a decentralized storage solution (a plus) and it integrates easily with Lens, where I have the most followers. You could argue this is the best place to attract an audience. But since it's new, it's still rather limited, and since the platform itself isn't well-known yet, there aren't cross-network effects from people accidentally discovering your content just by being there.

This is why I'm posting this on my Paragraph blog. I already have roughly 200 subscribers, though declining open rates suggest they either don't like my content (which is fair enough) or they're not real users. I'm using Paragraph only because Mirror was deprecated, which I really loved for its simplicity. One observation I've had is that both Mirror and Paragraph have the "collect" feature so prominently placed that it makes them very much crypto blogs.

Since I want my focus and reach to be broader, I feel tempted to launch elsewhere. Crypto can easily be seen as poisonous or misinterpreted. Although I'm a permissionless, distributed, decentralized, interoperability, composability maximalist, if your goal is to reach a more general audience, it's easy to be dismissed as just another crypto bro. So I'm thinking, well, maybe not Paragraph after all.

Which then leads me to Substack. What I realized through my exploration this week is that existing content defines the context in which I want to be seen or associated. This is why Fountain.ink (which is Lens) and Paragraph, both with their specific vibes, may not be right for me. Tooling-wise, Substack is years ahead. But as mentioned, I'm a web3 maximalist. I hate the control Substack has over me. There's always Medium, but publishing there feels dated now. So what should I do?

The Real Issue

I'm not actually looking for an answer; I'm still exploring. But this process has reminded me repeatedly that tokens aren't the coolest or most important thing about the markets and culture we're building today.

As I posted the same blog in several places, I've had to come to terms with the fact that platforms generally suck. The permissionless nature that drove both Farcaster and Lens in the first place remains an incredible superpower: post once but have it appear in multiple places. A shared social graph is a superpower; having some form of monetization built in by default is an almost too-good-to-be-true add-on.

Lately, I feel web3 has shifted away from its core concepts of interoperability and composability. These were always the superpowers for me. I'm a big fan of the latest evolution in chain and wallet abstraction, where you choose your interface and the backend matters less. Apps like World and Infinex are really leading the charge here, and they still excite me as much as day one. But I feel we're slowly moving away from that vision toward more lock-in, even if it's well-hidden.

My Simple Wish

All I want, selfishly, is an easy way to have a Markdown file with images that can be effortlessly distributed across all platforms, bringing all comments and feedback together. It's a lofty, probably slightly utopian dream. But that's what I felt "protocols not platforms" has always been about.

As we slowly but suddenly enter the next iteration of web3, where all infrastructure finally disappears into the background (thank you!), I feel there's a real threat that we'll end up with arbitrary boundaries and walls again. So if you're building anything social, I know your economic instincts tell you to treat interoperability, permissionlessness, and composability as secondary goals at best. Please don't do that. Life would be a lot easier if you didn't.