Blockchains are cities

Presently, the dominant blockchain/Web 3.0 application is decentralized finance, but I think it’s easier to see the value of where things are heading, and to allay worries about hype cycles, pyramid schemes and speculative bubbles, if we look past the purely financial stuff. Once you start to dig into some of the applications that venture capitalis... See more

There are clearly differences, but they have the same general shape. Let’s take it a step further. What if you wanted stronger pre-confirmations on your rollup (assume this is not a based rollup) rather than a centralized sequencer. Well then you may implement a PoS sequencer set, reintroducing economics that again look even closer to an L1. Or, wh... See more

It seems obvious that applications, not general-purpose networks, will capture the majority of cash flows generated in these systems over the long-run. This is already playing out. Apps have all of the leverage and pricing power with the end-customer. There’s still a big question though – how much MEV leakage will these apps leave around for the ch... See more

The Bitcoin network and other distributed ledgers all represent a collectively maintained public infrastructure and are the backbone of the next generation Internet, what the crypto community refers to as the Web3.