The question

When I started my crypto journey in 2017, the question everyone was asking was: What is blockchain good for? Can it do things other than money? Thousands of ICOs later, the dust settled, and we were left with tens of useable chains.

When we started our first fund in 2021, the question in the air was: What new primitives can be built onchain with crypto? In response, we endured the heat of DeFi summer, rode the tide of NFT and PFP mania, amassed laborious hours farming GameFi, and chipped in on memes and DAOs of all sorts.

In our frenzy, we broke crypto. Gas prices went crazy, chains went down, apps got hacked, users got scammed and rugged. The next question was natural: What infrastructure do we need to make crypto and blockchains useable? That’s when we started our second fund in 2022, focusing on scaling, interoperability, modular layers, middleware/ account abstraction, and cross-chain apps.

Today, in Q3 2023, we have useable L2s and app-chains for cheap and fast transactions. We can create seamless user experiences with social logins, gasless interactions, even session keys, thanks to account abstraction. ZK is leading the path towards verifiable chains, bridges, and even arbitrary programs; with privacy on the horizon. We have the minimum viable infrastructure to move ahead.

It is time to ask the next question: What can we now build, that was not possible before? What lessons have we learnt from previous hype cycles? How do we hit mass adoption?

Show me the 💰 👥 🌏

Ideas previously attempted, whose time may have now come, presented in order of craziness innovation

Level 1 (Plausible and practical): Vampire attack the real world

• Bring real world assets onchain -- make them more liquid, composable, accessible.

• Bring digital assets onchain, where they belong -- from games, collectibles, memberships, vouchers, where they can flow and compose naturally.

• Bring Web2 social graphs onchain -- where communities and creators are more sovereign, interoperable, monetisable.

Level 2 (Push frontiers): Permissionless = global = crowdsourcing

• Crowdfund what big [brother, tech, pharma] does not want you to have -- e.g., underfunded research areas, neglected public goods, underserved communities

• Build global collectives -- e.g., pool data for foundation and finetuned AI models, set up peer-to-peer meshes of internet/ energy/ compute

Level 3 (What??): Invent new worlds

• Create autonomous worlds -- where humans and autonomous agents co-exist, experiment on new societies and economies, explore the evolutionary branches of our civilisation

• Create network states -- startup nations with new sets of values and norms, incubated digitally, and grown into physical sovereign states

This time is different

Aside from using the latest infrastructure, the new generation of apps must learn from the pitfalls of the last.

Incorporate reputation/ proof of humanity

• Sybil attacks weaken your signal/noise ratio

• Pure plutocracy limits your accessibility, scalability, and sustainability

• You need a combination of monetary skin-in-the-game, combined with some form of social or reputation NFT/ SBT/ attestation that is earned non-financially (Read: Decentralised Society)

Wield the fire of speculation responsibly

• Let your early adopters enjoy upside via ownership

• Do not just incentivise acquisition, also create mechanisms for retention

• Use points/ NFTs/ SBTs as early placeholders, launch tokens upon product-market fit

Not dying > winning

• Prioritise security. Follow standards and best practices.

• Hold steadfast, but not directly defiant in the face of regulation.

• Manage your treasury and spending wisely. Diversify and adapt.

Your time is now

Every ecosystem, L2, appchain, infrastructure component is ready to shower you with grants and support -- looking for builders, users, assets.

Every LP, VC, retail investor is looking for a reason to stay in the space, finger on the dry powder trigger -- to back champions who will bring builders, users, assets.

Every single person still in crypto and Web3 today is asking ourselves: Is this all crypto can do? Is it really only speculation, gambling, and memes? Are we condemned to esoteric debates on minutiae of crypto infrastructure and cryptography? Who are we doing all this for?

Everyone is hungry for an answer. And when it comes, it will come roaring. It will feel obvious, and inevitable. So build, and we will come.