The Web 3 playbook: using token incentives to bootstrap new networks. 🧵 The killer app of the internet is networks. The web and email are networks. Social apps like Instagram and Twitter are networks. Marketplaces like Uber and Airbnb are networks. Networks get more valuable with more participants, which is great when they are at scale, but cuts the other way when starting out. This is the bootstrapping problem.

Why Web 3 matters 🧵 Web 1 (roughly 1990-2005) was about open protocols that were decentralized and community-governed. Most of the value accrued to the edges of the network — users and builders. Web 2 (roughly 2005-2020) was about siloed, centralized services run by corporations. Most of the value accrued to a handful of companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.

What’s next in web3? 🧵 First, where are we today? Let’s start with some anecdotes. We have an awesome games team led by [@Tocelot](https://twitter.com/Tocelot/) that invests in founders out of top game studios like Riot, Epic, Blizzard etc. Almost 100% of founders they've met with recently are exploring NFTs in some way, or are already building NFTs into their games

The myth of "ETH killers" — why demand for blockchains will always outpace supply 🧵 For every important computing resource in history demand has outpaced supply. This includes CPUs, GPUs, memory, storage, and both wired and wireless bandwidth. The core dynamic of computing movements is a mutually reinforcing feedback loop between applications and infrastructure.

Seven types of NFTs **🧵** NFTs are new digital primitives, similar in flexibility and generality to past digital primitives like the website. [https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1440343035737305098](https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1440343035737305098)

Blockchains are computers that can make commitments. [https://cdixon.org/2020/01/26/computers-that-can-make-commitments](https://cdixon.org/2020/01/26/computers-that-can-make-commitments) You pay some performance overhead for this property.

NFTs make art, music, writing, games, and other creative content more abundant, not more scarce. Many critics of NFTs claim the opposite — that NFTs restrict access to creative content. This is not a critique of NFTs. This is a critique of a fictional caricature of NFTs dreamt up by critics.

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 <https://opensea.io/cdixon.eth>

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. 🧵 This criticism is based on a mistaken understanding of what web3 advocates mean by decentralization. I’ll try to explain. There will be centralized services in web3 just as there were in web1. The key question in web3 is whether the network effects accrue as private goods (as they did in web2) or public goods (as they did in web1).

Some reasons to build your startup in web3 🧵 I recently had the chance to meet some great web2 founders considering moving into web3. Web3 is trendy now, so it’s important to cut through the noise and highlight the right long-term reasons to start a web3 project.