One of my former colleagues, Rob Marianski, and I used to have a running joke -- we would be building and debugging something, and he'd finally say, "Oh, so you just want me to set just_work = true?".
That was over 10 years ago, but it still gets me every time for some reason. (as an aside, I have always thought justworkequalstrue.com would make a great blog name, and actually bought the domain for Rob a few years back -- still waiting for that first post, Rob...).
But the idea of things "just working", automatically, and without friction, is magical and exciting. I mention it because of where we are today in the crypto/blockchain space. 99% of the attention recently has been on ICO hype and the financial use cases of crypto (fundraising, trading, payments, tokenized assets, etc) -- but I believe we are about to turn the corner and get a taste of what kinds of new online user experiences will become possible because of this technology.
This is where it's going to get fun. just_work = true will be the foundational element of this experience. Here is what I mean, by way of a few examples:
1) Browsers with identity and money built-in: the browsing experience will be directly tied to identity and payments, and any app will be able to natively, frictionlessly, tap into both. Users of Toshi, or Brave, or Metamask, or Blockstack are already getting a taste of it. Because all cryptonetworks are built around public key cryptography, and the private key is both your identity and your wallet, when you have a public/private keypair built into the browser, you can do lots of things -- be "logged in" everywhere, control & provision your own data, make seamless and flexible payments and payment arrangements (e.g., subscriptions). Imagine the entire web working as seamlessly as Amazon and Apple do today. As you surf the web, there will be less logging in, fewer passwords to remember, fewer forms to fill out -- it will just work.
2) Portable digital assets: I wrote about this previously, but the interoperability of blockchain-based digital assets is going to be a big thing. Because assets on blockchains are public, open and available, they can exist across many websites and applications. The suit of armor you build in world of warcraft could be used as collateral for getting a blockchain-based mortgage -- maybe that's a ridiculous example, but the idea is that these assets are open, interoperable, and natively portable -- which means things will "just work", across the web, in ways that aren't possible today.
3) Automatic dev / deploy environments: my colleague Albert described a story recently where his son participated in a Solidity hackathon -- the time from setup to deploy was vanishingly short, since all of the deployment infrastructure is part of the open Ethereum network. No need to set up accounts at amazon, heroku, stripe, etc to get started -- just write a contract, buy some ether for gas, and publish it, and you're online. We've never had a development / deployment environment this drop dead simple, and as blockchain dev tools mature further, it will get even easier.
I mention all of the above just as a thought exercise. It is easy for folks in this space to focus on issues like privacy and "freedom" -- and while these things do matter to some users (especially technically-minded power users), I don't believe this technology will unlock mainstream opportunity until we begin to surface the magical capabilities that make everyday users feel like "wow, it just works".
On Tuesday we announced our investment in Cryptokitties, and, as you might expect, received a combination of enthusiasm and skepticism in response. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies already sound ridiculous to most people, and virtual "real" kittens made out of cryptocurrency take it a step further. But, as with many new technologies, these first use cases just scratch the surface of a broader potential. There are lots of things to be excited about here, but for now I'll just focus on one of them: interoperability. Cryptokitties are a specific type of cryptoasset, known as a "non-fungible token" (in this case, based on the ERC-721 standard). Non-fungible means that each one is unique. So, when a kitty is "born", it is a one-of-a-kind digital asset, as opposed to other types of currencies or tokens that are completely interchangeable. So, they are different than other tokens in that way, but are similar in that each NFT is "scarce" or "real" in that is secured by the blockchain - in this case the Ethereum blockchain. So, what we have are unique, scarce, public digital assets. The public part is particularly interesting. Because each kitty is a token on Ethereum, that means that anyone else (aside from the original developers of Cryptokitties) can view that asset and integrate it into other systems, without anyone's permission
"Cryptonetworks" can help us build a more competitive, innovative, secure and decentralized Internet. "Tokens" (also known as cryptocurrencies or cryptoassets) are integral to the operation of cryptonetworks. As we design new laws and regulations in this emerging space, we should keep these concepts in mind, beyond the financial aspects that are today's primary focus.
