Thread by @fimoculous

I got mad about the lack of imagination of crypto zealots, so four eggnogs deep, from my in-laws’ basement on the eve of Thanksgiving, I emailed Casey and let loose…

https://twitter.com/caseynewton/status/1463674758101225472

Many people from my cohort have self-identified as crypto-skeptics. That’s not me. I suspect some powerful innovation will eventually spin out of this web3 furball. (Hint: defi greases markets. But that’s for another 🧵)

My beef is their rhetoric and lack of imagination…

Recently, we quietly entered the product phase of web3. The biggest loudmouths have finally been pinned down, told to churn bluster into code. Have you been watching their product rollouts? They’re quite amusing. They’re all leftovers ideas from web2 with an ETH token bolted on.

I mean, record labels? Your big idea is to go after RECORD LABELS? Again?And you call MY clique stuck in the past?

Here’s a sample. @adamdavidson boldly stepped to the plate this week and took a big swing with a few web3 product pitches. At this point in the game, he could propose anything. Anything! It’s all fantasy right now anyway. And his big idea was… adamd.mirror.xyz/ef3BZjrJGk7bb1…

…a LinkedIn clone plus a GitHub repository plus, i think?, a Goodreads list. And what exactly makes it web3? An ETH wallet. Hm.

The second-best idea on his list: A marketplace for selling book rights to movie studios, using NFTs for some reason.

Just what we needed?

I give him props though, because brilliant uses of crypto have not exactly been pouring into the marketplace of ideas. So many pitches simply recycle this formula:

Web2 thing + token = 🤑

One you commonly hear is a reboot of Wikipedia with ETH rewards.

OMFG, PLEASE NO.

They’re in deep trouble if all their biggest ideas are just “thing from before but now ETH.”

Maybe the web2.5 revolution spoiled them? It worked last time to just append “_____ but in the cloud” to a whole generation of software. Maybe they hope it’ll work again?

As I said to Casey, if A16Z is lucky, and they excel at manifesting luck, something will surely shimmy out of all of the web3 fracas. But it won't be by resurrecting failed web2 projects and taking another swing at established industries who have fought this off again and again.

Because at the moment, it feels like VCs are fighting a grudge match with the same old sectors of yesteryear. I imagine spreadsheets that look like:

Column 1: Industry we didn’t topple in the last go-around
Column 2: Token!

If they want to win over the skeptics, they’re gonna need better ideas than a gofundme to buy the constitution or some cumbersome tokenized identity software.

Oh and gang? I’m sure you’ll come up with something but until then… a little less cheerleading?

📣💥🤑 GN GN GN