Building a more intelligent web @recalllabs_. Fascinated by human coordination at all scales.
New York, NY
- Tweets 2,489
- Following 991
- Followers 84,064
- Likes 2,922
Pinned Tweet
The most existential question in crypto: what will be the relationship between tokens and communities?
At stake: can DAOs bring virtue back to scaled organization? Or will they accelerate the economics-only mentalities that have been corroding society?
A way-too-long-🧵👇
73
291
1,218
Web3 is getting close to 0->1. Once there, it will go 1->60 in a blur.
This week I've tried 3 Web3-Notion-like apps. Each has a different killer feature built on open data. No 2yr wait for a partial API. They will be customized, reimagined, and extended breathtakingly fast.
27
59
698
The killer app of Web3 isn't an app: it's the new way apps will be built and interact via open data.
An attempt to break down "Composable data" without technical jargon or a single mention of blockchain. mirror.xyz/0xBcfD8dDAc6B8fe5…
5
43
203
Today has been a day.
Alongside @somemikesena & @joelthorst I've been building towards the vision of composable data organized ard decentralized IDs for *5 years*
That's decades in crypto-time ⌛
🧵👇🏽indulging in some reflections after our $30M Series A nitter.app/ceramicnetwork/status/…
18
7
137
Web3 is again abuzz about identity and reputation.
What is identity? How should you think about it and build for it in Web3?
Here's a short primer based on 6 years of working on 'identity' in both Web3 and meatspace
the-looking-glass.mirror.xyz…
13
13
127
What does this mean for communities and how they should view tokens?
Dee Hock, founder of Visa (a pioneering decentralized organization), provides a better warning than I can:
4
17
117
Why might tokens crowd out other values?
Humans are motivated by different factors in different contexts.
Markets are governed by self-interest, mediated by money.
Communities and cultures are governed by reputation, value-alignment and norms.
They often can't co-exist.
6
13
114
The key (I think): the community must remain stronger than the economic rewards. And not in a soft, aspirational way.
There must be more motivation and agency built into the community (layer0) than there is economic motivation built into the cryptoeconomics (layer1).
3
11
104
1. Make community tokens look less like money.
Non-fungibility, non-transferability, limited liquidity, penalties for norm violations could all work. The token can still hold value, but is less likely to attract value-dilutive speculators or be viewed as a purely economic asset
5
9
103
These are not isolated cases. Economic, community and cultural motivations are highly interactive, complex, and powerful. Incentives frequently backfire because this isn't well enough understood.
Aside: I highly recommend anyone interested in this read
amazon.com/Moral-Economy-Inc…)
2
7
100
Web2: compete to build a network
Web3: cooperate to build the network, compete on applications of it
8
14
89
Is a sensible AI regulation "AIs cannot lead AI research"?
While a pill to swallow for accelerationists, it leaves most fields open and less regulated while putting a natural governor on how far AI can design and advance itself beyond human understanding and control.
this extremely thoughtful piece is must-read for anyone building in AI and terrifying ai-2027.com/
4
14
72
73,981
Introducing new incentives changes our framing & activates different motivations.
A famous ex: an Israeli school added fines for late pickups-->late pickups skyrocketed. The $ fine crowded out the guilt that had made more parents on-time before and implicitly condoned tardiness.
2
4
87
The nightmare would be that DAOs do rise, only to accelerate the dominance of shareholder return over all other values.
They are efficient and open to all -- but for what? What makes sense for financial networks is not necessarily good for non-economic relationships.
3
11
91
Today we published our vision for the Dataverse: a composable, web-scale data ecosystem owned by everyone and no one.
We've discussed this vision internally @3boxlabs for years and @somemikesena brought it to life beautifully in this post. A summary👇
nitter.app/ceramicnetwork/status/…
3
15
86
The core use case of Web3 is entrepreneurship.
Web2 did it for media: made it easy for anybody to publish, collab, distribute, & monetize.
Web3 will make it easy to for anybody to create, collab, distribute & monetize an explosion of digital apps, services and products.
3
8
85
First, the😞unhappy (and unpopular) path:
Tokens insert market-mentalities into every group, which crowds out all non-financial motivations.
Every community evolves into a profit-maximizing network; all ‘community’ values are eroded; economic self-interest spreads ever-further.
1
6
81
Even if we care only about efficiency markets are likely a step down from community in many cases.
We constantly confuse "things we can measure" with "things that have value." We make changes that destroy hard-to-explain value in the name of order, attribution, and neat models.
