Duality; Blockchain and the Web
[This entry is an opinion piece and is intended to only spur a meaningful conversation]
I recently read an article title “is blockchain really over?” tl;dr, no, no it’s not, followed by 😂.
What struck me is the parallel journey that early 90s web and blockchain are taking and while those in crypto tend to say “it’s like 1994 internet,” well it’s hard to know what that is supposed to mean if you were 8-years old at the time, weren’t born yet, or even better around at the time and not aware of it until later. Personally, my life was about Nintendo — everything else was noise or non-existent ☠️.
User Experience 😭😭
In a world that’s dominated by frictionless design, what I term as the ‘Uber’ or ‘Amazon’ experience (ie., one click or voice commands and magic happens), it wasn’t long ago that the user experience of the web was 💩 relative to what we expect today.
You had to order a CD, install software, call customer support to figure out the installation process, and go through the incredibly patient process of listening to the hallow screeching of a robot trying to karaoke.
After an hour of listening (sometimes you sang along) to get online (I wonder why no one developed a mute button for this), you are rewarded with being ‘connected.’
But what did being ‘connected’ mean?
Enter ‘the browser’
It took 4-years of development for the Web to be easy enough for the average consumer to ‘get it’ (aka, friendly user experience).
- In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee developed the first browser called the WorldWideWeb (yes, original).
- 1992 MidasWWW, Erwise (first browser with a graphical user interface).
- 1993 Cello browser was like Erwise but was the first to run on Windows (if you’re a millennial reading this, Windows is Microsoft’s product that dominated the marketplace).
- 1994 The popularity of the Web took off with Mosaic, led by Marc Andreessen, who later left Mosaics team to develop Netscape Navigator, (which enjoyed an 86% market share by 1996 🚀)
The majority of successful internet stuff was self-referential like Netscape Navigator or Yahoo’s Altavista (credit for this goes to Al!), but the critical point is to focus on the corresponding number of websites during 1991–1994:
- 1991: There was 1 website
- 1992: 10 websites (+900% )
- 1993: 130 websites (+1,200% )
- 1994: 2,738 websites (+2006%)
Think of the internet as the blockchain in the early 90s — it’s weird, confusing and it’s not for the average consumer (yet), because the majority of users don’t know what it is, or how to even use it (yet).
Now think of websites as the dApps (decentralized application). What struck me is the similarity in website growth in the early 90s over a 4-year period versus dApp development over a 2.5 year development:
Talent, Resources and 2019
If you were to compare existing funding, between 2015–2018, dApps fundraised ~$20b over the same 4-year period as previously mentioned. For context, total capital raised between 1980 to 1994 was ~$4b (adjusting for inflation, that’s only ~$6.8b).
I’m no Nostradamus (or am I?) but dApps will continue to rise at triple-digit growth rates with more fundraising in 2019 (whether it’s initial coin offerings or another method like traditional venture, and like the early days of the internet, it will create more jobs, and similar to the internet, these jobs will attract the best talent to build the future.
More importantly, an increase of adoption with user-friendly dApplications (ie the Netscape moment) is inevitable. After that, unprecedented value creation and redistribution on a global scale.
So, when we see media sensationalising the ‘end’ of the blockchain, please recognize that media simply inserting the popular jingle of recycle, reduce, reuse of early 90’s sentiment, switching out ‘internet’ for ‘blockchain’ and re-selling ad-space back to you. For a prime example of this, in February 26th of 1995, Newsweek was printing how the internet will fail — Why the Web Won’t Be Nirvana.
