SS01/02 |My simple Web3 learnings (so far...)
The evolution that is happening whether you want it to or not.
✍🏽 | Context
In Web1 we had a “look but don’t touch” model so to speak.
In Web2 we progressed a bit into “Create and I’ll monetize on YOUR content”.
And Web3 with all its promises of a better future is intended to provide creators of all sorts, to “create to earn directly”.
The biggest evolution in web2 that was becoming increasingly cringe-worthy (especially intra-and-post COVID) was the fact that value created by ordinary people became increasingly unevenly distributed.
Gatekeeping intermediaries (*cough tech giants) in all parts of the world (even here in Shanghai yes), increasingly hoarded, distributed, and marked-up knowledge and wealth created by individuals. This was of course not the intention of Web2, but human behavior and opportunism…
This leads to a serious misalignment in expectations and rewards.
You can check out Chris Dixon’s take on Why decentralization matters.
⏱ | Time will tell
Now I’m a bit pessimistic that Web3 will wipe the slate clean and give us the ideal Web, at least not that fast. We’ll go through a sort of Web2.5 version in which still many businesses and brands will need to transition.
However, what makes the future of Web3 look a bit more colorful is the fact that early adopters in the space are exponentially more out to rectify Web2 problems than we would’ve thought.
The technology of Web3 also allows creators of all walks of life to create actual peer-to-peer interaction without the need for a middle-man. At least that’s the ideology.
As many advocates and Web3 fans are claiming it to decentralize it completely, its just not true at the moment. Our current state of Web2.5 still requires majority of the creatives (especially in the NFT space), to utilize Web2 technologies such as Twitter, Youtube etc.
That said, it doesn’t take away from the future outlook most have for it and the gradually reduced dependency on those old platforms.
🍀| Web3 for Brands and Business
Given my own profession in Brand building and brand strategy, I love to observe the space and early adopters around the disruption this brings to current business models.
As traditionally was the case, the disrupter became disrupted and there was some sense of predictability for outsiders (especially consultants), maybe not a 100% prediction, but you could see there was a Semi-truck heading in a certain direction.
With Web3, no one alive right now can yet claim to be a veteran expert in this field and know what’s coming in the sense of disruption. In this lies a certain kind of comfort. For the first time in our lifetime, the rules for brands being built from scratch and actually standing a better chance than the heritage ones can be completely re-written. Every day this space changes.
If you are interested in this aspect of evolution, I would recommend you to follow the concept of #idealego by Packy McCormick. You can also listen to his brief break-down of it in his podcast “Not Boring”
Build on this concept I see NFT’s as BRAND/MEDIA Lego’s
One creation stacked on another breeds life to a whole new wave of possibilities. The same goes for software on the chain. The existence of all things crypto seems frivolous to many people (I don’t want to call them all skeptic as its just too new for some to relate) however the frivolous ones have high engagement, making it more interesting for truly creative people to explore and exploit the space which in turn is creating new business models and opportunities that could not have existed in our current eco-system.
🧬| Evolution case
Same way Web1 era had Encarta and this was disrupted by Web2’s Wikipedia, so too Web3 will bring along disruption for many who have been too stubborn to innovate their business models or at least keep innovation at their core. Now business model innovation I will save for another letter as that is a beast on its own.
I’ll leave you with this one and you can go explore others through your own research.
The sharing economy that was very much signature to the Web2 era through brands such as Fiverr, UpWork, Uber, Didi, Airbnb created a utopia for these venture-backed behemoths. So much so that they were able to charge the ones creating the content/services/products for their business models to survive, a 20-40% fee ON THEIR OWN CONTENT. This model worked very well as many of these content creators needed distribution and lack of resources left most of them no choice but to accept these fees.
Now, Web3 has breathed life to the disruptor company in this space; Braintrust.
According to their site, it is a fully user-owned, decentralized talent network, using Web3 technologies to return value to the Talent who creates it. It does so through BTRST, an ERC-20 token that launched on the Ethereum main net with a fixed supply of 250 million tokens on September 1, 2021.
They claim to charge 0% fees to talent. However their network effect approach to getting new talent on board looks as little like multi-layered marketing, but it doesn’t always have to be a bad thing.
I will join their Discord and hope to learn more about one of these new disruptors.
Maybe I’ll see you in the Discord. 😊
🥰| Sharing is caring
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See you in the next one. 🤍
Sai