cdixon

Toys, Secrets, and Cycles: Lessons from the 2000s

Jun 27

I started my internet career in the early 2000s during the dot-com bust. It's hard to picture this now, but the internet was a thing that people used only intermittently, to check email or plan travel or do some research. The average internet user spent about 30 minutes a day online, compared to about 7 hours today. To use the internet, you had to sit down in front of a desktop PC and "log on" (most people still had dial-up), nothing like the always-on, high-speed mobile internet we use today. Read more

Collected web3 twitter threads

Why web3 matters

Blockchains are the new app stores

Tokens are a new digital primitive, analogous to the website

Composability is to software as compounding interest is to finance

Embrace and extend

Bill Gates had a very clever tactic for responding to open alternatives to Microsoft proprietary tech. Learn more

Web3 critics misunderstand decentralization

A recent criticism of web3 is that it isn’t actually decentralized, because there are centralized services in the mix, such as NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, and data availability services like Alchemy.

How web3 data portability reduces the power of centralized services

For people new to web3, one thing that can be confusing is looking at user profiles on services like OpenSea. For example, here is my OpenSea profile OpenSea profile.

NFTs and ownership

NFTs make art, music, writing, games, and other creative content more abundant, not more scarce. This concept of ownership independent of copyright is widely understood in the offline world.

Blockchains and performance

Blockchains are computers that can make commitments. You pay some performance overhead for this property.

Seven types of NFTs

NFTs are new digital primitives, similar in flexibility and generality to past digital primitives like the website. Here are 7 types of NFTs I’m excited about:

Art
Music
Writing
Games
Virtual real estate
Domain names
Collectibles

The internet is not yet mature

There is a widespread view that the internet and software industry is now mature. This view affects valuations and future investment.

Economic loops for startups

Let’s say you run a startup that has a successful product, and you are now considering what product you should build or acquire next.

The myth of "ETH killers"

The myth of "ETH killers" — why demand for blockchains will always outpace supply.

Usability/monetization death spirals

Certain categories of web2 websites and apps fall into a usability-monetization death spiral.