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Originally posted at https://bodhi.wtf/12001
Or at least not every pile of bricks is. As obvious as that sounds, we seem to ignore that the same is true to a stack of tools not being a system. Over the last few years, the beautiful dream of composable web3 tooling has made the smug smirk of many builders look pretty for the eyes of investors and enthusiast. It was the pitch of a future where new tools are all connected and the magic of seamless integration come naturally. A single login. Better than any API. Fully permissionless. All on-chain (onchain? OnChain?).
I haven't been following the story since its beginning. No matter what you think of for "beginning", I wasn't there. I got in this sweet mess driven by chaos and the idea of human centered organizations that can explore their potentials further than ever by sourcing collective intelligence, by improving feedback loops, by offering possibilities such as forking or rage-quitting huge business because you think you can do better and the most far-fetched idea of all: by allowing it's participants to govern common assets with efficiency and transparency unprecedented in the thousands of years since the tribuni plebis started trying to distribute power to stakeholders beyond the few who could most easily muster violence to enforce it.
As in a heroic epic, all those super powers were created and scattered around the globe. Like pieces of a holy armor or the dragon balls, they are made of the same chain or substrate, they fit together perfectly, but it will take 5 books for our protagonist to pick them all and finally be ready to make its promised destiny a reality, just to likely start it all over again. Unlike a cliche hero's journey though, on the web3 tooling epic, those pieces of armor are quickly surpassed. Even before they're brought together, there're hundreds of builders creating the next generation of improvements, learning from past mistakes, following the latest alpha-numerically named hype, and making a new piece for the set, just to send it scattered around the landscape again.
It's a beautiful thing: the fit works, the feedback loops are faster than ever and the variety of pieces are amazing. Changing the metaphor from our hero back to the bricks, we have a bigger pile of those everyday. And you know what? They fit! You could even dare imagine someone with no skills on making new bricks could start using those and building new walls, and you wouldn't be wrong. As long as they are good wall builders, professionals cementers, let's say. We've come so far that making bricks is no longer a requirement to create solid walls. The new skillset for organization makers is finding them, organizing the piles, choosing the right ones and bringing them together in a system that can actually use the best of each.
Walls are not made of just bricks, and although we have made plenty of those, there're many more getting baked everyday. It's time we start building easy ways to cement, or glue, them together. It turns out just piling bricks up doesn't make for very stable walls. Turns out that getting your newcomer users through 5 different websites so they can access your service or community turn most of them away and teaches the rest to sign anything they see pop-up with an orange fox on their browser.
It is not news for anyone that "web3 UX sucks", and I dare say it's not as bad as the meme will tell you. For Block's sake, 90% of banks are just way worse. This piece is just a thought, a loose idea, that maybe we should stop expecting that brick makers will create good cement. Maybe we should understand that the dream of composability is dependent on integration builders that create the plug'n play cementing solutions. Those are the buttons that will allow both peeps who can't make bricks as well as those who can't glue them together, to start getting the walls they desire.
I'm Zeugh and it's early morning as I write this, I hope the thoughts are interesting. If it resonates, I recommend checking:
