#36 Mini-Essays Part IV

Google Maps, Crypto's Opportunity, and Parenting Lessons

I haven’t been writing / publishing as much as I’d like to, so I’m going to mix it up. I’ll continue to publish collection of mini-essays like today’s edition from time-to-time + long-form content, but also mix it up with the occasional stand-alone mini-essay. Here’s to a more active newsletter in 2023!

22. Google Maps for Blockchain

The analogy of comparing blockchains to major roads turns out to be a pretty good one. There’s a fixed set of lanes (blockspace), open to use (permission-less), traffic lights/laws help arbitrate who can use (MEV), and you can use tolled roads to optimize for speed (pay more in gas). And just how most premier stores and restaurants are located alongside major roads (you need to use the road to access them), the same exists in crypto. Most major DeFi apps and NFT projects live on specific chains (Ethereum, Solana, etc) and are only accessible to those communities.

I’ve recently been thinking about how crypto products can be made more accessible with a routing protocol that abstracts the notion of different chains altogether. Bridges and general-purpose interop protocols such as Layer Zero, Socket with Bungee, or Axelar are all doing interesting work here to remove these silos, but are still fundamentally centered around users who know which chains they want to traverse. In many ways, it’s similar to a pre-Google Maps time when you were lost: you wouldn’t ask someone how to go exactly where you wanted to get to, but rather how to get back on a major road. Google Maps changed the game by abstracting the notion of roads altogether.

I’m excited for a world where users can just use an application, buy a NFT, or access a specific DeFi project without knowing directions beforehand.

23. Eating Fabric

Back in 2011, Andreeson famously coined the phrase “software eating the world”. And in typical @pmarca fashion, it was precocious. Since then, software has “ate” media (Facebook/IG), entertainment (YT/TikTok/Netflix), hotels (AirBnB), transportation (Uber), etc. But if you double-click into what software has actually eaten, a lot of it has happened in what I call society’s services layer. It’s the layer most noticeable to people, but it’s just the appetizer.

The opportunity for crypto is to fulfill @pmarca’s vision by empowering software to eat the fabric of society: how we coordinate with and trust one another. How? If you ignore token prices and ape pictures, the real innovation behind cruypto is credibly neutral, permission-less infrastructure. It’s what our government, banking system, voting system, justice system, and other core pieces espouse to be — but have, atleast in the US, atrophied over time.

What might the next 5-10 years look like?

• New market formations that empower the historically under-served to own assets + culture

• School districts & universities run by students/parents, instead of administrators or boards.

• People pooling capital to act on climate change (e.g. buying Rainforest or carbon credits). Think ConstitutionDAO but 10-100X bigger.

24. Parenting Reveals

I’ve been a parent now for ~5 years to two amazing (and crazy 😜) girls. In that time, parenting has revealed certain truths about life that I didn’t appreciate but in retrospect, are obvious:

1. We dramatically under-appreciate our parents — I know everyone’s life experiences are different here, but on the whole, there’s nothing like first-hand experience to realize the level of sacrifice, resources, and sheer energy it takes to raise a kid. I see my parents in a whole new light now now — I get how hard it was, and I appreciate them so much more.

2. Embrace the Feels - Too much of our life is focused on getting shit done. And while that drives progress, it leaves us out of touch with our most primitive human emotions. I don’t think that’s healthy. Something about being a parent opened that part back up for me (I prided myself on not crying & now can’t stop crying if i leave for two days for a biz trip). It’s knowing that your kids will never love you as much as you love them — and being OK w/ that.

3. We are all short-term maniacs - No matter what people preach on Twitter about long-term thinking, we all obsess over what is happening right here right now. We can’t help it — its hard-wired in our reptilian brain as a survival instinct. Unf, the truth of it is that for 99% for us, nothing we do in our lives will meaningfully impact humanity at a long enough time horizon (which makes you wonder why we spend so much time obsessing over our job, etc). There’s one caveat: raising good humans who can force-multiply impact and vibes to make the world better 1000 years from now.

4. Enjoy the moments - Each day as a parent serves as a good microcosm for life. There’s plenty of things that are mind-numbing, frustrating, and challenging. But just about every day, there’s a moment that takes your breath away. Life should be about maximizing those moments — everything else is just noise.

25. Hybrid Theory

To me, the cycle of progress goes something like this:

1. People create good experiences on what’s now possible.

2. People build awesome “hybrid” experiences on top of what’s possible

3. Technology expands what’s possible albeit with an initially subpar experience

4. Repeat forever

At the macro level, we’ve seen this progression play out repeatedly as we go from physical → digital. Think written communication (paper → MS word + printing → Google Docs), movies (theatre → DVD → streaming), cars (gas → hybrid → EV), and $$ (tradfi → fintech → crypto).

IMO, crypto writ large sits firmly in the Not Good/New Possible phase of this cycle, which means: 1) we’re firmly in Google in 1997 or Netflix in 2005 territory re: the amount of user experience that still needs to be built to get to “awesome”, and 2) based on past history, we’re looking at a ~15 year window before the next “new possible” comes along.

26. Why Government = MEV, and where we go from here

Democracy in theory isn’t democracy in practice. Our democratic institutions don’t function as 1 person 1 vote — rather they are representative-based. We elect representatives who theoretically have our best interests at heart to vote and drive policy on our behalf. However, there’s a susceptibility to all this: it’s effectively what we lovingly refer to in the crypto community as MEV.

Because representatives are the arbiter of policy, their influence is sought after by entities who are willing to pay for that influence. And thanks to the rise of social media, we’ve seen a recent flurry of politicians seemingly more interested in elevating their own brand vs. being thoughtful caretakers of policy. So are we the people screwed?

Perhaps but I tend to be optimistic about the future. Crypto and its ability to provide credibly neutral, permissionless infrastructure makes it possible to reduce this MEV footprint and enable voters to directly engage on these issues. While I think it’s infeasible for national governments and large institutions to function this way, DAOs have demonstrated that small, focused groups can thrive doing so. I believe one area we’ll start seeing this shift over the next 3-5 years is in education. If there’s one thing people can make time to inform themselves on issues, it’s for their kids. I can see school districts and university boards being pushed to decentralized and offer their constitituents the opportunity to directly vote on issues.

And this makes me excited about the future.

27. Handling Shit

Shit happens to everyone. Perhaps something we were excited about doesn’t pan out. Or something we had worked hard to build ends up not working. Or an investment we made goes down the tubes. In fact, I’d bet that most of us consider ourselves to be unluckier than the average person — despite us knowing that if you’re reading this right now, you’re in the top 5-10% of the luckiest people in the world, and probably in the top .5% all-time in human history. So, why the dichotomy?

I think it’s primarily FOMO. We see others doing something we aren’t and can’t help compare ourselves upwards specifically to them*.* What does that mean? We typically compare ourselves to someone we consider better in a very specific regard (e.g. this person has more money than me). What we tend not to do is compare downwards or generally (would I rather be this person entirely, or just have a specific trait/attribute of this person). This narrow framing makes us feel like we’re not doing as great as might otherwise feel. So how do we handle this better?

Focus on your strengths (what you have going for you) than any perceived weakness. Focus on what you can control and understand that some things are simply out of your control. And know that if you stay steady and are persistent in your approach, good things will find you.

—Karthik