Words matter. “The limits of my language means the limits of my world,” Ludwig Wittgenstein famously wrote. This is one of the reasons why I welcome the recent discussion about words to describe end-user use cases and technological developments in the crypto community. Crypto – do we still use that word? (Yes.)

Base has recently started using ‘onchain‘ to describe many of the phenomena previously associated with the term 'web3' - a word I've increasingly tried to avoid after the last cycle. It can have a pretentious connotation and lead to negative reactions. During a panel at Bright Moments Paris, I also learned about the history of the hyphen in technology penetration: many technological concepts have in common that as they evolve and get closer to mass adoption, they drop the hyphen if they have one. E-mail became email, on-line became online. Now it's ‘onchain'. Other words get dropped completely as the technology matures, like cyberspace or information superhighway in the early days of the World Wide Web.

Words matter. They also construct our worlds. 'NFTs' and 'crypto' are seen differently people's eyes than 'digital collectibles' and 'onchain'. At 0xNXT, the creative studio for Mercedes-Benz's onchain digital art and digital collectibles activities, we have been using the term 'digital objects' instead of 'NFTs' since our launch in May 2023. This seemed to us to be the more accessible term. Of course, we use "blockchain-based" and "blockchain technology" when we go one level deeper into the technology, but we have learned that explaining the use case ("What is unique and what can I do with it?") is a better onboarding than the technological background.

Concepts and words evolve. Some are dropped, others stick. It will be very interesting to see how sticky 'onchain' is during the approaching bull market.