In recent months, there has been untold attention paid to cryptocurrencies, blockchains and the coming of the "decentralized web" or "web3". And, given the rise of the cryptocurrency markets (over 1500 coins, with a total market cap of $370B as of today) and the recent boom in token-based fundraising (including a healthy dose of scams and shenanigans) there is increasing regulatory and legal attention being paid to the sector, and rightly so. This is a profound, and confusing, innovation. As John Oliver so aptly put it last week, it's "everything you don't understand about money combined with everything you don't understand about computers". Basically right. At USV, we've spent the better part of the past five years exploring and investing in this space, and now have roughly a dozen investments touching it in one way or another. As we have watched the technology and market evolve, alongside the public discourse, we feel its important to reiterate why we think this technology is so powerful and important, and contribute to the ongoing collective learning about how it works. While much of the focus, especially in the context of regulations, is on the financial and fundraising applications of cryptocurrencies, our interest continues to be on the potential for cryptonetworks to provide
One of my former colleagues, Rob Marianski, and I used to have a running joke -- we would be building and debugging something, and he'd finally say, "Oh, so you just want me to set just_work = true?".
That was over 10 years ago, but it still gets me every time for some reason. (as an aside, I have always thought justworkequalstrue.com would make a great blog name, and actually bought the domain for Rob a few years back -- still waiting for that first post, Rob...).
But the idea of things "just working", automatically, and without friction, is magical and exciting. I mention it because of where we are today in the crypto/blockchain space. 99% of the attention recently has been on ICO hype and the financial use cases of crypto (fundraising, trading, payments, tokenized assets, etc) -- but I believe we are about to turn the corner and get a taste of what kinds of new online user experiences will become possible because of this technology.
This is where it's going to get fun. just_work = true will be the foundational element of this experience. Here is what I mean, by way of a few examples:
1) Browsers with identity and money built-in: the browsing experience will be directly tied to identity and payments, and any app will be able to natively, frictionlessly, tap into both. Users of Toshi, or Brave, or Metamask, or Blockstack are already getting a taste of it. Because all cryptonetworks are built around public key cryptography, and the private key is both your identity and your wallet, when you have a public/private keypair built into the browser, you can do lots of things -- be "logged in" everywhere, control & provision your own data, make seamless and flexible payments and payment arrangements (e.g., subscriptions). Imagine the entire web working as seamlessly as Amazon and Apple do today. As you surf the web, there will be less logging in, fewer passwords to remember, fewer forms to fill out -- it will just work.
2) Portable digital assets: I wrote about this previously, but the interoperability of blockchain-based digital assets is going to be a big thing. Because assets on blockchains are public, open and available, they can exist across many websites and applications. The suit of armor you build in world of warcraft could be used as collateral for getting a blockchain-based mortgage -- maybe that's a ridiculous example, but the idea is that these assets are open, interoperable, and natively portable -- which means things will "just work", across the web, in ways that aren't possible today.
3) Automatic dev / deploy environments: my colleague Albert described a story recently where his son participated in a Solidity hackathon -- the time from setup to deploy was vanishingly short, since all of the deployment infrastructure is part of the open Ethereum network. No need to set up accounts at amazon, heroku, stripe, etc to get started -- just write a contract, buy some ether for gas, and publish it, and you're online. We've never had a development / deployment environment this drop dead simple, and as blockchain dev tools mature further, it will get even easier.
I mention all of the above just as a thought exercise. It is easy for folks in this space to focus on issues like privacy and "freedom" -- and while these things do matter to some users (especially technically-minded power users), I don't believe this technology will unlock mainstream opportunity until we begin to surface the magical capabilities that make everyday users feel like "wow, it just works".
