Annika LewisCollectivizing Finance: Why The Future of VC is Multiplayer
Today’s piece was cowritten with David Phelps. Two months in the works, it is about collectivizing finance, but it is also an experiment in collectivizing finance:Collectively commissioned by 14 backers through Ghost KnowledgeCollectively written with contributions by Lila Shroff and Julia LiptonCollectively sold—we hope—through a PartyBid on Zora. Our hope is that a collective group will purchase it as a kind of meta-memento of this strange and wonderful era.Collectively splitting the procee...
Annika LewisGrants 101: Standing up a Grants Program in Web3
Co-written with Meg Lister If you’ve engaged with crypto projects on any sort of scale, you’ve likely come across grants programs – there are tens, if not hundreds, of such programs in existence across Web3 today. We’ve both worked in DAOs and Web3 for years – which means that we’ve inevitably worked around or with many of the best grants programs in the space. We’ve also both spent time at Gitcoin, where Annika was previously Grants Program Lead and Meg currently leads Product for Grants Sta...
Annika LewisA peek into DAOs: Part 1 of 3
As a result of my rapidly-accelerating crypto obsession, in the past couple months I’ve gone from a near-never Discord user to waking up every morning to an overwhelming left-hand sidebar with logos and notifications galore. These are, of course, the logos of DAOs I’m following.Source: My Discord notifications screenSince I’m teetering on the brink of being mostly a quiet DAO lurker to becoming a contributing member of these communities, I’d like to document my experience and learnings about ...
Annika LewisCollectivizing Finance: Why The Future of VC is Multiplayer
Today’s piece was cowritten with David Phelps. Two months in the works, it is about collectivizing finance, but it is also an experiment in collectivizing finance:Collectively commissioned by 14 backers through Ghost KnowledgeCollectively written with contributions by Lila Shroff and Julia LiptonCollectively sold—we hope—through a PartyBid on Zora. Our hope is that a collective group will purchase it as a kind of meta-memento of this strange and wonderful era.Collectively splitting the procee...
Annika LewisGrants 101: Standing up a Grants Program in Web3
Co-written with Meg Lister If you’ve engaged with crypto projects on any sort of scale, you’ve likely come across grants programs – there are tens, if not hundreds, of such programs in existence across Web3 today. We’ve both worked in DAOs and Web3 for years – which means that we’ve inevitably worked around or with many of the best grants programs in the space. We’ve also both spent time at Gitcoin, where Annika was previously Grants Program Lead and Meg currently leads Product for Grants Sta...
Annika LewisA peek into DAOs: Part 1 of 3
As a result of my rapidly-accelerating crypto obsession, in the past couple months I’ve gone from a near-never Discord user to waking up every morning to an overwhelming left-hand sidebar with logos and notifications galore. These are, of course, the logos of DAOs I’m following.Source: My Discord notifications screenSince I’m teetering on the brink of being mostly a quiet DAO lurker to becoming a contributing member of these communities, I’d like to document my experience and learnings about ...
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Subscribe to Annika Lewis
Subscribe to Annika Lewis
<100 subscribers
<100 subscribers
After being deep in Web3 for awhile now, I’ve been going back to basics and reflecting on areas I’m most excited about.
I got into crypto in the first place because I was concerned about the future of the US dollar as the world’s foremost reserve currency. I wanted to understand Bitcoin & Ethereum as assets and form my own viewpoint on whether they might be “digital gold”, as the meme goes - or even something more.
Fast-forward 2.5 years since my first real foray into crypto, and I’m convinced of two things:
Blockchains will underpin the future of the internet
Blockchains will do to money what the internet did to publishing
This post focuses on the second one.
Reflecting on all the projects I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with in the crypto space over the past couple years, among all my observations around what’s different in Web2 vs. Web3, there is one thing that really strikes me as I reflect at a macro level:
Anyone can create and manage a currency out of thin air.
And, I do mean literally anyone. An extreme example:
https://twitter.com/AnnikaSays/status/1423495478809825281?s=20&t=FVvC2c_y84yobW_VC0DlKw
No, I don’t think the US Dollar is getting replaced tomorrow.