1
10
81
Another ex: are you more likely to help a neighbor move if they (a) ask as a favor, or (b) offer $25?
Likely A. The $ introduced in B reframes it from a social interaction to a market one, and $25 may not be enough to be 'worth it.' The neighborly instinct is crowded out.
2
3
77
I've had more breakthroughs and insights today than in the last 2 months combined. Today was also my first day off in months.
Never underestimate the value of rest and the cost of stress.
4
2
78
That takes us to a happier😄scenario: communities preserve their values AND use tokens to coordinate at scale better than co's or govts ever could.
Value-driven communities could become the world's most powerful coordinators, enabling us to optimize for more than economic gain.
1
9
74
@AnytypeLabs
@clarityteams
and a 3rd in stealth that I'll let the team share when ready.
Also take a look at ipns://doxx.link/ which is crazy functional and fully built during a hackathon - b/c open data.
3
2
75
If all this seems doomsday, consider that there is very recent precedent in social media.
FB and Twitter began by democratizing communication. Only over time did we realize the true impact: all speech became performative - every message and post an opportunity to build status.
2
6
67
Will attempts to quantify and reward community activity crowd out the non-financial motivations that make a community so valuable and productive in the first place?
Again Dee Hock says it better than I can:
2
12
69
If 15 years from now we’ve collateralized our communities, monetized our reputations, and turned every digital interaction into a transaction, then we might all be wealthier but we’ll be a hell of a lot worse off.
1
6
68
Saying DAOs are just a new form of corporation is like saying cars are just a better horse & buggy.
Sure, they are both coordination (or transportation) technologies. But when the improvement is so dramatic it's indistinguishable from a paradigm change.
4
19
71
Communities are full of deep intrinsic motivation and hidden order. Not all of them can be plotted, attributed, measured.
Tokens can add legibility and direct incentives. But they can also wipe out far more powerful organizing principles in the process.
1
10
66
We have mis-memed the value of removing the middleman in web3.
The benefit of reallocating platform fees to the network is minuscule compared to the value unleashed by removing platforms as a gatekeeper to participation, innovation, & extension of the services on a network
5
6
68
Social, Culture, Capital, Tokens: combine thoughtfully.
NFTs represent "social capital" & community coins like @FWBtweets are "culture tokens." Each is a value system, not just value.
"Social tokens" w/o culture: bitclout. An attempt to monetize, not to capitalize or connect.
2
7
70
As @vitalik said, “even a billion dollars of capital cannot compete with a project having a soul.”
Preserving both will be incredibly hard, and incredibly powerful for those who do.
vitalik.ca/general/2020/12/2…
1
9
64
Done rashly, introducing tokens will turn communities into markets.
nitter.app/naval/status/877467629…
While markets are seen as efficient, this would be a huge loss for both community values and effectiveness.
1
6
61
2. Maintain subjectivity: in access to the community, decisions within it, rewards.
Keeping governance in the ‘social layer’ rather than on-chain could preserve the importance of reputation, norms, and communication - things that make it a community rather than economic bloc.
2
7
68
Thanks to the many who unwittingly inspired these thoughts with their writing or work. Any useful ideas are stolen from them; all flaws are mine.
@bankless @jbrukh @jeffemmett @ptrwtts @Cooopahtroopa @Bradley_Miles_ @rabbithole_gg
14
1
66
More troubling: when subjects were then switched back to the original non-market framing, they were far more likely to kill the mice than originally.
The market framing, once introduced, stuck. Once market mentalities crowd out other motivators, we can’t just go back.
2
5
63
The quality of questions being asked about DAOs, governance, and scaling decentralized orgs is accelerating so rapidly.
2
6
64
Imagine tokenizing a relationship with a spouse. Cleaning is worth X; cooking is worth Y.
The result might be 'fair' and efficient. It would also eliminate every chance to build trust, understanding, appreciation. It would turn an intimate relationship into an economic one.
3
3
60
Why the knife’s edge? Money and communities typically mix poorly.
(Not all networks need to be communities; some are purely economic & production-oriented and that's fine. This is for those that aspire to maintain values beyond economic self-interest.)
3
3
59
I'm hiring both a Chief of Staff and a BD & Partnerships Lead! Jobs.lever.co/3box
Both will drive massive impact, tackle novel challenges w/ freedom and support + get to work w/ the amazing @3boxlabs team on @ceramicnetwork - putting you at the center of the web3 ecosystem.
8
14
61
Tokens today are in the skeuomorphic phase: replicating scarcity-based economics in a new medium.
