gm creators!
Hope everyone is having a relaxing Saturday 🔆
Today is day 2️⃣4️⃣ of my 30 day challenge.
Yesterday, I wrote a post on how Ethereum fits the requirements to be considered a "full stack protocol" based on an a16z framework with nine sections.
Key takeaway of yesterday's post. Here's why Ethereum is a full stack protocol:
Aiming to break apart the high level of consolidation in traditional finance and media
Serving as infrastructure
Faces a high barrier of entry due to regulatory causes
Check out the full post here: "Picture yourself creating a full stack protocol"
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Today's Takeaway💡
Having strong conviction in anything can be tough. For anyone that's in web3 and is feeing demoralized, just know that it's okay to take a breather.
I personally stayed away from crypto Twitter this whole month as I've been doing the writing challenge and let myself explore things in tech outside of web3 for this writing challenge. And I can confidently say that by letting my mind run free for a bit with what content I was consuming and thinking about, I automatically found myself wandering back to the world of crypto.
Light at the end of the tunnel 🔦
About a year ago, we saw the start of an epic crypto crash that led to one of the harshest crypto winters we've seen. In the past 12 months, so much has happened! There was the Luna/Terra meltdown, the FTX fiasco, investment freezes from VC, the great migration from crypto to AI after the launch of ChatGPT, multiple SEC lawsuits, another series of major wallet hacks and rug pulls, etc. And not to mention the doubtful looks and questions from friends and family about the future of our careers in web3. This meme I made pretty much sums it up for anyone who has still been active in the space the past year.
It's extremely annoying and demoralizing to constantly have to feel like it's crypto vs. the world. You have to remind yourself why you got into crypto the first place. You have to deepen your conviction on the tech being built. You have to make an effort to ignore the grifters and find the builders. You have to look past all the attacks from mainstream media that want crypto to fail. You have to stand still as the fake believers run to the next current thing in tech. All in all, it can be rough going from the sunny beaches of the bull market to the snowy forests of the bear market.
I'll be honest, recently I was definitely frustrated with being in web3. I questioned if I had made a mistake investing my time, money, and efforts in crypto the past four years. It felt disheartening to be in a space that had bad actors constantly screwing over everyone else's efforts. This was my first real bear market that I experienced - one where my own capital, career, etc. was on the line.
However, now it feels as though we're in the part of the bear market where the true believers in crypto have grown indifferent to the outside news and are focused on building, designing, and creating. There's not necessarily positive news being thrown at us right and left, but overall I'm starting to see a sentiment shift for sure.
Those who have stayed in the trenches are starting to finally see light at the end of the tunnel. Ironically, if you look past all the noise, it's somehow easier to be more bullish now than even when prices were at an all time high in 2020/2021. There's a ton of cool things being built, proposals getting passed, and high value meetups happening.
Rekindling Conviction
When I started this 30 day challenge, I gave myself permission to be completely open ended about what I was going to write about. I purposely didn't want to pigeonhole myself to crypto. In the last few weeks, I've written posts about all sorts of things in tech: the traitorous eight, the origins of the gaming industry, Reddit blackout, Kevin Kelly blog posts, etc. These have been things I've been curious about for a while but never really took an effort to look further into.
As I did these daily writings, I wanted to see what I would be interested in, where the rabbithole naturally went, and how I would spend my time researching. I'm really happy I made the decision because by allowing myself to be open ended, I found multiple situations when I was learning about [x topic not related to crypto] but thought about how a web3 tool/principle would have really made the situation better. The easiest example here is when I was writing my Reddit API change post and couldn't help but think about how the centralized model just didn't make sense compared to a protocol, open-source code direction.
Spending time away from crypto actually increased my conviction in the technology, values, people, & ecosystem.
As I think about what I'm going to write the next few days to finish up my writing challenge, I think I can finally say with conviction that I'm excited to get back into researching what's poppin in the space. There's a ton of cool new products getting built like Paragraph, Airstack, Unlonely, etc. There's fresh vibes on social media platforms such as Farcaster and Lens. There's a ton of interesting proposals getting funded on Prop House.
I'm excited to dive further into what's happening but from a fresh new set of lens. One that is one that can ignore the noise of all the pessimistic outsiders. And more importantly, one that is focused on building a great web3 experience that will onboard the next billion users.
That's all for today's post!
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