Thread by @ljin18

NFT collections would do well to learn from Legos (the toy bricks) 🧱

Here’s why:

Legos have network effects:

1. Each new user who buys them & each new collection purchased ADDS value to existing owners, because they’re all interoperable and composable.

Importantly, the network effects and added utility are even true without additional users:

Even single player mode gets more valuable as you buy more products / have more combinations.

We often talk about NFTs as 'media legos,' but today the network effects of NFT collections mainly takes the form of community & prices going up, rather than of actual utility and functionality increasing as new users join in.

2. New generations of Lego players often get bootstrapped via hand-me-downs, making it easier to be inducted into the community.

This serves as a customer acquisition channel, leading them to purchase more (again, back to the network effects).

3. There are different price tiers of Legos, so price discrimination can happen among superfans vs. casual fans, but importantly there are low barriers to entry for newcomers.

Today, the most prestigious NFT collections are inaccessible to new users as a result of their success.

This is me in 2019 writing about the network effects of Legos:

https://twitter.com/ljin18/status/1087853113355063297?lang=en

and metrics to measure the strength of network effects (because they're not all the same):
a16z.com/2018/12/13/16-…