No One Cares About Your Vision (Just Chew Glass and Keep Shipping)
The Web3 is a magnet for aspiring world-changers driven by grand visions and idealistic values (as nearly every other human endeavour in its early innings).
However, the history of innovation casts serious doubts about the importance of the utopian dreams of innovators themselves on the evolution and market adoption of new technologies.
We must cut through the noise, ignore day-dreamers, and look for the signal emitted by the generational talent that is also attracted to the crypto industry, and works hard to build things people want.
1. Background: The Punk Roots of Crypto
A few weeks ago, Vitalik Buterin, the Founder of Ethereum, called for a revival of the original ‘Cypherpunk’ values that spurred the blockchain revolution.
In his view, the initial technology vision for Ethereum as a public, shared hard drive, with peer-to-peer messaging together with decentralised file storage, has been shifting towards over-financialization and unchecked centralisation at a growing pace since 2017.
And Vitalik laments that, as a consequence, the industry is at risk of being a distant shadow of the foundational values that he came to build for.
Aligning on Values is Hard
On paper, it may be relatively easy to align on ideal values, specially if they are expressed in big, fancy and well-meaning words. But the harsh reality is that a truly consistent alignment is extremely hard.
On the one hand, not everyone is willing to fight the same fights or with the same level of intensity, even if they have similar interests. For instance, the 1993 Cypherpunk’s Manifesto by pioneer Eric Hughes, only cites ‘privacy’ as the core value to be defended if we want an open society in the Internet age. Whereas Vitalik emphasises multiple values such as open global participation, decentralisation, censorship resistance, audibility, credible neutrality, a cooperative mindset and the focus on building tools, not empires. And then, there are groups whose interests are radically opposed.
“One’s utopia is another’s dystopia.” Yoshie Itasaka.
On the other hand, conceptual ideals are way too abstract to drive specific actions. Theoretical values fail to account for the complexity, contradictions and nuanced details of reality, and logically deriving every decision from a single set of immutable principles is just impossible.
Beware of What You Wish For
The german engineer Rudolf Diesel was a diehard ‘punk’ who championed for a more open and decentralised society. Abhorred by the living conditions of industrial workers in the 19th century, he invented a small internal combustion engine.
He dreamt about a world where small factories powered by his engine flourished in the countryside. Diesel wanted to ‘decentralise’ factories to scale back hostile cities and turn to more human-friendly dwellings.
Instead of achieving that, the Diesel engine disrupted transport. Its extremely high power-to-weight ratio enabled the creation of very efficient motorised vehicles like trucks and ships, that expanded supply chains globally, leading to massive factories and mega-cities (not to mention global warming).
2. Understanding the Evolution of New Tech
Rather than by politically-oriented narratives, technological progress is driven by engineering-oriented pragmatism.
The moral aspirations of inventors are somehow irrelevant for the adoption, evolution and the role played by a new technology. What matters is if the new technology:
· Enables doing something that was not possible before.
· Satisfies a market need and can “cross the chasm”.
· Can be combined to create more complex ‘composed’ systems.
I. What You Do Is Who You Are
In a sense, technology is similar to company culture. As Ben Horowitz puts it, no matter what you say it is, or what you want it to be, your culture is defined by the actual decisions your organisation makes.
With technology what matters is not the ideology of the founders, but what the technology actually does. Not the intentions, but the specific use cases it enables. If you want to improve financial inclusion, you have to build scalable systems that support cheap and fast financial transactions, not preach about improving people’s lives.
II. Crossing the Chasm
A new technology and a compelling vision can spark the interest of innovators and early adopters. Those willing to buy into a new product very early in its lifecycle, and willing to serve as visible references to other adopter groups.
Technological novelty, abstract ideals, and well-intentioned statements may well play a necessary role in driving adoption. But they are far from being enough.
Idealist innovators and early adopters are not the majority of the market. They are outliers. The majority of the market is driven by pragmatism. The majority will adopt something only as long as it helps them make money, save time, or have fun. Or just because everyone else is already using it, and the power of the network effect is unstoppable.
III. Symbiogenesis and Tech Composability
Lynn Margulis was an American biologist who transformed our understanding of evolution. Her paper “On the Origin of Mitosing Cells”, that popularised the ideas of Russian biologist Konstantin Mereschkowski, is considered a landmark in the criticism of Neo-Darwinism.
Margulis proposed the symbiotic relationships between different organisms, as the driving force of evolution, and explained genetic variation as occurring mainly through transfer of nuclear information between different types of cells, bacteria or viruses. According to her theory of symbiogenesis, it is not only greed and competition, but also efficiency and cooperation what drives evolution.
Technology evolves in a very similar fashion. Take, for instance, the Personal Computer. The creation of the PC was enabled by the combination of multiple technologies like the microprocessor, dynamic RAM, display screens, software, input devices or communication protocols.
Not even in his wildest dreams would Sir William Crooks (who was born in 1832 and was a pioneer of vacuum tubes) have imagined the advent of the PC. It is illuminating to note that, although his work was key for the development of the PC, his ideology and intentions were completely irrelevant.
Every new technology, like the PC or the Internet, was once extremely complex to use, with basically only true enthusiasts and experts as users. But, as a result of composability, complexity got eventually abstracted away, the infrastructure scaled, regulations became clear, and disruptive use cases were made possible.
History does not repeat itself, but it tends to rhyme. And right now, the different building blocks of the financial infrastructure of the future are being laid out:
· Scalable chains that support millions of transactions per second.
· Secure cross-chain interoperability.
· Abstracted chains that make infrastructure invisible.
· Simple and safe self-custody.
· Tokenized real-world assets.
· Regulatory clarity globally.
3. Where Do We Go From Here?
Based on the previous description, it may seem that tech evolves in a chaotic and arbitrary process.
The Arrow of History
Taking a closer look, however, it is possible to identify a pattern. An “Arrow of History” that shapes the progress of human civilization.
If a new technology makes transferring and using energy, matter or information easier it tends to win. Because the ones that use it, outperform the ones that do not. And the laggards, either copy leaders or are shaken out of the market.
“Humanity tends towards increasingly organised, expansive and complex forms of existence, using increasingly more efficient technologies for the transfer of energy, matter and information.” Carlos de Castro, A Holistic Theory of Evolution.
The crypto ecosystem may look like a pandemonium from the outside but I think there is certain logic to its development. Those who use a technology that enables transferring value over the Internet, building consensus globally and updating state at the speed of light, will probably outperform those who do not, and anything that contributes to that mission will thrive.
The Path Ahead
The Web3 industry has come a long way, and there are clear signs of product-market fit. But there are still many unsolved problems and exciting opportunities to be tackled.
A few closing thoughts:
1. Everyone has their unique understanding of what winning means (and price going up is not necessarily the best measure of progress).
2. Everyone has their unique hypothesis on why Web3 (or a particular chain, protocol or app) is winning. But the fact that we repeat certain memes about why Bitcoin, Ethereum or Solana are winning, does not mean that they are the reason, and we have to acknowledge that we are somehow ignorant.
3. Everyone has their unique view around which are the most pressing issues, or the most promising startup ideas in the crypto space. Most will fail and only a few will stay, and that is a good thing.
