But what gives $APE any value to begin with? It’s not directly, legally tied to the profits of Yuga Labs, the parent company of BAYC — that would make it a totally illegal security. In a literal sense, owning the token only allows you to vote in matters of concern to the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that formed around the currency. T... See more

The rise of Web 2.0 was heralded as an advancement by not just allowing people to read and write content and do transactions but to connect with each other in new ways. That gave rise, eventually, to Facebook and other social networks, along with a raft of “sharing economy” companies that peddled a fantasy of building community at the heart of busi... See more

Payments and identity are attractors for wealth, power, centralization, and all the problems that come along with those things.Aggregators emerged at the intersection of these attractors, and broke the evolutionary loop of technology, leveraging network effects to fend off componentization and freeze the evolutionary landscape in place.Now into thi... See more

OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, is eerily similar to any other exchange platform: In return for making transactions easier and (modestly) safer, the company takes a 2.5% cut of every transaction. The largest crypto company, Coinbase, operates the same way — it has industry-high fees (based on an opaque fee structure) and a CEO who’s g... See more