1/ Today we’re thrilled to be launching a slate of open sourced “Can’t be Evil” NFT licenses. These licenses are designed specifically for NFTs and were inspired by 20-plus years of work by the Creative Commons. a16zcrypto.com/introducing-nf…
2/ There’s currently significant ambiguity and legal risk across the NFT ecosystem, a lack of standardization makes it difficult for NFT purchasers to know what rights they’re getting and creating customized licenses is expensive. All of this acts as a drag on the industry.
3/ With that in mind, the CBE licenses serve three core purposes: 1) protect creators’ IP, 2) grant NFT holders a baseline of rights that are irrevocable, enforceable, and easy-to-understand 3) help creators & their communities unleash the economic potential of their projects.
4/ Why call them “Can’t be Evil”? B/c blockchains enable a new version of the internet where people don’t necessarily need to trust each other or companies to transact. It’s not the hope of Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’, it’s certainty that people can’t be.
5/ The CBE licenses seek to extend the “Can’t be Evil” principle to NFTs by transparently codifying the rights of NFT creators, buyers and sellers, thereby making NFT ecosystems inherently more trustless.
6/ The six CBE licenses we’re publishing today are also designed to be broadly applicable and provide a variety of options for users to select from. We hope this lowers the barrier to entry for artists, creators, and anyone interested in getting into the NFT ecosystem.
7/ Finally, the CBE licenses have been deployed to Arweave and incorporated into a smart contract so creators can build them directly into their NFT projects. They’re also available on @github, for anyone to download, use, fork, iterate on & improve. See: github.com/a16z/a16z-cont…
Having read through yesterday’s SEC complaint, my biggest takeaway is that it’s remarkable how little new information/guidance can be taken from the allegations...
Nevertheless, the allegations are a good reminder of the rules of the road for web3 builders.
Here are 5👇
(1) Don’t sell tokens to U.S. persons for fundraising purposes.
There is no issue that the SEC has been more clear or consistent about over the last 4 years.
(2) Even if you aren’t selling tokens, don’t ever market/hype them as an investment opportunity.
Discussions of price and tokenomics models designed to lead to price appreciation (including in whitepapers) will all be portrayed negatively by the SEC.
2/ Even though Part I was published 8 months ago, DAOs still face the same challenges we covered in that paper. In addition, as new use cases for DAOs have surfaced, so too have new challenges.
It’s great to see Congress working hard to provide web3 builders with regulatory clarity. The SEC should see this moment as an opportunity to adopt a more constructive approach to regulating web3.
If it does, here are 3 suggestions for where it could start.🧵
1/ First, the SEC should engage in a constructive dialogue w/ industry. As we said in our comment letter on the proposed “Exchange” rule change, policy questions about the proper regulation of DeFi systems are serious and shouldn't be decided opaquely.
1/10 Lots of talk about who should own Twitter. Here’s how web3 decentralization can turn social media platforms like Twitter into Public Utilities and what that might mean for content moderation.
2/ Much of the platform’s backend would be moved on-chain into a smart contract protocol controlled by a DAO, governed by tokens.
This forms the foundation upon which multiple clients (the apps, software and services that run off-chain) could be built.
3/ The key to decentralization in this model would be a robust ecosystem of clients developing, which the DAO could drive through the protocol’s network effects and native token incentives.
But would that be enough to encourage builders to build their own clients from scratch?
1/ As the web3 space continues to expand, approaches to decentralization need to evolve.
Today, I published this piece for web3 builders on the principles and models of web3 decentralization. Here's a quick guide. 🧵 future.a16z.com/web3-decentral…
2/ The heart of the piece discusses the model of "Full" Decentralization used throughout DeFi and how its limitations may ultimately make it unsuitable for most of web3 beyond DeFi. I then analyze a more complex model of "Open" Decentralization for web3.
More on both below 👀
3/ To get there, the piece starts with (1) a framework for the web3 decentralization design challenge and (2) a summary of how builders can use the components of web3 systems to achieve decentralization. Section (3) then provides an analysis of several models of decentralization.
Today's NYT article on DAOs misses the big picture. DAOs are a groundbreaking way for people with shared interests to collaborate towards common goals, and can deliver unprecedented societal benefits if we cultivate them well. 🧵nytimes.com/2022/03/08/us/…
Because of the trustless nature of DAOs, people can collaborate with confidence even if they don't know each other.
We've seen an explosion in the number and size of DAOs over the past year, as well as the variety and scale of their objectives.
Every day, entrepreneurs and participants are discovering new things DAOs are capable of in web3 that other org structures can't match, including mitigations of intermediary risk like fraud and other problems that plague LLCs, C-corps, etc.