Let me open by saying that the motivation for writing is to refer back to this and use as a timeless reminder for myself. Failing well is what I aspire to do on my best days. Please don’t think for a second I got this completely nailed.
In the grand scheme of human civilization, Web3 has a very recent history. There is relatively little historical data to look at in order to predict broad patterns in the future. If we had 100+ years of data, as we do with traditional economic and financial data, it would likely be easier to extrapolate trends into the future, since most of the possible scenarios have already played out in the past.
Investing in Web3 is an infinite game. The purpose of the game is to keep playing, compounding good or bad decisions along the way. Part of this infinite game is to bring unique skills and insights and to keep redefining the rules and strategy of the game - could call that the metagame.
The modern version of software in Web2, Software-as-a-service, is broadly divided in two audiences: consumers and businesses. Of course this is a spectrum and not binary, since you have business software for solo entrepreneurs and S\&P 500 companies, and you have prosumer products for specialist consumers.
A Web3 theme I want to see emerge in 2022 is the rise of learn-to-earn models. Play-to-earn came onto the scene last year with Axie Infinity. It was pretty mind-blowing to observe how Web3 can actually help people that are economically vulnerable. Anyone can earn a new source of income by playing Axie.
The seed of this article came when I read Balaji’s excellent post on founding v. inheriting institutions. That post got me wondering what would happen if we just let bloated legacy institutions fail. I am not an anarchist and my hope is not for chaos to prevail.
Economic activity is linked to the flow of money in the system. The more money flows, the more a society is considered productive. People use money to pay for goods and services, and the same dollar can be used to pay for many transactions in a given year. Monetary velocity is used to determine the quantity of dollars in circulation.