In my last tweetstorm on crypto and AI’s intersection, I described projects that are applying crypto to solve AI problems.
Today, I’ll outline the second category: companies that are applying AI to crypto.
AI's application to crypto parallels the broader impact we’re already seeing AI and LLMs have on the non-crypto world:
Creating a new user interface for computing; helping content creators in their creative processes; helping enterprises enhance their operations
May 15 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
I've been spending a lot of time at the intersection of AI and crypto. We believe the coupling of the two is critical to making AI more equitable and user-owned.
Sharing quick thoughts about what we’re seeing:
Projects at the intersection of AI x crypto fall into two broad categories:
1) Applying crypto to solve AI problems 2) Applying AI to solve crypto problems
Sep 26, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A metric that I like to ground convos about crypto in is that Ethereum just crossed 245m cumulative unique addresses. Meanwhile, the internet had 248m users in December 1999.
We're at December 1999 levels in terms of onchain activity
December '99 was just months before the dot-com bubble burst, and many well-funded, hyped businesses failed and shut down
Many of those businesses actually had great ideas, but were just too early: drkoop -> WebMD; Webvan -> Instacart; -> ChewyPets.com
Apr 4, 2023 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
Psychological ownership -- or making users feel like owners -- is the missing ingredient to unlock retention and sustainability for web3 projects.
li.substack.com/p/building-psy…
Psychological ownership is the feeling of possession or "mineness" over a product/service. It’s distinct from legal ownership: you can *feel* like an owner without actually owning something (my sports team, my social media profile), and vice versa.
Mar 27, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Lots of thoughts about the TikTok hearing last week:
- it's horrifying to see the level of knowledge that lawmakers have about the internet/tech ("Does TikTok access users' home wifi networks?" was a real q that was asked)
- a ban of TikTok will leave 150m users orphaned, as well as 5m SMBs that use it to grow organically
- less competition among social media companies -> worse for creators & users. e.g. TikTok pioneered the Creator Fund and sparked a slew of competitors (Reels, Snap, Pinterest)
Mar 24, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
NEWS!
We’re excited to announce the inaugural Variant Founder Fellowship: a three-month cohort-based program for web3 founders at the earliest stages of their journey:
variant.fund/variant-founde…
Variant is proud to support some of the top projects in the ecosystem, which are part of our Variant Network, a peer learning community comprised of the founders and leaders across our portfolio.
In just 5 months, Blur has become the top NFT aggregator with >40% market share leading up to the airdrop last week.
That growth required not just UX improvements but also sophisticated incentives.
@variantfund's new blog unpacks Blur's airdrop lessons:
variant.fund/articles/what-…
Disclosure: We're not investors in Blur. But given our thesis on user ownership, we think the Blur case study holds interesting lessons for all crypto projects seeking to turn users into owners.
Feb 15, 2023 • 16 tweets • 2 min read
Prediction that in the future, consumer token airdrops will resemble web2 incentive programs: largely used to engage and incentivize users who already have product-market fit and intrinsic interest to use a product, rather than to acquire new users.
Tokens today by and large get airdropped retroactively to past users, creating an incentive for users to game the system in anticipation of a future token.
Feb 8, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
If Kickstarter + crypto had a baby, it would be Campaigns on Formfunction 👇
Campaigns allows more creators to achieve their dream projects by fundraising through NFTs, providing perks to supporters, and keeping their communities updated on progress
The very first pilot Campaign on Formfunction was by Robbie Shilstone for an animated short film about a group of dogs, Off Leash. Collectors’ benefits included being credited in the film, joining video calls to review storyboards, and gaining early access to the completed film
Jan 26, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
In 2000, people predicted that the internet was just a "passing fad." Then in the mid-2000s, we got all of the web2 companies that changed the way we work & live: FB, YouTube, Twitter, etc.
Web3 and creator economy may have "fallen out of favor" but they're here to stay...
The innovation of web3 is digital ownership, which unlocks many new behaviors/experiences that we've only started to scratch the surface for designing around
How will AI affect creators & the creator economy? 🧵
It's easy to view the advances in AI art as a threat to artists. AI tools have triggered concern (and lawsuits) over the use of artists' work as training data w/o compensation, credit, or consent...
Artists are also rightfully worried that these tools can undermine creative labor. (Why pay an artist for something when you can generate it for free, in seconds?)
Some are even predicting that AI art will eventually wholly replace human-driven creation.
Jan 9, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Hypothesis: Progressive decentralization is an effective playbook for media creation (not just crypto applications).
In other words, building a creative community should start with great content made by a small team, before layering in community ownership.
The playbook mirrors that of progressive decentralization for crypto apps:
1. Content-market fit 2. Community participation 3. Community ownership
Once high quality content can be generated via AI (whether that's text, video, songs, etc.), the role of the creator/fan will become much more about steering and governing the model and managing the revenue from its creations...
This is a flippening of traditional content creation model, wherein humans created content that was then mediated by social media feed algorithms.
In the future, communities will steward the AI model and creative outputs, and also serve as a as built-in distribution channel
Dec 15, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
In China, despair about economic prospects and backlash against a hyper-competitive work environment have resulted in the "tangping" movement, which literally translates into "lying flat" 🛌
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping
"Lying flat" entails refusing to work or quiet quitting and eschewing material goals like home ownership, and is basically the opposite of "996" -- the grueling culture of working from 9am to 9pm, 6 days per week that has become the norm in the tech industry in China
Dec 15, 2022 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
In the bear market, one sector within web3 that I expect to continue to grow unabated is creators
@bonfire_tweets is helping web3 creators to be “platform-less": identify and build more direct relationships w/ their fans that transcend any individual platform.
That’s more of a need now than ever before as large social media platforms alter policies and priorities overnight.
Dec 8, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Down the 🐇 hole we go!
We are thrilled to back @shibuyaxyz, a new platform that enables creators to pursue new ways to fund long-form content and engage fans through crypto:
variant.fund/articles/the-l…
Variant was started in 2020 with the belief that crypto would be the foundation of a user-owned web. This idea has tremendous potential for how to build new networks, as well as broader implications on economic equity. variant.fund/articles/the-o…
Nov 10, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Something that has always troubled me about effective altruism, and pure utilitarianism more broadly, is the lack of foundational moral ground rules. The ends justify the means, and human lives & complex values are reduced to numbers in a spreadsheet to be weighed.
For instance, I've encountered EA arguments that if 5 people are in need of lifesaving organ transplants, it would be rational to kill someone else to harvest their organs. Which.. obviously doesn't account for the fact that there are moral principles we should never violate!
Nov 7, 2022 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
One way to view what's happening at Twitter today is not only as an organizational reshuffling and effort to reinvigorate product & revenues — but as a platform in the midst of a legitimacy crisis.
In a piece last year by me & @kplikethebird, we built upon historical & sociological analysis of political legitimacy to examine tech platforms’ legitimacy in the eyes of creators & users.
Web3 enables co-creation where fans exert significantly more influence on the creative process, powered by shared ownership & new monetization models.
But there are a variety of different approaches for fostering fan creation, each with different types of outcomes 🧵
Models for community-driven creation exist on a spectrum in terms of how much fan ownership, agency, and economic upside are afforded.
Let’s unpack the various models:
1) Constrained / directional fan influence 2) Fan licensing 3) CC0 fan creation
Oct 23, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
6 ideas for a web3 dating app 💕👇
1 - Call the app Unhinged and vampire attack Hinge users
2 - Use token incentives to bootstrap the network
Dating apps are notoriously capital-intensive to scale, because they only becomes useful after many users join in any geography. Token incentives can build up the network to the point where underlying product utility kicks in.
