Web3 Consumers: Wild Idealism, Scalability, Skeuomorphism

8 min readAug 18, 2023

The Web3 consumer stack needs wild idealism and scalability boosted through super apps and vertically deep interfaces.

Can you believe it? Its only August. In just the last 8 months alone…

We saw Varda the world’s first industrial space manufacturing platform open the age of space economy. We’re continuing to witness the proliferation of Chatgpt4 integrations, new industry-specific LLMs, mass adoption of AI agents that communicate autonomously, and most recently the exploration of superconductors. Its safe to say we are at era-defining point of history.

The thirst for accelerated growth was fervent in the crypto/Web3 landscape too. Despite falls in Web3 VC funding, sorrowful new developer inflow numbers, and the plethora of regulatory issues and exploits — the Web3 space showed amazing resilience and industry-defining progress. We saw Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs filed from more than six firms, Paypal launch a stablecoin, and rigorous growth in respective ecosystems with Uniswap v4 launch, Base going live, RWAs, NFTs and middleware projects all making a strong comeback.

Of these, there was a sector that caught my eye. A sector I believe can turn the world upside down. Without the world even knowing it happened.

The Web3 Consumer Stack.

Namely comprised of decentralized social, onchain gaming, NFT financialization, content co-creation and digiphysicals (aka phygitals whichever linguistic mishap you prefer). This sector is changing the way we understand the world, communicate and connect, and manage assets at the level of mass adoption. If indeed the Web3 world is one in which sufficient decentralization and ownership is the norm, and killer apps will be those with seamless, behind the scenes interaction with blockchains — understanding the consumer apps currently defining behavior and interaction are prerequisite to the coming future.

So, what must investors and participants know to construct a true and working consumer thesis? I’ve got a few ideas.

Successful socialization of economies, DeSoc, gaming, NFTs and physical goods all share a commonality.

1. Wild Idealism and Sinful Nature.

Recently I came across Investing in Vices and Virtues — Lessons from the first Internet Age by Reid Hoffman. Written in 2021, this timely yet timeless piece provides the first rule for successful consumer platforms. Tap into humanity’s Seven Deadly Sins. But don’t make it obvious.

Each era had its own translation of wild idealism. Web 1.0 had pioneers, anime fans, pop culture boys exploring the unknown. Web2.0 brought real identities into the digital space and real relationships with real interactions. Here, the cardinal sins became more apparent. For the simplest of aphorisms, Facebook tapped into Pride, Linkedin tapped into Greed, Instagram tapped into Envy, Youtube tapped into Gluttony and as the list goes on, the lines begin to blur. Now entering Web3.0 we have in our hands the tools to go one step further and integrate wild idealism deeper into our interactions than ever. With asset-first approaches, the socialization of financial interactions and speculation-driven markets, our dopamine is through the roof. Triggering pride, greed, envy, wrath, sloth all at the same time. All to say, only those who can leverage this will have a spot in the race. We’ll dive into live examples of such projects further along.

“We’re in the first inning of Web3. Having wild idealism is a good thing even though of course, you should always pay attention to what could go wrong and try to steer towards positive outcomes and away from negative ones.”
— Reid Hoffman Web3 Vices and Virtues

The second rule for consumer apps?

2. You’ve Gots To Scale.

The bull cycle in the next few years will happen with products that people can use at scale.

Nah shit, sherlock. Well unfortunately, most overlook this. As shown through traditional tech adoption and affirmed by Chris Dixon, the next big product will start out looking like a toy. But the point remains in that the product has the potential and vision to become a disruptive technology. Remember what struck you most about Web3. It probably wasn’t penguin jpegs or #BALD meme coins. Remember decentralization, autonomy, composability, ownership, transparency?

Web3 is that new paradigm for the changing world. Living through the changing norms of most trusted monetary systems failing, witnessing the need for proof-of-personhood, balancing within changing demographics and navigating network states. 🤯 The more time passes people are desperately seeking a solution and alternative to their broken world. The products we call “use-cases” today; the zero-knowledge proofs, the regenerative finance initiatives, the decentralized science DAOs, all the fat protocols we know and love are the cornerstones of a working world. Sure, more experimentation is needed and infrastructures will need to mature but at the speed Web3 is going at, its safe to say our world is slowly shifting and the game changers are those who know what will scale.

