A Socially Scalable Internet — Our Investment Thesis

Social scalability is the ability of an institution […] to overcome shortcomings in human minds and in the motivating or constraining aspects of said institution that limit who or how many can successfully participate” — Nick Szabo

Technical scalability has been the focus of the first era of the Internet; unfortunately, more and more trust was delegated to centralised institutions in exchange for performance and efficient, technical scaling. Its approach reflected a rush to connect millions of users without a proper focus on how to do so successfully.

Blockchain Moats

Warren Buffett popularized the idea of an economic moat – the ability to maintain competitive advantages over competitors and build long-term defensibility.

Web 2.0 companies built moats around centralization and taking fees on centralized data. Blockchain moats are important to understand as they follow a different set of rules because of decentralization and a shared data layer.

The biggest leverage for decentralized projects is to align incentives across all stakeholders. For the first time in history, we have decentralized communities that can exceed the impact of centralized organizations.

The Beginner’s Guide to Ethereum’s Roadmap

Ethereum’s mission is to become a decentralized world computer that replaces server farms. Think of it as a single computer that the whole world can use. It can’t be shut down or turned off. As an overview, here’s a beginner’s guide to Ethereum and an explanation of how it technically works.

Token Network Effects

“It might make sense just to get some Bitcoin in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.” — Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009

Today, developers are building the infrastructure for a decentralized web (also known as web 3 or the fifth protocol). Similar to the 1990’s, they’re building the same infrastructure across computing power, storage, and data.