Morning Walk #2
Nirvana Fallacy and forecasts for the future of web3
Some of the newsletters I’m subscribed to announce the number of subscribers each week. I thought it would be fun to do the same from day one. Besides, you’d be able to know how many others like you are reading this.
So, without further ado, hello to the first 7 subscribers of this newsletter. You’re an elite bunch! The first issue received 137 views, and 7 people signed up.
In this issue
Better understanding my flaws
I’m trying to predict the future of web3
Some interesting things I read/watched/listened to lately
Nirvana Fallacy
The phrase “Perfect is the enemy of good” has been making rounds in my head again and again. This summer, I got a chance to spend a lot of time reflecting and understanding myself better. Among other things, I realized that this aphorism might be the best explanation for most of my failures to create something meaningful.
But there is an even more suitable concept, and it’s called the Nirvana fallacy (besides, it sounds just awesome 😎).
The nirvana fallacy is the informal fallacy of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives. It can also refer to the tendency to assume there is a perfect solution to a particular problem.
By creating a false dichotomy that presents one option which is obviously advantageous—while at the same time being completely implausible—a person using the nirvana fallacy can attack any opposing idea because it is imperfect. Under this fallacy, the choice is not between real world solutions; it is, rather, a choice between one realistic achievable possibility and another unrealistic solution that could in some way be "better".
The way I see it is that I abandoned a lot of projects or opportunities because I knew they weren’t perfect. But I couldn’t execute on improving them either. I was writing a blog post on the fascinating story of the Chicago Cubs (just for fun), then realized that text is not the best medium to tell the story. Video would be so much better at conveying this. But I can’t make a great quality video, so I just gave up.
The same happens with starting a company. There are plenty of business ideas I’m capable of executing and making good money from them. But no, this is not perfect for me. I want something with a long-term vision and mission, and global reach. And now I have neither of these things.
And I want to change this now. Obviously, there needs to be some balance between lousy work and good work, but in most (not all!) cases, it’s better to do something than nothing at all. I want to change this. I want to build more, not worrying about making something imperfect. I want to publish more, not being afraid that it’s not as perfect as I can imagine. That’s one of the reasons I started this newsletter, actually. I want to throw myself out there.
I’m still a big believer in attention to details and actually producing great work. But it needs to have some balance! Right now, it just doesn’t.
Predicting the future
I always considered myself to have good product sense and be able to notice emerging trends. This happened with govtech. No one heard of it back in 2013 when we started MyCity. Since then, the govtech sector has been growing rapidly.
I started trying to predict the future in my private journal a few years ago, and it’s been really fun to go back to my notes and check how well I guessed it.
So, I thought I’d do the same in this newsletter from time to time. And there is no better topic for this other than web3. So let’s start from here.
There are several elements of web3. Let’s take a look at each of them and try to predict whether it would impact the future us.
Decentralization (cultural value)
Many people think of the web3 revolution as the one where everything on the web becomes decentralized. I don’t believe it would become much of a value proposition. To me, it’s like “open source.” Do people care that your product is “open source” now? No, they just want it to work. The same, I believe, applies to the concept of decentralization as a cultural value.
Forecast: decentralization would gain some market but not become mainstream and “the only way to go.” There won’t be much demand from customers to “make it decentralized.”
Storing information on-chain.
This would probably become mainstream. Just because it’s easier and more convenient. This is what I call decentralization as a tech value. Ryan Hoover had a great use case in mind.
Forecast: a lot of personal data would be stored on-chain. But it would need a universal provider (e.g. pick only one blockchain) to work, which might be tricky.
New Finance
Digital money is coming, I’m sure of it. And it will be on a blockchain. I don’t believe in Bitcoin unless they change its mechanism to “Proof of stake” to dramatically reduce energy use. Any blockchain that uses a lot of energy won’t last long, especially in our climate crisis awareness.
Forecast: some other digital currency will rise to the mainstream, but it will be regulated. Actually, it would work only after regulations.
NFTs
The technology will be used heavily for art/gaming. The community will be striving heavily to find other applications with some success later.
Forecast: NFTs would become common in the collectibles market, and we will see some other practical applications we can't even imagine now.
DAOs
This one is 50/50, I believe. DAOs won’t replace corporations and how we organize economic activity. Although it will be used heavily in some fields where distributing power is significant. I believe it might hold a tremendous potential for sports clubs to distribute power to fans or for running charities. But outside of these fields, there won’t be many DAOs.
Forecast: DAOs will find applications in some fields, and many people will be a part of one or two DAOs.
Phew. That’s a pretty short summary for such a major concept. Let’s see how it holds up in a year from now.
Things I've been reading/watching/enjoying
Not Boring published a series of posts on web3 that might really help someone just navigating the field. The first one, called The Interface Phase, explores the dying need to create new interfaces for web3. The other one is called Crypto Bezos, and it’s a fun take at guessing what kind of a business a 30-year old Jeff Bezos would have build if he’d be starting today (using his business principles from 1999). This would get you thinking of the possibilities of web3.
I recently subscribed to Ethan Mollick on Twitter, and it's definitely one of the most worthwhile accounts I follow. He is a professor at The Wharton School in Philly studying innovation & entrepreneurship & ephemera. Basically, all his tweets are 280-character summaries of research papers. Just the findings. He covers a lot of startups, founder's mentality, tech culture, VCs, decision-making, distributed work, and all that jazz.
Venture firm NFX (stands for Network Effects) launched FAST, and this is quite ground-breaking in the VC world. You can get between $500K and $2M in just 9 days! Typical venture deals take months to get to a decision. Still, often startup founders don't really have that much time and struggle to keep afloat. FAST might solve this.
Thanks for reading. Until next week 👋🏻