In Action

There are many projects that have harnessed the above concepts and of them you can notice one of three characteristics.

Super Apps
Non-skeuomorphic Interfaces
Familiar but Better Experiences

These are the narratives that I believe will be the no-brainer game-changers. Let me elaborate.

1. Super Apps — Best use case? Wallets

About now, most agree the word “wallet” was a mistake. After all wallets nowadays do not just hold your assets but in essence are more like a passport/key/portfolio/asset manager all in one. The more this industry matures, the novelty of wallets are expanding. Wallets as an app now provide in-app access to various dapps, communities and provide messaging interfaces. In the coming years we’ll see wallets store experiences, preferences, social graphs and so much more. The composability of blockchain is opening a new age of super apps on the backs of protocols. Read more about it here.

2. Non-skeuomorphic Interfaces — Best use case? Web3 Social

I’ve written on emergent consumer behavior before and I’ll say it again. The best part of Web3 comes from the unprecedented experiences the crypto features allow. An easy example is the recent launch of Friend Tech. Coming from the founder who built TweetDAO and Stealcam “social tokens with utility” has come to fruition. The idea of buying shares of your friend’s profile is a new approach to our conventional social apps and yet it reached $8.1M in trading volume in less than 24hrs of its beta launch (source). Whether its Lens or Farcaster, some new dapp or even webpage, new interfaces and experiences are sought after. The benefits don’t just stop at users either. The value accrual model for Web3 is more lucrative. Take Web3 messaging as an example.

🎶 A whole new world 🧞‍♂️ ️is here.

3. Familiar but Better Experiences — Best use case? NFT Financialization, Content Co-creation

The first time I heard of the Kpop boy band BTS was actually from a caucasian Aussie friend called Grace. She had orange curly hair, pale white skin she didn’t appreciate and liked playing netball. Considering I was born in Korea, raised by Korean parents and always had kimchi in the fridge, watching her sing lyrics that she didn’t know the exact meaning of but with perfect Korean pronunciation had me shook. She subscribed to their youtube channel, ordered merchandise from Korea and carried their photo card. Mind you this was back in 2014. That was passion.

Since then interactions between fans and their creators have only become closer. People want to contribute to their passion be it a project or product, and creators have tighter communication channels with their fans. With blockchain now enabling audiences to become owners, incentivization is aligned and passion can reach deeper.

From *Building on Passion* by Gaby Goldberg from Consumer-focused Venture TGC Crypto

There are two fields I’m excited to see grow in this respect; NFT financialization and Content Co-creation. Messari did an outstanding overview so I won’t delve deeper but if you’re busy read the summary (left box, left column centre) and you’ll get the idea.

It Works Cuz Its Web3

Web3 allows for the most rapid iteration on new economic and governance models of any system humans have built
— Packy McCormick Web3 Use Cases: The Future

Web3 is honestly extremely difficult to build in. Just as the Plumbing Hypothesis goes, for blockchain-based systems to be useful and adopted at scale, the challenges in core infrastructure, financial and regulatory integration and large-scale commercial activity need to be addressed simultaneously. As if start-ups weren’t already difficult, Web3 projects require completely new systems to run on since transparency and interoperability are impossible with the existing status quo. Essentially, Web3 builders are driving, redesigning and rebuilding a plane while its still in the air.

Moreover, as perfectly expressed by Chris Burniske, protocols are minimally extractive coordinators and not fundamentally businesses. In other words, they are hyperstructures that can “run for free and forever, without maintenance, interruption or intermediary”.

Paolo Soleri’s “hyperstructure”. To the right is the Empire State Building at the same scale. Source: Hyperstructures by Jacob

So then what does the future hold for us? No one knows. But the unknown seems pretty darn exciting and each day my mind is blown by the genius projects building in the space. Transitioning from the centralized, permissioned, gated infrastructures and moving into decentralized, permissionless, public hyperstructures I look forward to seeing the Web3 paradigm become a real solution for consumers. As an industry we’re ready to prepare to onboard the next billion.

Thank you for reading my nascent thoughts.

Let me know what you think here, your insight is much needed 😁

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