Community, Collaboration, and Composability
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
In order to make Web3 an improvement to Web2, it’s important to remember how we got here in the first place.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Let’s go back in time
Before the concept of Web2 or Web3, there was Web1.
To give this thought piece justice, a short history lesson is required.
Let’s rewind to March 1989. We set our scene in Geneva at a centre for scientific research: CERN. It was a golden age. Computers were evolving; they now had graphics, they had folders and “point and click” and word processors.
Working at CERN, British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee found himself frustrated with the disconnect between systems and programs on these computers.
As he put it, “The data was there, somewhere, going around and around on a disk, but it was really difficult to get at.” Facing demand for a more collaborative working environment that would also promote automated information-sharing between scientists around the world, he invented the World Wide Web.
A few years later, it was no surprise that CERN would put the World Wide Web software into the public domain and make a release available with an open license to maximize its reach; after all, the Web was created in the first place to promote ideals of shared knowledge and collaboration. These deliberate actions in pursuit of collaboration allowed the Web to flourish and ushered in an unprecedented era of growth, innovation and opportunity.
The Progression to Web2
Fast forward a few decades and companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon — through their incredible product offerings — have experienced immense growth and financial success in the Web 2 space. The benefits to the world are obvious, but are there hidden costs?
Companies like these have owners (or shareholders) to answer to and, as a result, prioritize self-preservation (and profits) over collective growth and innovation.
Common approaches include patent protection, data protection, deliberately engineering products using incompatible tech, and locking users into platforms through high switching costs.
Time that could be spent innovating is instead spent defending what already exists.
“We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”
Despite its noble beginnings, Web 2 has manifested ‘walled gardens’ which create a fragmented system where components cannot be combined to create greater value. The spirit of collaboration has been eroded.
Web3 — or is it?
Enter from stage left: Web3 and blockchains. A new golden age ushering in complementary philosophies of decentralization, open source and collaboration with the promise of equal opportunities for success for all.
But are we doomed to repeat the same history? Are companies operating in Web3 pursuing a walled garden approach as well? Our collective experiences over the last few years tell us that, so far, history is repeating. Time and time again, it’s been proven that code is not a competitive moat in Web3. Yet, we continue to see development of closed-source technology that locks users in with a refusal to reveal what’s behind the curtain.
The Motley DAO Promise
We’re committing to Community, Collaboration, and Composability.
Motley DAO aims to be different. We don’t believe in walled gardens and we don’t use words like ‘collaboration’ as a buzzword for marketing; we hold it up as an ideal and champion it in everything we do. We do this through commitments to interoperability and composability.
Interoperability is the extent to which protocols and platforms can exchange data and interpret that shared data, or as Vitalkin Buterin puts it, “talk to each other”.
Composability is the extent to which these protocols and platforms can be integrated with each other; it is the ability for developers to take existing code and reuse it, or repurpose it, or combine it with other code blocks to create something new. Just like building blocks.
Interoperability is an essential condition for composability. If protocols and platforms can’t “talk to each other”, then they can’t be integrated with each other.
Why does this matter? Why should anyone care?
Let’s pretend you want to build a car. You’re passionate about cars and the purpose they serve. You have a vision and unique skills to bring to this field. But how much will you achieve working on your own? Can you build the best component parts for the whole car, and do so in an efficient and timely manner? Would you literally re-invent the wheel or could you benefit from collaboration, interoperability and composability?
We believe that a community that collaborates with one another fosters interoperability and composability. This is our approach to unlocking the limitless potential that Web3 proposes, primarily governance, sovereignty of assets, and permissionless access to technology.
These ideals are the foundations on which Web 3 — and Web 2 before it — was created. Through commitments to true partnership, shared knowledge, and collaboration, we can live our best futures. We believe in the strengths of open-source builders on Solana and want them to be partners to everything we do, as we want to be partners to them. We can all succeed together.
In the very near future, we will be sharing our secret sauce. Motley DAO will launch a suite of products that changes the landscape of NFTs and DeFi on Solana — and we’re going to do it alongside some of the strongest partners in the ecosystem.
We can’t wait to introduce you.
Made with love,
The Motley DAO Team
