I do think people who did well in crypto have an obligation to think about job creation on some level. If we're going to be the future of money and labor, that's where the conversation needs to go, really. It's pretty clear politicians aren't up for it; neither Web 2, nor Trad-Fi. Web 3 may be only thing left that cares enough -- and have the means to -- actually adapt to the changing economic landscape we find ourselves in today.

This is something I think about a lot since it relates to how I imagine how a “functional” Web 3 looks like. One-off NFT sales won't cut it alone - distribution/royalty deals baked into smart contracts are mandatory, not optional, especially for Music NFTs. And we can no longer afford to treat creatives as charity cases -- because it is not really an acceptable way for a society to function if we want to consider ourselves dignified. Creative work should be on equal footing as “regular” work and enjoy the same types of deals and protections that others have, at the very least.

I believe that crypto only becomes mainstream when we start providing meaningful, reliable jobs to the average person out there. For that to become real, passive income streams in NFTs should be mandatory, not optional - long-term jobs only emerge when there are prospects for long-term revenue streams a-plenty - not playing the NFT lotto game that the ecosystem is running on currently. We’re not quite there yet, in other words.

In theory, most NFT and crypto supporters do understand that this is where we need to go, long-term. But there’s a difference between saying and doing -- and it won't be easy since the resistance from the old worlds will be fierce, no doubt. The "then they fight you" phase is coming. (Some people think it already happened but crypto is not exactly “winning”, yet -- the “fight” is only getting started.)

There are a few folks like Miyaguchi and Buterin (who are both big on the “hands-off” approach to Ethereum) who seem to “get it”, but I found that people who really know how to internalize this ethos is actually very rare. (Even within the ETH ecosystem itself, to be fair.) I've been to a few meetings where people asked the basic question, "how do emerging/smaller acts thrive in Web 3, if they're not celebs already?" (This is the old model of Web 2 -- either become a celebrity, or perish, pretty much.) They usually pay lip service to the idea of a decentralized economy, but never of the specifics of detailed roadmaps of getting there. Either they don’t know, don’t care, or are actually there for the cheap and fast money. Hate to say it, but there are still a lot of them in Web 3, even now.

Which is pretty disappointing because the answer is already obvious - you have to form a self-sustaining ecosystem between small biz and indie acts, with the glue largely running invisibly in the background. We’re talking about a few hundred, few thousand dollars here and there, where the margins are very small and where the “middle-man” will have to learn to expect modest returns, as opposed to the “winner-take-all” casino of Web 2. Web 2 also happens to be a very ego and attention driven platform, so by its nature it tends to attract and propagate the exact types of people who are unable to follow through on the promises of Web 3. Some are more well-intentioned than others, but buyer beware, to say the least.

As such, there's a lot of people who made their success in Web 2 who are approaching Web 3 with the same methods as before, probably without even really knowing that they’re doing it. (Again, most with good intensions -- but most people don’t realize when they’re dodging a question, usually.) But since we’re still reliant on Web 2 platforms to talk about this stuff, the bad habits from the past still (and will continue to) persist.

VC funding is another thing to watch out for - the coins we know as being "long standing coins" today were all self-funded through public ICOs, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Tezos, Litecoin (which DOGE also used as a backbone), even Cardano - all of the “OG” coins in circulation, basically. (Ripple is one exception, but look how that turned out in practice, really.) In Web 3 projects, VC/Angel backed projects often burn out much faster than ones that grow through the slow process of self-funded initiatives and has a predictable pattern of market-hype followed by a devastating crash. In Web 2 they survived by earning the favors of the incumbents (especially as acquisition startups started to become more popular) but in crypto, there is no such thing -- at least, not yet.

An idealistic and too purist of an approach for most, perhaps, but self-sustenance is what made the crypto community what it is today and the results tend to speak for themselves - it’s a thought worth keeping in mind, at least.

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The leap from Web 2 to Web 3 is going to be a lot more difficult than anticipated, I would argue, because it is a mental leap just as much as a technological one. (The technology to do this stuff is already there -- this is a people problem, not a technical one.) As the saying in startups goes - changing your balance sheet is easy, changing a process is hard, changing a culture, impossible. But it is the impossible we must do, in order to progress.

As time goes on, I’m starting to realize that the 4th Industrial Revolution (something I dove deep into during my time spent supporting Andrew Yang in 2020) may already be here and that it’s going to be up to the crypto community to respond to the crises that our governments and institutions failed to address. I hear the ETH folks saying “responsibility, responsibility” all the time but it’s often said without specifics -- do they really know what they’re getting into? I sure hope so -- the future of humanity may rest on the simple smart contract that pays people in a reasonable, predictable way. Keep your eyes on the prize, folks. 💎