One thing I’ve learned from past cycles is that it’s a mistake to dismiss the criticism outright OR take it at face value. There’s always an element of truth to it, but it’s never the whole truth. So participating in the early history of a technology involves a reputational tax.
One mistake techies made ~2009-13 when political potential of social media was becoming clear (Iran election, Arab spring), was focus polyannishly on the positive and dismiss criticism as “haters.” It can be true that both the scammy and positive potential are real.
Same things happened with Web1 (“eyeballs business models are a scam!”) and PCs (“software piracy!”). New technologies always refactor moralities based on old technologies. I personally find that if there’s technical novelty, eventually the net unambiguous value also follows.
One reason it’s generally young people who dive in, besides having less intellectual baggage and more intact brain cells, is that they usually have no reputation to lose, only a shot at making one. If it’s a public media technology, the reputational risk is even higher.
Here for eg… yes I’m making a bit of money, but notice I’m putting 14 years of accumulated Web2 reputation at risk, with poll suggesting I could lose ~23% of it right now AND an indeterminate fraction of the undecideds, in 3 of 4 scenarios here. Not trivial.
Aside, far more interesting than the hostility from genpop is the hostility from Bitcoin maxis (Bitcoin maximalists — people who believe Bitcoin is the One True Coin), since Web3 is based entirely on post-Bitcoin tech. For the record I think they’re wrong.
You have ~2 more hours to vote in the WRITE race. And the Foundation auction ends in 50 minutes...unless someone bids in last 15 minutes in which case it gets extended another 15 minutes (who came up with this sniper-action design pattern? is it common?) https://foundation.app/@vgr/~/106332
I *think* we made it? Says we came in at #2 in the current round of voting and the rules say top 10 get in. But don't yet see a way to verify. I'll wait to confirm, but looks like yakcollective will be on mirror shortly, and that's like halfway to being a DAO right?
Thanks to all who voted for us in the WRITE race. If you're wondering why so many voters have 100s or 1000+ votes, it's because existing Mirror DAO members get 1000 votes when they get in and it increases slowly as they participate more. Outsiders get 10. It's an ingroupocracy!
Everything about Web3 seems to be driven by an underground warren-like Signal/Telegram/Discord-based network. In a 2019 post, I had an area marked "Cryptoweb" under the Cozyweb region... well, it's kinda nearing completion and this is it.
So far I think the most interesting general insight Ive developed some confidence in is that Web3 is all about flows, not stocks. In that sense it’s different not only from Web0 and Web1, but industrial organizations too (think “stock” markets).
The split (branch between flows) is to Web3 what links (bridge between stocks) is to Web1 and Web2.
Calling it now.
The split is the hyperlink of Web3.
If I’m right this is a radical subversion of even the OG vision of the internet, Vannevar Bush’s Memex, which is stock-centric. His classic 1945 essay, As We May Think, which shaped 70 years of tech development, (including my own modest bits at Xerox) does *not* fit Web3.
In Web3 it feels like the fundamental behavior is not following a trail of links from stock to stock, but following a stock as it flows from address to address. Even our basic metaphor of a “bitcoin” is utterly wrong because it anchors on a stock view.
The coin metaphor is going to prove to be severe baggage for Web3, just as the document metaphor was baggage for Web1 and Web2. The late Web2 metaphor of the stream (effectively infinite dynamic frankendocument) is a clumsy Web2 version of a Web3 flow.
This is why the split is the hyperlink of Web3. It forks a flow structurally. Voting and staking mechanisms look like flows > stocks. Multisig wallets are flow control valves. “Balances” (not coins) are levels of fungible stocks in flow buffers. Burning tokens is flow.
Minting is an unfortunate coin-metaphor term (“coinage” 😖). It’s really a kind of source spigot. I wish they’d called mining drilling. Drilling for hashes.
Ethereum developed better language tbh. Ether, gas… fluid metaphors all over the place.
Oh yeah, hash rates! Can’t get more flow than that!
And mining “pool” … you can’t really pool solids.
Okay will hit pause on this train of thought. Trying hard to stay on the hands-on side. It would be just too easy for me to get carried away by this flow 🤣
My natural mode is tinker with real things for 5 minutes, speculate wildly in the abstract for 15. Must resist.
Someone make a Sankey diagram based blockchain explorer. At the very least it will improve Sankey literacy for climate awareness. You can split me a royalty for the idea. See how natural the language is? “Link to me” —> “split to me.”
Prediction: MetaMask will add a messaging function. You already have an address book. You’re probably doing splits with them. Why go to Signal or wherever? Mutisigs will develop attached group discussion fora. Messaging companies may acquire wallet companies. Or vice versa.
Venmo has already created a weird social network around Web2 payments. But Web3 is the natural home for the idea. On Venmo, it’s vaguely voyeuristic, like Glassdoor reviews. But on Web3 such things may have a healthier valence.
This is probably going to be the big ideological divide.
I think *decentralized* artificial digital scarcity is a great invention. Incentivizes production without empowering aggregators too much. I think
A general pattern of question I’m getting as in every tech futures conversation I’ve ever had, is “How is Web3 thing X different from obvious analogical old thing Y?”
Anchoring on the most obvious analogy tends to minimize distinctions and magnify similarities.
The snark form of this is perversely self blinding, as in “X, you invented X”
“Rideshare with published routes”… “public transit you invented public transit” (treating app based failing as a rounding error).
Thing is *you choose your anchors, you choose your blindness*
This is why I don’t engage “how is it different from X” whether motivated by sincere curiosity or bad-faith trolling.
You chose your anchor. I don’t have to. I may offer alternate anchors, but I don’t have to correct the invisibilities of your frame. That’s a futile battle.
In general, I try to understand a thing on its own terms. You can never avoid metaphors (unpopular opinion: there is no System 2; there is no ‘first principles thinking’, there’s only conceptual metaphors too subtle to notice), but you can pick one that highlight the differences.
Obvious metaphors and analogies aren’t intrinsically bad. They do save you cognitive labor. But they make good servants and bad masters. If a hammer in your hand makes you see everything as a nail, the hammer is using you, you’re not using the hammer.
I’m not trying to preach. Just explaining why I don’t engage with some comments. I am not necessarily assuming bad faith or disputing or ignoring your point. You’re just using anchors I don’t care to conform to.
Choose your anchors. Don’t let them choose you.
I guess part of me is just kinda exhausted by a sense of “here we go again; new tech revolution same debates” deja vu. It would be nice to have weird new arguments and a strange new type of techlash at least.
A question I’m mulling — anyone have a sense of the demographics of the ENS token drops, or how to probe that? Unlike the early crypto era, where those who got in were either wealth-privileged or tech-privileged, or both, this one I suspect has been more of a true trickle-down.
Hard-earned cash: The monumental stone coins used by the Yap (Jap) people in Micronesia which are called Rai are still a working currency on the island of Palau. Although no more disks are being produced or imported, this money supply is fixed.
I've been looking at Web3 culture through the lens of Geertz' classic Deep Play lens. The DeFi degens (profiteering hucksters) are clearly shallow play, and those building DAOs etc are clearly deep play, but happy frothy gm/wagmi crowd is kinda in between https://jstor.org/stable/20024056