SHILL Issue 25

And I’m optimistic that we might get there in the next few
years; that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. How about
use cases? Well, the biggest blockers are network effects: for
crypto payments to work well, both the buyer and seller need
to support it.
This means slow, hard work; building out the network until it
approaches transition points where enough merchants and
consumers use crypto that payments and remittances start
flowing. And, similarly for blockchain based social media and
information flow.
Tapping into the existing userbase of video games could be
huge--billions of users and hundreds of billions of dollars each
year. But this only makes sense if it makes the virtual worlds
more engaging, not less.
The real goal, here, is to take a great game, and integrate NFTs
in a way that makes the game better. And, meanwhile, networks
need to keep scaling. I always laugh when a blockchain says
they’re already fast. None are! Fast means millions of TPS. No
one is there yet.
What matters the most is having a concrete roadmap to scale
to millions of TPS and executing well on it. So, there are some
concrete things that the crypto ecosystem needs to manage
well over the next year. But more generally, everything matters.
I may write more on this later, but one of the core theses I’ve
come to believe over the last few years is: Everything is the
same; everything is commensurable. If you want to grow trust
in the industry, regulation matters. But so does UI/UX; and each
scam detracts.
Every time we can do something great and beautiful and useful
as an industry, we move everyone forward. Every time we fuck
up, we all take a step back.
Let’s keep putting one foot in front of the other.
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SHILL Issue #25