Tag: web3

• Be your own bitch

  I just joined Warpcast. You can find my profile, here.

  At first glance, Warpcast is going to look a lot like X. But instead of tweets, you cast. There are also various topic channels, similar to how Reddit works. But the most important difference is that Warpcast is a client for the Farcaster protocol, which is a social network built on Ethereum. This means that it is a decentralized social network.

  You won’t see of any this if you decide to sign up. All of the esoteric crypto things are hidden in the background. But it’s there. And it ultimately means that, as a user, you get to own your online identity and whatever content and following you create. Meaning, you can take it with you if you decide you no longer want to use Warpcast and instead want to access the network through another client.

  It also means that software developers now have a real incentive to build things on top of the protocol, because unlike with a centralized service like X, they can be confident that they won’t get the rug pulled out from underneath them. And herein lies the feature that will ultimately lead to an enormous amount of new ideas and innovation.

  In real estate terms, you can think of developing on top of a centralized service like building within a theme park owned by a single company. The theme park might want you to build on their land, right now, but if at some point it no longer suits their business needs, they can always change the game on you.

  On the other hand, building in a city on land you own outright is a lot like developing on top of a decentralized service. Sure, you need roads and municipal infrastructure to service your land (think of these like the above protocol), but you generally don’t need to worry that the city might wake up one day and remove all of this important infrastructure. It’s a given. And that’s a fundamental difference, even if the buildings might look the same in the end.

  Venture capitalist Fred Wilson once explained it in this way, “don’t be a Google bitch, don’t be a Facebook bitch, and don’t be a Twitter bitch. Be your own bitch.” What he meant by this is that if you build on someone else’s land, then you’re opening yourself up to being their bitch. What you want to be is your own bitch. And similar to how our cities work, this is the potential of decentralized services.

  As I write this post, I currently have 6 followers on Warpcast. If you’d like to be number 7, you can follow me here.

  2024.05.22

• How to make the internet more like our cities

  I am halfway through reading Read Write Own and I can confidently say that you want to read this book. If you’re already a believer in this “next era of the internet” (like I am) it will make you a true believer. And if you’re not a believer, maybe it will make you one. Or not. Either way, I am thoroughly enjoying it.

  One chapter that will be particularly interesting to all of you is the one where Dixon makes a comparison between the internet and cities. Cities, he argues, work because of a delicate interplay between public and private interests. And the private side works because, among other things, we have the rule of law and the construct of ownership.

  If I own an asset, like a piece of real estate, I’m only going to be confident to invest in it if I know that someone won’t take it away from me (or dramatically change the rules on me), which is why if this prerequisite doesn’t exist, you typically see a lack of investment.

  The same is true on the internet. But currently, the dominant form of networks are centralized corporate networks. In city terms, you can think of these like an amusement park. Once you enter through the gates, you’re in their world. You could maybe rent some space, but at the end of the day, the owner makes the rules. And if they don’t like what you’re doing, they can remove you.

  It’s a pretty stark contrast when you think of it in these terms, which is why it’s hard not to feel compelled when you consider that similar dynamics are playing out on the internet right now. Cities thrive because we have rules, ownership, and the freedom to innovate on top of the foundations laid by government.

  So I’m all for making the internet more like our most successful cities.

  2023.11.15

• Blockchain gas fees are dropping — that’s good

  I watched the BlackBerry movie the other week and right away I thought, “whoa, is Jim Balsillie really like that?” Supposedly, kind of. Either way, it was a good movie that naturally ended with the fall of BlackBerry, with Balsillie not getting an NHL team, and with Mike Lazaridis dismissing the first iPhone as a toy. “Who wants to use a phone without a keyboard?”

  We all know these stories. In fact, they feel trite in retrospect. There’s Blockbuster, Kodak, and countless others. But these moments are clearly a lot harder to identify in the moment. And today, at least for me, it feels like this moment for crypto and blockchains.

