A Web3 Reading List
Learning in Public
“Every age has its peculiar folly: Some scheme, project, or fantasy into which it plunges, spurred on by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the force of imitation.” Charles Mackay
I’m a VC cliché, so I spent the last month diving back into web3. A lot has changed since I wrote this post about community-focussed NFTs in September last year — it looks comically out of date.
This world is unbelievably fun when you start tumbling down the rabbit hole, largely because of the emergent nature of innovation, driven by thousands of people building upon each other’s projects, ideas and mistakes at a rapid pace.
My opinions on everything web3 seem to change every few days, at times I’m skeptical then quickly learn more and become optimistic. Other times I celebrate a new project only to watch it manifest the worst of human nature. So I don’t yet feel comfortable having opinions that will live on the internet for years to come. However, finding high-quality content has been extremely tough (so many youtube videos of day trader bros) so I’ve decided to share some of the best content I’ve found so far….
NFTs & Creator Communities
An investigation of truth, meaning, belief, and value in the art world in 2021 - how NFTs deconstruct and reconstruct our perception of value in art and usher a new world that expands opportunity for artists both financially and creatively:
GameStop-start: Notva, NFTrees, and the deconstruction of value
An intro to Creator DAOs:
Creator DAOs: An OS for Participation
Protocols and Creator DAOs: Economic Flows and Cultural Products
The founder of Creator DAO Seed Club on building Web3 communities:
Jess Sloss: Billion dollar communities, Kanye and owning culture
How crypto can enhance the Creator Economy:
Come for the Creator, Stay for the Economy
The problem with social tokens as they exist today — once a community gains popularity the price of the token increases so much that it becomes accessible only to the wealthy. We need to reimagine social tokens so they’re about what we do rather than what we have:
Some fun examples of how quickly this world moves to solve emergent issues:
Mirror launching Editions in June to address the accessibility problem emerging in NFTs: Introducing Editions: Mirror
Nouns, which launched a minute ago, evolving the model in public: Noun o’Clock
Governance (DAOs)
Some examples of DAOs making decisions in practice:
Yearn Finance: YIP-56 Buyback and Build
Rally’s Proposal to Decentralise
Nouns playing with the DAO model
DeFi
How the traditional financial system works and how DeFi re-imagines global financial infrastructure in a digital world:
FinTech 3.0 Re-Architecting Financial Market Infrastructure & DeFi
It took me a while to get started in DeFi because, with gas fees so high, it’s hard to play around with a few hundred dollars and not lose all your money to gas. I bought this Nat Eliason course on DeFi which gets you started on Polygon, solving the gas issues:
Solana CEO Anatoly on Acquired:
Blockchain Gaming
On Axie Infinity, the most popular Play to Earn game today:
Infinity Revenue, Infinity Possibilities
On the investment firms/communities evolving to cater to emerging Play to Earn economies:
Mapping the Metaverse Economy: Gabby Dizon of Yield Guild Games
While Axie is still a pretty basic gaming experience, Illuvium is building a AAA quality blockchain game on Immutable X which will enable more complex game mechanics:
People to Follow:
Podcasts:
Kevin Rose’s Modern Finance podcast
Twitter
Darren Lau (subscribe to his Telegram and check out his web3 Directory)
What have I missed? I’m trying to play catch up quickly and would love to hear your recommendations…
There’s a lot of material out there. I’m still getting familiar too. But, watched the Lex Fridman podcast with a couple crypto founders- chainlink, cardano and also with Vitalik as super informative about those respective projects, their visions too for Web3
Thanks Jax.
Check out my summary on ETH
https://gurusundaram.substack.com/p/ethereum-lay-of-the-land