Great read! Love the way you approach it. I think there's a lot more to be said about where in the stack Web3 protocols actually exist in the first place. The fat protocol government analogy is great but leaves a lot of wiggle room in the details. Pretty sure you're going to start dialing into this in your next posts so looking forward to that.
The only thing I'd quibble about is the business model for open-source. I think the evidence points to long-term service-models (integration, maintainence, operations, etc.) as the primary source of business revenue in open-source software. Where you mention integrations and community captures some of that, but not in it's entirety. In relation to crypto, the emphasis on decentralization has off-loaded a lot of this work, but I think that's only temporary. In the long-run, those who can figure out the maintainence model of a protocol and it's associated ecosystem is where my guess is - whether they're a DAO or not.
Great piece. Brand is an underrated factor in evaluating the stability of crypto protocols. Users and investors in crypto are notoriously fickle, their attention span is generally short and most are constantly moving between protocols and apeing into the next 'hot' thing. Creating a brand which is seen as reliable, long-term and resistant to FUD is a super power for blockchains or protocols. BTC, ETH, MKR etc all doing it successfully. Alt L1s and DeFi 2.0 (Olympus etc) still have a long way to go to build trusted brands.
Great read! Love the way you approach it. I think there's a lot more to be said about where in the stack Web3 protocols actually exist in the first place. The fat protocol government analogy is great but leaves a lot of wiggle room in the details. Pretty sure you're going to start dialing into this in your next posts so looking forward to that.
The only thing I'd quibble about is the business model for open-source. I think the evidence points to long-term service-models (integration, maintainence, operations, etc.) as the primary source of business revenue in open-source software. Where you mention integrations and community captures some of that, but not in it's entirety. In relation to crypto, the emphasis on decentralization has off-loaded a lot of this work, but I think that's only temporary. In the long-run, those who can figure out the maintainence model of a protocol and it's associated ecosystem is where my guess is - whether they're a DAO or not.
Really well written. Subscribed!
Great piece. Brand is an underrated factor in evaluating the stability of crypto protocols. Users and investors in crypto are notoriously fickle, their attention span is generally short and most are constantly moving between protocols and apeing into the next 'hot' thing. Creating a brand which is seen as reliable, long-term and resistant to FUD is a super power for blockchains or protocols. BTC, ETH, MKR etc all doing it successfully. Alt L1s and DeFi 2.0 (Olympus etc) still have a long way to go to build trusted brands.