  It’s easy to dismiss this space. Among other things, a blockchain is an objectively worse database. They’re slower than today’s alternatives. They require more computing power. There’s no customer service when something goes wrong. And, it generally costs a lot more to save new information to a blockchain (this cost is called a gas fee).

  At the peak of the market in 2021, the average quarterly gas fee (cost per transaction) on the Ethereum network reached about US$37. Given this, nobody wanted to use this database to buy a $2 coffee. (However, many people were, at least at the time, willing to use it to buy expensive NFTs.)

  But as Tomasz Tunguz outlines in this great post called “Gas Gas Revolution”, the cost of saving data to a blockchain has dropped dramatically over the last few years. And all signs indicate that this trend is only going to continue. So what happens when it becomes cheap/basically free to save to these worse databases?

  Well, if you believe that “decentralized” and open databases are going to unlock powerful new innovations, the correct answer is probably: a lot. And then all of a sudden, they’ll be better databases.

  2023.10.27

• Cold, warm, hot

  Sadly, this can very easily happen in the world of crypto. If you connect your wallet to a bad actor and sign a malicious transaction, it is possible for someone to drain all of your assets (coins, NFTs, and so on). It’s pretty terrifying. And I’m sure that a lot of people will see this and say to themselves, “that’s why I don’t like crypto! It’s too risky. Too many scammers. Bunch of rat poison.”

  There is no question that crypto is risky. It’s also not very user friendly. Clearly even sophisticated users can get tricked into signing the wrong kind of blockchain transaction. It happens all the time. But this is also a nascent space. And maybe this will become less common in the future as things mature.

  Either way, there are things you can absolutely do today to protect yourself if you’re planning to own and do crypto things. One of the most important rules to follow is this one here: you should have at least 3 crypto wallets. Let’s call them cold, warm, and hot wallets (which is often how they are described in web3 land).

  A hot wallet is the one you use to connect to sites, mint things, and do whatever else. Because of this, you want to keep almost nothing in it. If you want to mint an NFT, transfer in only whatever crypto is required to complete that transaction. That way if something bad happens, it’s not devastating. Once your mint is complete, transfer out the NFT to a colder wallet.

  A cold wallet is essentially your vault. This is where you store your Mona Lisas. These are the NFTs (or whatever else) that you plan to own for the long-term. The only transactions with this wallet should be to move things in and out of it. You should never connect it to any sites/services, even if they’re reputable ones. Once you do that, it’s no longer a cold wallet. It’s now a warmer wallet.

  A warm wallet lives somewhere in between. You connect it to sites/services that you trust, and you use it to hold NFTs that you might be looking to sell in the short-term (to give just one use-case example). In my case, brandondonnelly.eth is my warm wallet. It’s where I mint the NFT photography that nobody ever buys.

  I realize that all of this probably sounds convoluted, especially to those who are unfamiliar with this space. But in today’s world, if you want to be crypto literate, you need to take things like this into consideration. My NFTs might be finally totally worthless, but I love my growing art collection and I like it being on ice in a vault.

  2023.09.26

• Read, write, own

  

  I have been following Chris Dixon for many years and, yesterday, I learned that he has written a new book called, Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet. It is a book about web3 (crypto things) and the title is based on thinking about the evolution of the internet in terms of these three phases:

  The first act, called the “read era”, circa 1990-2005, democratized information. Anyone could type a few words into a browser and read about almost any topic through websites.

  The second act, the “read-write era”, roughly 2006-2020, democratized publishing. Anyone could write and publish to mass audiences on social networks and other services through posts.

  The third act, the “read-write-own era”, 2020-present, is democratizing ownership. Anyone can become a stakeholder in a digital service or network, gaining power, governance rights, and economic upside previously reserved for only a small number of corporate affiliates, like stockholders and employees.

  The book won’t be out until March 2024, but if you’re interested, maybe you want to pre-order it or at least get it on your radar. I immediately put this in my queue and I’m looking forward to welcoming it to the pile of books next to my bed.