On Tuesday we announced our investment in Cryptokitties, and, as you might expect, received a combination of enthusiasm and skepticism in response. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies already sound ridiculous to most people, and virtual "real" kittens made out of cryptocurrency take it a step further. But, as with many new technologies, these first use cases just scratch the surface of a broader potential. There are lots of things to be excited about here, but for now I'll just focus on one of them: interoperability. Cryptokitties are a specific type of cryptoasset, known as a "non-fungible token" (in this case, based on the ERC-721 standard). Non-fungible means that each one is unique. So, when a kitty is "born", it is a one-of-a-kind digital asset, as opposed to other types of currencies or tokens that are completely interchangeable. So, they are different than other tokens in that way, but are similar in that each NFT is "scarce" or "real" in that is secured by the blockchain - in this case the Ethereum blockchain. So, what we have are unique, scarce, public digital assets. The public part is particularly interesting. Because each kitty is a token on Ethereum, that means that anyone else (aside from the original developers of Cryptokitties) can view that asset and integrate it into other systems, without anyone's permission
"Cryptonetworks" can help us build a more competitive, innovative, secure and decentralized Internet. "Tokens" (also known as cryptocurrencies or cryptoassets) are integral to the operation of cryptonetworks. As we design new laws and regulations in this emerging space, we should keep these concepts in mind, beyond the financial aspects that are today's primary focus.
In recent months, there has been untold attention paid to cryptocurrencies, blockchains and the coming of the "decentralized web" or "web3". And, given the rise of the cryptocurrency markets (over 1500 coins, with a total market cap of $370B as of today) and the recent boom in token-based fundraising (including a healthy dose of scams and shenanigans) there is increasing regulatory and legal attention being paid to the sector, and rightly so. This is a profound, and confusing, innovation. As John Oliver so aptly put it last week, it's "everything you don't understand about money combined with everything you don't understand about computers". Basically right. At USV, we've spent the better part of the past five years exploring and investing in this space, and now have roughly a dozen investments touching it in one way or another. As we have watched the technology and market evolve, alongside the public discourse, we feel its important to reiterate why we think this technology is so powerful and important, and contribute to the ongoing collective learning about how it works. While much of the focus, especially in the context of regulations, is on the financial and fundraising applications of cryptocurrencies, our interest continues to be on the potential for cryptonetworks to provide
Crypto Decentralization - The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman - Page 4
-- developed independently from CryptoKitties -- you can buy a hat for your kitty. Here's the one I bought:
(There are now 899 flat brim hats still available if anyone is interested) What's particularly interesting is that I don't own the hat, my kitty does -- from the KittyHats whitepaper:
"When you sell a kitty, the sticker remains applied to the kitty. The new owner can choose to remove the sticker or leave it attached."
So neat! So what we have the beginnings of is a world where digital assets that are created in one place can be freely integrated into other places. If hats are too tame, you can also race your kitty at KittyRace: (updated, via @sidkal)
Or, when you've had enough of your kitty, you can head over to CryptoZombies (hat tip to Aaron), which teaches Ethereum programming via online game development. As you create a zombie, it can start to do things. One of the things it can do is eat CryptoKitties:
The (original) internet brought us a world where any site could link to any other site, and they could all be accessed from anywhere in the world. This was the first interoperability revolution. The next one will be with data and digital assets. For a long time, data has been the property of platforms -- with cryptonetworks and cryptoassets, data can live outside of anyone platform, under the control of users. This has the potential to open up a lot of innovation.
digital services
, such as computing, file storage, social applications, and more. You might ask, why is it important to have another way to provide digital services? We already have lots of websites and apps that do that today. The reason cryptonetworks are an interesting addition to today's digital services is their core architecture of
decentralization
. Just as the original internet gave us a decentralized layer on top of the telecommuncations network, which resulted in untold innovation, cryptonetworks are a decentralized way to provide digital services.
