Innovation is what remains

Why is innovation important? Why are things like blockchain and web3 important even when I think they are not going to be as people think they will? Why do I consider that they will not be relevant in their current form?

Many times when one analyzes innovation and creative solutions, one tends to think in black and white, in winners and losers. But I believe that innovation is what remains in the middle, it is the learning, the culture built and the advances made on the side, those that remain for several years or decades even when the “innovation” that created them disappeared, or “lost the game”.

Take for example all the products, technologies and advances that the first space age left us. Although we could say that it “failed”, I do not see anyone traveling through space or living like the Jetsons, the great advances that it brought to society are impossible to deny.

I believe that when the dust settles on the blockchain, the Metaverse, and web3, what will be left will be useful technologies, new ways of thinking about software development, and advances that will make our lives easier in many ways.
Let’s take the example of products like braintrust or some other, that have helped creators around the world operate with lower costs or simply eliminate an abusive middleman.
Or let’s look at how cryptocurrencies have sparked discussion about the processes needed to move money around the world. Today we can see centralized solutions that being threatened by crypto have grown and offer very efficient and very cheap services to move money around the world.

I think the most interesting part of the blockchain and the projects it has spawned is that it opened a global discussion about the way society operates, manages, and governs itself in a way that few other technologies have.

We cannot ignore the economic, social or even emotional problems that crypto assets have generated, but neither can we deny that innovation and progress require investment, risk, blood, sweat and tears. And we must all understand what part we can play in each of these processes.