  Full disclosure: I don’t get anything if you pre-order this book. I’m only putting this out there because I have a high degree of conviction about this coming shift and because, in the future, I want to be able to look back at posts like this one here. I think they’ll age well.

  2023.06.23

• Decentralization and public infrastructure

  

  Decentralization, in the crypto/blockchain/web3 sense of the word, is a crucial thing. Here is an excellent article talking about why it is the key innovation of blockchain technology and why it is a central feature in this new emerging web3 world.

  But of course, it can all get very complicated. So I thought this — and in particular the sentence in bold below — was a good way of describing the benefits:

  “…decentralization enables web3 systems to be credibly neutral (they cannot discriminate against any individual stakeholder or any group of stakeholders, which is critical to incentivize developers to build within ecosystems) and composable (to mix and match software components like Lego bricks). As a result, web3 systems function more like public infrastructure than proprietary technology platforms. In contrast to the gated software of Web2, web3 protocols provide decentralized internet infrastructure on which anybody can build and create an internet business. Crucially, in web3, this can be done without the permission of the original deployer of the protocol or the need to use a centrally controlled interface.“

  This resonated with me because think about how important public infrastructure is to our cities. Most of us take it for granted that, when we need it, we can just plug in and access electricity, water, sewer, and other public infrastructure.

  But throughout history, these services have been fundamental to the growth of our cities. They empowered scale and better health outcomes, among other things. So it’s exciting to think that we are now living through the creation of something kind of similar in tech.

  Image: a16z

  2023.06.12

• New web3 restaurant loyalty platform launches in NYC

  

  I just learned about Blackbird’s technology platform and the restaurant loyalty program that they are currently building. On the surface, the way it works is that you walk into a restaurant and then tap your phone on one of their NFC-enabled chips (see above).

  This then signals that you are/were there and so you earn loyalty points, kind of like a stamp on one of those cards in the food court. Except here, the idea is to create an endless and customizable array of wonderful customer experiences.

  Maybe after 15 fifteen visits you’re now considered “fam” (decided by the restaurant), and so you get a designated table at the restaurant and your favorite dessert automatically sent to your home on your birthday. This is just one example.

  At the same time, you also earn $FLY, which is the platform’s native crypto token (built on Base by Coinbase). And this to me is one of the most exciting aspects of the platform.

  Because here is a crypto or web3 product that is seemingly really easy to use. In fact, nobody needs to know that it is doing things on a blockchain. Just tap your phone on the thingy. Earn stuff. And move on.

  So I think it’s a really good example of where we’re headed in this space. The underlying technologies are going to recede into the background and all that we’ll see are useful products and services.

  2023.04.11

• Modern luxury

  “Luxury” is an overused term in the world of real estate. If you call everything luxury, then ultimately nothing is luxury, right? But let’s ignore this particular debate for right now. I was recently in a meeting where our interior design team — Mason Studio — made what I think is an important distinction between “classic luxury” and “modern luxury.”

  Classic luxury is old school luxury. It is the kind of luxury that says, “you can’t come in here unless you look like this.” And I’m sure that all of you can think of brands that might speak to you in this way.

  But I think this idea of luxury is quickly changing. Perhaps a good example of “modern luxury” is the recent collaboration between RTFKT — the web3 digital fashion company that Nike bought last year — and high-end luggage company RIMOWA.

  This, to me, is a brilliant collaboration. It is a sign of what’s to come — an ongoing blurring of our physical and digital worlds — and it is a less fussy kind of luxury; maybe I’ll mint an exceptionally expensive piece of luggage, maybe I’ll mint a digital collectible, or maybe I’ll just hang out on Discord.

  Now, one could argue that nothing has really changed and we’re just talking about different kinds of trappings. But that doesn’t feel exactly right. There is something about modern luxury that feels more inclusive to me. And I think that is why it is quickly becoming the dominant form of “luxury” — whatever that means.

