We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us.
Churchill (View Highlight)
The cheat code for studying new technologies is that they tend to follow old patterns. Let’s look back before we look forward. (View Highlight)
apps-infrastructure-cycle. “The history of new technologies shows that apps beget infrastructure,” they wrote, “not the other way around.” (View Highlight)
Note: This intuitively makes sense to me. You cobble together a solution to deliver on a problem, then improve the infrastructure to smooth out how you solve a problem. “Infrastructure makes more elegant solutions”
Polygon is leading the charge, with $2.4 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL), a proxy for volume. (View Highlight)
Note: Tvl is web3 volume
The real-time, interactive interfaces of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other social networks popularized Web 2.0 and pushed it across the chasm. (View Highlight)
Paradigm-shifting interfaces do a few things:
Abstract away complexity
Give users easy ways to take advantage of most of the power of the new tech and assets
Wrangle some of the entropy created by the new tech
Create new experiences not possible through previous interfaces (View Highlight)
Wallet-First
web3 starts with the wallet.
Wallets are passports and bank accounts. They serve as users’ identity, and lets them carry their digital assets across web3. Signing in on web3 means connecting your wallet, and once you’re connected, you can spend, trade, and gain access to gated areas (View Highlight)
My three favorites are MetaMask (for Ethereum browser sign-in), Rainbow (for iOS and for searching wallets), and Phantom (for Solana browser sign-in). If you don’t already, go get one of each; you’ll need them. (View Highlight)
The internet is now a place where everyone has an inventory. The existence of programmable, interoperable digital objects will fundamentally change the logic of the Internet. (View Highlight)
One of the things that crypto is good at is giving digital assets physical characteristics.
Cryptocurrencies behave more like cash than bank-mediated digital money. They’re peer-to-peer, and if I sent someone 1 ETH, that ETH goes right from my wallet to theirs.
NFTs make digital items unique, ownable, and scarce, like physical items.
I believe that the web3 interface, then, will be something that also has more physical characteristics than the internet we’re used to. (View Highlight)