The full power of tokens will be to unlock new economic models that are more native to non-rivalrous and anti-rivarlous goods + services.
4
7
62
this extremely thoughtful piece is must-read for anyone building in AI and terrifying ai-2027.com/
1
13
51
91,180
Young people dominate the blockchain space not because they are crypto native or Gen Z. It's because they don't have to attend (and recover from) weddings every other weekend.
5
1
59
Who's building (and funding) HQ open source VR hardware?
Metaverse should run on Web3, and open tech has huge advantages over closed platforms. Biggest threat to that future IMO is such a huge gap on hardware quality so big that that composable software & data can't overcome it.
Apple’s AR/VR Headset Could Be Less Than a Year Away macrumors.com/2021/12/18/app… by @hartleycharlton
5
2
60
DAOs are likely to be the ‘killer app’ of crypto and outcompete traditional institutions.
Whether they are a force for good or for economic gain depends on whether the design favors preserving and advance community values, or capturing value for the community.
1
6
60
Someone will crack tokenized referral-network-hiring and it will be huge.
Feels like there should already be a dozen DAOs doing this and making a killing pulling all their Web2 connections into Web3.
10
4
60
At @recallnet we've started saying "everyone is a coder" and "everyone is a marketer".
We're not abandoning appreciation for the crafts. But AI is giving all of us incredible tools to abstract away some of the executional/time-consuming parts of our historical function and to extend our own capabilities with complementary ones.
We all now have always-on partners to PR a small code changes (for marketers/operators) or think through a sensible GTM (for engineers) that let us do more - with more agency and less dependencies.
Great article from @every and @rauchg on this every.to/podcast/best-of-the…
40
4
48
3,423
Blown away by the @3boxdb submissions at @ETHBerlin ! It was our first hackathon and 18 out of 90 submissions used 3box profiles, spaces or threads and you taught us so much about how we can #buildbetter to help you #buildbetter. 🚀
8
57
“The centralized state wanted the world to be “legible”, ie arranged in a way that made it easy to monitor and control...And so we gradually transitioned from systems that were messy but full of fine-tuned hidden order, to ones that were barely-functional but really easy to tax.”
2
4
53
3. Fit token distribution to community goals.
Some communities should aim for less decentralization. Token concentration in the founders + earliest members may preserve early values. In a world of many overlapping communities, diversity of influence is good. Leaders matter.
4
4
54
Tokenized communities can be the most value-driven & effective organizations we’ve ever had.
To realize that we need to be extremely intentional about ‘social capital.’ Representing it too much like financial capital may erode its power rather than capture leverage & influence.
1
3
51
First, values/ethics:
Markets erode morality, and not just in predictable ways.
Researchers tested subjects’ willingness to kill mice, first in a base scenario then in market framing. Predictably, kill rates rose dramatically.
science.sciencemag.org/conte…
1
2
49
4. Bundle with products/services
@lennysan’s paid newsletter unlocks access to a community that is frankly more valuable than the content. It’s all subscribers: curious product builders. If the community itself were paid it would likely be full of networkers and headhunters.
1
3
52
Communities are many-person relationships. Tokenizing communities could lead to more fair and effective coordination. But will it eventually erode the trust, shared values, and culture that let the community form - and would help it get through any hard times?
2
4
50
How we plan and spec work @recallnet now:
- 3-8 person "jam" getting all the ideas and considerations out and the creative juices flowing
- Feed the video to @AnthropicAI with our macro team context to create a project strategy & workplan
- DRI iterates with @claudeai a few times to get it perfect, shares with team while Claude puts the project description and issues into @linear via MCP
- Humans and Agents build and ship
29
3
45
4,161
"The more one writes about identity, the more the word becomes a term for something that is as unfathomable as it is all-pervasive," wrote the pschologist who coined "identity crisis"
We wrote Demistifying Digital ID to lend some clarity
nitter.app/3boxdb/status/12740191…
TLDR Thread 👇
Identity has been an elusive challenge in Web3.
We wrote Demystifying Digital Identity to make the often-confusing topic clearer and more practical: what is ID, what to beware of, what to insist on, & what simple steps to take for your app or service
medium.com/p/6ec413b129ac
2
15
51
I am HUGELY bullish on DAOs, and communities using tokens generally. This paradigm could change the world.
But it’s far from a given and IMO there are very real dangers and big (and interesting) questions that deserve more share of voice.
2
5
50
"Tools for a post-cringe society"
Best talk title I've seen in a while - from @urbit Assembly assembly.urbit.org/
2
51
Tokens begin by giving communities incentive powers. Over time, might they turn all our groups economic? Will every interaction be only a chance to build wealth?