  2022.10.27

• The Germania Bank Building at 190 Bowery

  I recently mentioned that it would be nice to be able to buy a five-storey building in Soho (New York) for $70,000. Yes, that was in 1968 dollars. But even in today’s dollars, we’re talking less than $600,000. I would gladly buy a cast-iron five-storey building in Soho for that price today if it were somehow possible.

  In response to this post, a reader sent me this (thank you), which is another great example of an artist buying an old buying in New York for what is clearly an absurdly low price. The artist is photographer Jay Maisel, and the building is The Germania Bank Building at 190 Bowery.

  Jay bought the six-storey building in 1966 for $102,000. He then used it as his residence, a studio, and as a place to collect a hell of a lot of things. Though at one point he also rented out some of the other floors to artists like Roy Lichtenstein.

  It is alleged that most people thought the building was abandoned. But this was obviously not the case. Jay sold the building to RFR Holdings in 2014 for $55 million. And in 2019, streetwear brand Supreme opened up in the bottom.

  Today, I understand that Web3 things are also happening in the building. And who knows, it might be the case that we’ll be reading about some of them, in a similar kind of way, fifty years from now.

  2022.07.18

• Happiness vs. satisfaction

  I have heard from some of you that you don’t like it when I write about crypto and NFTs. This personal blog is supposed to be largely about city building after all. So today I thought I would write about crypto and NFTs. More specifically, this podcast episode, which I watched last night.

  It’s with Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon of the venture firm a16z, and it’s actually less about specific things like NFTs and more about the reinvention of the internet in general. Why I found it particularly interesting is that Marc co-invented the first widely-used web browser. Anyone remember Netscape?

  So he was around for what we are now calling web 1 and he is around for what we are today calling web 3. And there are lots of parallels between then and now. Similar to today with crypto, the early internet had lots of critics and lots of people who thought it was dumb and that it would never amount to much.

  Oops.

  Here are a few other thoughts and ideas from the podcast that I found interesting (some of them even relate to city building):

  • No matter how many times we have seen the same movie, humanity seems doomed to repeat the same mistakes when it comes to, among other things, embracing new ideas and innovations. I agree with Marc in that part of this is generational. Younger people are often more open to new ideas because they view it as a way for them to establish themselves and make their mark on the world. Whereas older people (established people) often view new ideas and change as a threat to their current position in the world.
  • Marc drops a number of books throughout the talk and one of them is The Mystery of Capital — Why Capitalism Succeeds in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. This is a well known book by Hernando De Soto and the big idea is that property ownership and property rights are really the fundamental ingredients in our modern world. People need to know that if they hold title and invest money into something, it’s not just going to get taken away by someone. And it is this underlying legal structure that has allowed people to leverage property into wealth.
  • This is a fascinating observation in its own right, but it also relates to crypto. Hear me out. Chris Dixon makes the argument in the episode that web1 democratized information (anyone can search for stuff), and that web2 democratized publishing (anyone can share stuff through platforms like Twitter or the blogging platform I’m writing on right now). He then goes on to argue that the promise of web3 and crypto is really to democratize ownership of the internet. Anyone can buy crypto tokens.
  • Why might this be a big deal? Well if property rights in our offline world are a fundamental ingredient to modern society, it seems logical to me that property rights in our digital world(s) might also be equally transformative. And this is precisely one of the things that blockchain technologies enable for the very first time.
  • Finally, on a mostly unrelated note, I liked Marc’s comparison of happiness vs. satisfaction in life. Happiness, he explains, is like getting an ice cream cone on a hot summer day. The first and second feel great, but after that you move on. Satisfaction on the other hand is enduring. It’s the feeling you get from working on something really challenging and then finally succeeding. And that’s exactly how I feel about real estate development. There are lots of shitty days and lots of grinding. But in the end, I do feel very satisfied.

  2022.06.02