And, no, I don’t think fiat currencies are going away anytime soon.
But the early days of this shift are, in my opinion, clearly indicative of an inevitable future. Money, like any other construct invented by humans, has the potential to be disrupted.
https://twitter.com/AnnikaSays/status/1566220979873136641?s=20&t=ED8cqCF0ir9uMmNiaAQEdQ
And the status quo is so incredibly archaic. Creativity in monetary policy, at any sort of meaningful scale, has been limited to Central Banks and their mandates, scopes, and risk appetites.
Already, in these early days of crypto, we’ve seen monetary policy experiments - successful, unsuccessful, and yet-to-be-proven - that we can learn so much from.
A few obvious examples that come to mind:
Ethereum’s EIP-1559 as, what I would call, a successful monetary policy experiment (to date, at least)
The collapse of UST (Terra/Luna), painfully teaching us about the vulnerabilities of algorithmic stablecoins
Even Bitcoin’s simple hard-capped issuance policy - with 21M BTC as the upper limit - as a new structure to explore & entertain
And beyond these, there’s so much more. There are tens, if not hundreds, of Layer 1 blockchains with their own tokens in circulation, and hundreds more ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum Blockchain. Each of these has its own monetary policy to analyze - whether fine-tuned & intentional or completely yolo’ed.
From a competitive analysis standpoint, fiat just feels so incredibly ripe for disruption. With high inflation, decreasing consumer confidence, and many Central Banks finding themselves in between a rock and a hard place - I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about this massive design space and how rapidly it’s opening itself up.
After being deep in Web3 for awhile now, I’ve been going back to basics and reflecting on areas I’m most excited about.
I got into crypto in the first place because I was concerned about the future of the US dollar as the world’s foremost reserve currency. I wanted to understand Bitcoin & Ethereum as assets and form my own viewpoint on whether they might be “digital gold”, as the meme goes - or even something more.
Fast-forward 2.5 years since my first real foray into crypto, and I’m convinced of two things:
Blockchains will underpin the future of the internet
Blockchains will do to money what the internet did to publishing
This post focuses on the second one.
Reflecting on all the projects I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with in the crypto space over the past couple years, among all my observations around what’s different in Web2 vs. Web3, there is one thing that really strikes me as I reflect at a macro level:
Anyone can create and manage a currency out of thin air.
And, I do mean literally anyone. An extreme example:
https://twitter.com/AnnikaSays/status/1423495478809825281?s=20&t=FVvC2c_y84yobW_VC0DlKw
No, I don’t think the US Dollar is getting replaced tomorrow.
And, no, I don’t think fiat currencies are going away anytime soon.
But the early days of this shift are, in my opinion, clearly indicative of an inevitable future. Money, like any other construct invented by humans, has the potential to be disrupted.
https://twitter.com/AnnikaSays/status/1566220979873136641?s=20&t=ED8cqCF0ir9uMmNiaAQEdQ
And the status quo is so incredibly archaic. Creativity in monetary policy, at any sort of meaningful scale, has been limited to Central Banks and their mandates, scopes, and risk appetites.
Already, in these early days of crypto, we’ve seen monetary policy experiments - successful, unsuccessful, and yet-to-be-proven - that we can learn so much from.
A few obvious examples that come to mind:
Ethereum’s EIP-1559 as, what I would call, a successful monetary policy experiment (to date, at least)
The collapse of UST (Terra/Luna), painfully teaching us about the vulnerabilities of algorithmic stablecoins
Even Bitcoin’s simple hard-capped issuance policy - with 21M BTC as the upper limit - as a new structure to explore & entertain
And beyond these, there’s so much more. There are tens, if not hundreds, of Layer 1 blockchains with their own tokens in circulation, and hundreds more ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum Blockchain. Each of these has its own monetary policy to analyze - whether fine-tuned & intentional or completely yolo’ed.
From a competitive analysis standpoint, fiat just feels so incredibly ripe for disruption. With high inflation, decreasing consumer confidence, and many Central Banks finding themselves in between a rock and a hard place - I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about this massive design space and how rapidly it’s opening itself up.
No activity yet