It depends on whether tokens can be more than financial - can they represent or co-exist with other motivations?
1
3
46
An ex from “Seeing Like a State," as reviewed by SlateStarCodex:
“An intact forest might be more productive than an evenly-spaced rectangular grid of Norway spruce, but it was harder to legislate rules for, or assess taxes on.” The forest was wiped out for less-effective grids
2
2
45
Let’s experiment and see what works in preserving and extending communities without undermining them.
Move fast and test things, but not break them. Some failures can’t be easily reversed.
1
1
44
(Though if the neighbor offered to supply good beer we're much more likely to jump to help. This may be a key pattern -- more later)
2
43
Investment DAOs are very "weak" today, just replacing LLCs and GPs with smart contracts and members.
The future "strong" investment DAO: massive capital pools, transparently (and algorithmically) managed, allocated based on signal from a huge collection of member-user-builders.
6
3
45
Don't miss the DAO forest for a few sapling trees.
DAOs arent "for" investing, purchasing or building. Nor for voting, pooling, signing. Don't equate voting to governance, Corps to Orgs.
Humans' ability to coordinate set us apart & DAOs are our best coordination technology yet.
3
5
44
That’s not an impossible outcome if we’re not careful. 10 years ago the dominant narrative around Facebook was that it had created connection and opportunity all over the globe.
Let’s not be Facebook.
1
2
43
2.5 years since the @3boxlabs team got together for a retreat - can't wait to get together with (most everyone) this week.
Safe travels frens ✈️😷🏖️🍸🥥🍍🤿
1
45
We are so early in our journey and >300 apps have already used shared profiles + data via @3boxdb
Decoupling data from apps is starting to lead to such rapid innovation, powerful & compounding services, and great UX. Getting more excited every day about what's coming next 🚀
6
45
The projects at @ETHGlobal #HackFS and @gitcoin #kernel this week are mindblowingly advanced compared to where dapps and decentralized infrastructure were 6 months ago. Web3 is coming fast.
3
9
45
Always impressed by the consistency of thought @usv - only investor founders go w/ because they can point to years of writing & say "we've been waiting for you."
AI age will lead us to replace data walls with data wells - great writeup @rebeccakaden
blog.usv.com/collision-cours…
1
5
42
4,776
Congrats to all the @EthereumDenver winners, hackers and organizers. That was one hell of a #smoth event
4
43
I’m not sure. But my hypothesis is that one promising route is to create cognitive separations between the community motivations and the measurable, economic reward.
Like the neighbor persuading you to help them move with beer instead of with money.
1
2
41
Generations of tech founders learned to scale from High Output Management, YC, and bay area networks.
Where will wisdom about how to build and scale decentralized orgs live? So much learning is happening right now, but so much of the knowledge is spread out and inaccessible.
10
4
43
This is definitely possible, and powerful.
Ethereum has maintained community value alongside economic power. Smaller ones like @FWBtweets too.
But it’s hard and early, and it will get much harder over time as the values at stake grow and the original believers are diluted.
1
39
Excited for the launch of dBlogs from @unstoppableweb , with censorship-resistant and user-managed content powered by @3boxdb and @protocollabs
JUST IN: Decentralized blogging is coming to a .crypto URL near you thanks to a partnership between @unstoppableweb and @protocollabs.
@wsfoxley reports
coindesk.com/unstoppable-dom…
1
6
41
Cold email is dramatically underrated, and is hard to do well. But reality is
(a) nearly everyone looks at most of their email
(b) if you can offer potential value to them beyond the effort required to act, you've done them a service too and there's no reason it won't work
2
41
Community Manager is the most in-demand, under-supplied, high-impact role across Web3. It's also (relatively) undeveloped with huge oppty for innovation & leadership.
So why aren't talented,people-minded,high-agency builders & operators flocking to Community Mgr vs. Product Mgr?
27%
Lack of prestige
26%
Less clear career path
23%
Few examples/role models
23%
Less appealing daily work
124 votes • Final results
12
3
42
Pretty awesome day for Web3 and decentralized data.
Congrats to friends at both @privy_io and @SpruceID on their funding announcements today🚀🚀🚀
Web3 data stack coming together nicely 🧩
coindesk.com/business/2022/0…
blog.spruceid.com/spruce-rai…
1
2
43
If economics motivations and accessibility become stronger than the community values, behaviors will begin to skew towards pure economic maximization.
As prices increase and the network of stakeholders grows faster than the original community, this gets extremely likely.
