Thread by @balajis

Open source business models.

Consulting (v1): open source the code, sell consulting

Cloud (v2): open source some code, but sell a closed source cloud complement

Community (v3): open source all code, and issue a token or charge for access to the community

The consulting model didn't scale because you had to keep finding great engineers and selling their time by the hour. Hard to do that endlessly.

The community model does scale because essentially each community member is buying time from each other. You're just the moderator.

Thesis: many SaaS companies will eventually issue a karma token (or be outcompeted by one that does). They set up a developer marketplace / StackOverflow equivalent where experts earn and charge crypto karma for advice. Would work for Figma, Mixpanel, etc.

Note: you can do this without putting any price on the token. No ICO. Just issue it to users like a social reward, similar to karma or likes or badges.

If the community puts a price on the token or NFT, that's then an emergent property. Organic decentralization?

Rough analogy: Twitter issues usernames when people sign up. Usernames are valuable & there is a decentralized marketplace in names. But Twitter didn't set the price.

Similarly, issuing karma (tokens), badges (NFTs), or usernames (ENS) to users might result in organic value.