# The web3 accumulation model

By [tallneil](https://paragraph.com/@tallneil) · 2022-03-30

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![Evan Spiegel, 2015](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/8b2b8be4465358924ced47aef426c9abb8bbfd9edcf37a107c6f398d7fbb2a55.png)

Evan Spiegel, 2015

In 2011, Snapchat pioneered a new wave of social media with ephemeral content, or content that disappears. First with the core product, then a few years later with Snapchat Stories. By 2016, Instagram had launched their own Stories copycat, and ephemeral content has since dominated social media.

Snapchat’s founder, Evan Spiegel, [had a theory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykGXIQAHLnA) about content as it relates to individual identity. He laid out two basic identity models: accumulation and instant expression.

In the accumulation model, he says, “identity is everything I’ve ever done. So you have all the pictures of everything you’ve ever done, and that’s who you are, as a person.” My archive is my identity.

Instant expression, on the other hand, is about who you are, right now, in this moment. Evan believed that instant expression, by way of ephemeral content, would be the next wave of social media. [For the record](https://www.tiktok.com/@tallneil/video/6988034492292271365), I identify more with accumulation.

As social media has evolved into live streaming (i.e. Twitch), live audio (i.e. Twitter Spaces), and the metaverse (i.e. Roblox), I think Evan’s prediction has been mostly correct. Things have trended towards ephemeral, real-time content, with no archives.

Then we entered web3.

Something fundamental to the collective psychology of web3 is, we love archives. In fact, we’re putting a ton of manpower into protecting our archives, and ensuring that no platform can ever take our archives away. This is the next wave of accumulation.

Ethereum is anti-ephemeral.

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*Originally published on [tallneil](https://paragraph.com/@tallneil/the-web3-accumulation-model)*