1/ Only ~30% of Americans trust schools, the media, or banks. Similar trends appear globally. This is a 40-year downward trend, not b/c of the Internet. We no longer trust the pillar institutions of post-WWII society and this has significant consequences: medium.com/@ElectricCapit…
2/ We used to think of paranoia about schools, banks, or the media as fringe beliefs. But they are now the mainstream belief structure! The foundational beliefs behind Bitcoin are not new. They are resonating now because culture has shifted.
3/ Truly decentralized cryptocurrencies are terrible in most dimensions -- throughput, dispute resolution, volatility. However this is a conscious decision to prioritize other dimensions -- seizure resistance, immutability, decentralization, etc.
4/ Focusing on the inefficiencies misses the point. It would be like trying to understand YouTube as a worse form of television. Blockchains and cryptocurrencies are not a worse developer platform. They are platforms that prioritize solving trust challenges above all else.
5/ Where trading throughput off for seizure resistance makes sense is in the financial stack, starting with stores of value (and a handful of a other use cases). Most dapps fail this test. They are not fundamentally embracing the native advantages of blockchain and crypto.
6/ The best projects in BUIDL mode understand this new world is fundamentally about (lack of) trust. We are in the early days of adoption, but when innovations are adopted, they are adopted VERY quickly. And the rate of adoption is increasing with each new wave of tech
7/ As many have noted, people tend to over-estimate what can be done in two years but dramatically under-estimate what we can do in ten. But even the last year has seen a remarkable rate of progress. Play this forward ten years and the world looks very different.
8/ The best projects embrace what makes crypto-platforms unique. What can we do now that we could not previously? Not just do better, but that we simply could not do? Odds are you are not the first to think of an idea, but that's ok. Most ideas are too early, not too late.
9/ Of course, we have to be mindful of the lessons of the Internet. Disruptive innovation has secondary effects that are hard to predict, and we should do our best to plan for these risks. We should think about the consequences of our work on both individuals and societies.
10/ The collapse of trust in formerly trusted institutions is a cultural shift that cannot be understated. How exactly will we rebuild these institutions? When does it happen exactly? Which populations fully embrace the native use cases? 🤷♂️ There are many unknowns in crypto.
11/ But history has taught us: Do NOT bet against entrepreneurs, developers, and builders. Given enough time they *will* win. We went from Kitty Hawk to humans on the moon in 65 years. The iPhone is only 10 years old. WeChat is only 7 years old. A decade is an eternity in tech.
12/ Now thousands, soon millions, of developers have tools to solve trust problems & are experimenting en masse. Builders will try to reimagine every untrusted institution and all means to transmit trust. Many will fail, some may succeed. But this is just getting started. ⚡️
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We analyzed 150m+ repos & xM code commits to produce these 100+ charts.
This was a community effort: 150 people contributed via email and Github! Thank you everyone who helped.
Let's dig in👇
2/ Our methodology:
We focus on open source code, so we undercount total developers in web3.
We focus on unique code and do not count purely copy/paste code.
These are all imperfect measures but directionally useful to understand web3 growth. Feedback is appreciated!
3/ tl;dr - Web3 is at All-Time Highs:
* 18k+ monthly devs
* 2.5k monthly devs in DeFi
* 3k NEW devs touch web3 code each month
* Several emerging ecosystems are growing faster than @Ethereum at the same stage in its history
* 20-25% of new devs each month start on @Ethereum
A Loot bag is an NFT that contains text. The bag is a collection of items each with a known rarity -- think @Wizards_DnD, Magic the Gathering, or Pokemon
It is now up to the community what games to build on top of Loot items.
3/ Once you get your head around what it is, you can appreciate @lootproject's significance.
More important than $400k is the South Park Commons community -- 250+ founders, domain experts, authors, researchers, intentionally exploring together: southparkcommons.com/faq
3/ Why are we doing $400k so early, before founders have picked an idea?
We believe the founder(s) are the most important ingredient in startup success.
We also believe some ideas are better than others & that we can help founders orient towards these better markets and ideas