3
1
40
There can be rewards in a community, they just have to be designed in a way that they don’t trigger members into a “market mindset.”
What might this look like? A few ideas:
2
3
38
How are your favorite dapps using open ID to usher in Web3? Tune in tmrw w/
@Flynnjamm-@rabbithole_gg
@owocki-@gitcoin
@kevinknielsen-@boardroom_info
@rockfridrich-@zerion_io
@abbey_titcomb-@radicle
@META_DREAMER-@TheMetaFactory
@GravenPrest-@thegeoweb
nitter.app/i/spaces/1ynJOBBvMNvGR
8
41
Communities that successfully ossifying their values strongly enough will be able to use tokens to achieve incredible things: orgs with global scale, ultra low coordination costs, fully aligned incentives, and intrinsic + extrinsic motivators in pursuit of shared values/goals.
1
2
38
This pattern repeats everywhere in all kinds of logically centralized organizations.
It is behind national identity systems (for tax collection), bureaucratic reporting structures in large companies, and pre-planned cities with perfect structure and zero vitality.
1
2
36
Web3 will take off when it's easier for an app to link to existing data than to create new data.
That time is coming soon. For profiles and verifications, for follows and social graphs, for UGC, for the data models and schema that new data is built on.
3
3
39
Super excited for the launch of BuilderDAO 🚀
We've wanted to create an education and collaboration community like this for ages for the devs around @ceramicnetwork. Thrilled to be doing so in a web3-wide way with @ArweaveTeam @graphprotocol @Figment_io @solana @PythNetwork
Let’s build a better internet together 🌇
As a first step, we’re creating a learning platform in collaboration with our friends at @ArweaveTeam @ceramicnetwork @Figment_io @graphprotocol @PythNetwork @solana
But we can’t do this alone. Come join us!🤝
mirror.xyz/builder-dao.eth/h…
3
35
NFTs are only just getting started.
We've been stuck with mostly static digital property to date. Now, every NFT is an identity that controls its own data - excited to see what devs and creators build with more dynamic NFTs.
3
3
38
We want to send someone from an underrepresented background to Lisbon to learn more about Web3.
Know someone great who'd want a free flight to @0xliscon , @ETHLisbon , #NearCon, or @SolanaConf - send em 👇🏽
Identify with a group underrepresented in tech + interested in exploring Web3 more deeply?
We'll pay for 1 dev or community builder to fly to Lisbon for upcoming events. No strings attached! Just a free ✈ for some fresh perspective.
DM us your goals & profile by Wednesday!
4
9
35
Nothing to do with NFTs.
Imagine an editor like Notion where any external app & service can be granted full read/write permissions on the data; can create new block types, functions, automations; can add visualizations, transformations, interfaces. Without permission or lock-in
4
32
Blown away by the projects built over the past month. Can't wait to see the finalist demos on Wednesday
Huge congratulations to the SkyDB x @identityindex @ceramicnetwork hackathon finalists 👏🎉
From decentralized @Dropbox to decentralized @Twitter, the quality of projects surpassed all our expectations!
Check them out: airtable.com/shrvceKhVIj39bj…
5
32
And remember that even a little economic incentive can switch participants from social to economic frames, crowding out other motivations.
So how can community values be preserved with more strength than the economic layer?
2
31
Very excited to share the upcoming release of Identity Theft, the book I have been co-authoring the past 18 months. It's due out in 1 month and available for pre-order now at identitytheftbook.org
4
5
31
Hiring across the stack to build the data rails of Web3 @ceramicnetwork
PMs, Protocol Engineers, software engineers, DevOps, DevRel and Dev Marketing.
All at jobs.lever.co/3box
2
5
32
Crypto gives us the best tool for social coordination we've ever had.
When things get noisy, come back to this. Everything else falls away long-term. To find if and why a trend matters, look for how it enables coordination in novel ways, implicitly or explicitly.
5
34
The talent joining the @3boxlabs team this month is 🤯🤯🤯
Big things coming this summer for @ceramicnetwork
1
32
Congrats to @nir_III and team, very well deserved.
Web3 social will be curated, composable communities and Yup has been passionately building towards this for years. We should all be excited for what's coming next.
couldn't be prouder of our team and the incredible partners we've brought on for this round. extremely excited to start this next chapter and revolutionize web3 social
9
28
Extremely excited for a year of hard work by the @3boxlabs team to launch for web3 devs today --
check out info on the beta of ComposeDB on @ceramicnetwork 👇
4
2
32
5,504