exploring why this is important, including the historical parallels to the original internet. The decentralized architecture of cryptonetworks has the potential to address many issues in today's tech and business landscape, including
information security
,
market competition
,
product innovation
, and
equitable distribution of gains from technology
. Imagine, for instance, if the owners or users of Amazon/Google/Facebook/Reddit/etc. were able to "fork" the product and launch an identical competing copy, if they didn't agree with the direction of the company? And imagine if all of the users of & contributors to a web platform also had a direct, monetary interest in the success of that platform, that reflected their own contributions as community members? This is how cryptonetworks work, since they are essentially open-source, mutually owned & operated web platforms. Each network's cryptocurrency or "token" acts as the internal currency, incentive mechanism, and "binding agent" for the other processes that help the platform function. And further, the internal data structure of cryptonetworks, the
distributed ledger
or
blockchain
has unique properties that can improve privacy and data security. See also,
exploring these ideas. With that as context, it's important to walk through how cryptonetworks function, and importantly, how tokens function within them -- especially given the growing regulatory scrutiny around how tokens are created and traded. The deck below (
) is meant to help explain this. While it does touch on some public policy goals at the end, it does not attempt to make specific, detailed recommendations. The main takeaways should be (a) cryptonetworks are an important new innovation in how digital services are delivered, (b) tokens are fundamental to their operation, and (c) as we design new laws and regulations in the space, we should keep (a) and (b) in mind as guiding concepts.
-- developed independently from CryptoKitties -- you can buy a hat for your kitty. Here's the one I bought:
(There are now 899 flat brim hats still available if anyone is interested) What's particularly interesting is that I don't own the hat, my kitty does -- from the KittyHats whitepaper:
"When you sell a kitty, the sticker remains applied to the kitty. The new owner can choose to remove the sticker or leave it attached."
So neat! So what we have the beginnings of is a world where digital assets that are created in one place can be freely integrated into other places. If hats are too tame, you can also race your kitty at KittyRace: (updated, via @sidkal)
Or, when you've had enough of your kitty, you can head over to CryptoZombies (hat tip to Aaron), which teaches Ethereum programming via online game development. As you create a zombie, it can start to do things. One of the things it can do is eat CryptoKitties:
The (original) internet brought us a world where any site could link to any other site, and they could all be accessed from anywhere in the world. This was the first interoperability revolution. The next one will be with data and digital assets. For a long time, data has been the property of platforms -- with cryptonetworks and cryptoassets, data can live outside of anyone platform, under the control of users. This has the potential to open up a lot of innovation.
digital services
, such as computing, file storage, social applications, and more. You might ask, why is it important to have another way to provide digital services? We already have lots of websites and apps that do that today. The reason cryptonetworks are an interesting addition to today's digital services is their core architecture of
decentralization
. Just as the original internet gave us a decentralized layer on top of the telecommuncations network, which resulted in untold innovation, cryptonetworks are a decentralized way to provide digital services.
exploring why this is important, including the historical parallels to the original internet. The decentralized architecture of cryptonetworks has the potential to address many issues in today's tech and business landscape, including
information security
,
market competition
,
product innovation
, and
equitable distribution of gains from technology
. Imagine, for instance, if the owners or users of Amazon/Google/Facebook/Reddit/etc. were able to "fork" the product and launch an identical competing copy, if they didn't agree with the direction of the company? And imagine if all of the users of & contributors to a web platform also had a direct, monetary interest in the success of that platform, that reflected their own contributions as community members? This is how cryptonetworks work, since they are essentially open-source, mutually owned & operated web platforms. Each network's cryptocurrency or "token" acts as the internal currency, incentive mechanism, and "binding agent" for the other processes that help the platform function. And further, the internal data structure of cryptonetworks, the
distributed ledger
or
blockchain
has unique properties that can improve privacy and data security. See also,
exploring these ideas. With that as context, it's important to walk through how cryptonetworks function, and importantly, how tokens function within them -- especially given the growing regulatory scrutiny around how tokens are created and traded. The deck below (
) is meant to help explain this. While it does touch on some public policy goals at the end, it does not attempt to make specific, detailed recommendations. The main takeaways should be (a) cryptonetworks are an important new innovation in how digital services are delivered, (b) tokens are fundamental to their operation, and (c) as we design new laws and regulations in the space, we should keep (a) and (b) in mind as guiding concepts.
