A collection of letters encompassing simple insights and recognition of foundational shifts that any bright minds trapped within the old norms of a VC mindset can use to break free, whether they are just starting their journey or reflecting back on what they wish someone had told them in their early days.
We’re now on letter nineteen, and it’s about time that we talked about what actually differentiates assets built for and in web3.
The thing is, we have to be honest with ourselves, most assets that claim to be in web3 are just regular old flatland assets with some minimal crypto payment integration. Not quite the right click save as JPEG accusation, exactly, but really, too damn close for comfort.
What makes an asset meaningfully web3 is actually quite simple.
It’s all about the dimensions.
And we don’t mean how many pixels up and across it happens to be. To truly understand an asset you have to look at where it lives, how it behaves and what it does.
Who really cares about some static slice that never really changes or changes anything for you, that lets gamblers posing as financiers make bets on what some greater fool will think that it will be worth some day?
No.
The magical power and near mythical source of delta, of change, in any asset is in how it moves through mediums of many dynamic dimensions.
It is precisely the ability of an asset to perform as a key that differentiates it from a speculation or an investment. A key to what, you ask?
Well, remember, assets like money are representations with some variance of complexity, from the super simple to the myriad layered, of value.
Just like the role energy, of the touch the 3rd rail and you’ll almost certainly be burnt to a crisp flowing through you kind, not the new age crystal vibes kind, plays in physics as the literal currency moving mechanisms of all kinds in this great and wondrous multiverse, the proper value of assets is measured by how they make others move.
An asset with true web3 dimensional utility has some dynamic nature that with real functional utility crosses between and beyond a variety of mediums, settings and coordinate contexts, like for example the keys that we mentioned. Think now of NFTs of many varieties with some kind of content on display, used specifically to open up or to lock and unlock a treasure chest you find out in a real world dungeon crawl or VIP access to a secret apparel drop.
The exact same keys can also serve as your status badge allowing for like and game to recognise game and like.
NFTs as high functionality utility keys give the bearer access to a token governed coordination crew of fellow keyholders. These dimensional assets can also take the shape of what might in staler generations be thought of as vandalism in the form of sticker swapping, wheatpasting and street art.
Same content, jump to a new dimension and here you find yourself in a 3D immersive RPG. Maybe wearing a virtual reality HMD, preferably made with open source hardware, but unfortunately more likely made by that least metaversal tycoon wannabe, Zuck, or maybe, in a super cool one of a kind because it’s always changing immersive projection IRL NFT experience.
And for the relentlessly archaic VC model minded amongst us, the imposter thinking here that you might be prone to is to leap headlong into the addiction with looking at every kind of asset as an opportunity for speculative gambling style investment.
Do as you like, but there is no jurisdictional summoning circle for the SEC to salivate over here.
These are uncommon experiences and journeys made possible by entirely composable machine parts used to produce everyday commonplace commerce.
We’ll forgive you this time though for getting a similar thrill of excitement from the prospect of being able to portal jump across dimensions into a much improved reality over the flatland we’ve all become far too used to.
Any value brought in from sales of NFTs minted through this article will be used for building out the F₃M Realm treasury, which will eventually be governed and coordinated by the DAO, furthering to decentralise the web3 fashion capital stack.