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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Do you think it’s clear yet how anyone is going to turn this into something normal people will use? This all reminds me of like 80s hacker culture, which only went mainstream when they got rid of everything 80s hackers were excited about.
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I believe that it’s more usable than it looks from the outside, but I don’t see how you get people inside in the first place. Seems like a solvable problem, but how do you make a user-friendly walled garden when decentralization is the whole idea?
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I actually suspect the blocker is not usability but money. Gas fees are atrocious. It’s only profitable for me to explore because I’m earning my way through thanks to reputation/content inventory. I’ve literally spent like 2-3k in fees on this thread but made back way more.
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What’s the use case for normal people, though? What would they be doing if gas fees weren’t so high? Maybe I lack imagination, and I certainly lack goodwill, but I’m reasonably plugged into all this and I have yet to see anything I would want to do with it.
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