Tag Archives Web3

Elon’s Twitter Takeover: What this means for Web3

The chain of events leading up to Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter offer and acceptance feels like a well choreographed waltz by two billionaire bros.

source: CCN.com

Timeline  

February 2020  Twitter’s biggest investor Elliot Management announces plans to oust co-founder Jack Dorsey as CEO. Something about him running two publicly traded company, yet also seemingly distracted with his personal life. Elon responds with:

November 2021  Jack abruptly resigns as CEO.

December 2021  Jack renames Square to Block – to embrace cryptocurrency and the blockchain. Note he’s a Bitcoin Maximalist (someone that’s all in Bitcoin and believes all other coins are inferior).

March 2022  Elon takes a 9% stake in Twitter, becoming its largest outside shareholder.

April 10 2022  Elon turns down a seat on Twitter’s Board.

April 14 2022  Elon offers to buy Twitter for $44 billion to take it private in the name of free speech.

April 25 2022  Twitter accepts Elon’s offer. Jack tweets:

What We Know

Based on Elon’s tweets, this is what we know so far about his intentions of buying Twitter:

  1.  He will take the company private.
  2.  Make it a free speech platform.
  3.  Create an edit button (apparently this is a big deal).
  4.  Plans for an open-source algorithm “to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
  5.  Get rid of advertising and move to a subscription model. He even suggested Dogecoin (the meme coin that Elon supports) would be an acceptable form of payment for a Twitter subscription.
What We Don’t Know

…is everything else.

Will Jack be reinstated as CEO? Was this the plan all along? What are they masterminding for the future of crypto with both Twitter and Block?

How will free speech on Twitter really pan out in practice? What happens when extreme and potentially harmful views now have a platform?

Does Elon actually care or is he just gaining more traction to continue to troll the SEC?

The big question mark that’s really on the peripheral – is what is to become of the Web3 movement, whose ground 0 is on Twitter in the first place? Especially if Elon and Jack have both entirely brushed it off?

Hint: “between a and z” is a jab at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), who really is spearheading this movement.

As mentioned, Jack is a Bitcoin Maximalist, so everything else is inferior, including Ethereum (where Web3 is built on), which he’s expressed his disdain for. It is ironic since his first tweet was sold as an NFT (on the ETH blockchain) for $2.9 million. What gives Jack?

This excerpt sums it up best:

“I think it’s actually the opposite: Ethereum hates Jack.

Ethereum is, ultimately, kryptonite for supercompanies such as Twitter, as well as Facebook and Google and any of the other massive, centralized public-owned platforms that most of us live on these days…which make their money by knowing as much about you, the user, as they can glean from the things you tweet, like and retweet.”  

In a tweet storm, Chris Dixon (a16z VC partner) said:

“Web 3 startups begin to eat into the margins of Web 2 incumbents. The higher the take rate, the more vulnerable the incumbent… Social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok have take rates of 100% — they don’t share any revenue at all with creators! That’s been great for them but bad for users.”

So both sides are battling it out (with Elon on Jack’s side of course) and us bystanders are left to pick a side (or not). Both are your typical privileged, rich, white males in positions of power. It’s hard to find trust in either… What are their motives beyond money and power? Does Elon really care about democracy and freedom of speech? Is Jack really a hippie that believes Bitcoin will create world peace? Does Chris really care about reclaiming the power and value back to the people via Web3?

And so the plot thickens…

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Down the Web3 Rabbit Hole – Top 10 for the Non-Technical Newb

It has been a month since I’ve tripped over an NFT rock and fell down the Web3/crypto rabbit hole. My fascination with Web3 is more than merely hopping on the latest (polarizing) trend – I think it might finally provide some tangible clues to some “lifelong” unanswered questions.

I’ve spent the last decade or so really trying to understand this concept of “work” – the compartmentalization of our lives between 5 work days and 2 play days/week, between a career from 20-66 years old and retirement from 66 to death. What our Boomer parents understood it meant to make a living is in stark contrast to what Gen Z and Gen Alpa will understand it to be.

As millennials stuck somewhere in between, we witnessed how the digital age spawned a new era of what “work” could look like for the creative economy – whether we rode that entrepreneurial wave or sat on the corporate sidelines – it happened right under our feet.

When I went down this rabbit hole, I came to the realization that there’s a high possibility that we’re not just living in the middle of a digital disruption, but potentially the beginning of it.

That’s what excites me, that’s what keeps me up all night these days. It was a complete paradigm shift of feeling you’re late to something, but then realizing you might not be after all. 

It’s easy to get lost and discouraged amongst all the chaos – critics, non-believers, trolls, scammers… And even the one’s that seem like experts are not even experts – because it’s forward looking, highly speculative and aspirational. 

With every belief or non-belief, we discern and validate it through our personal lens of what we want to filter in as truths. Nobody’s right and nobody’s wrong. Most people won’t care until they care and care until they don’t.

With that – take this journey down the Web3 rabbit hole as lightly or seriously as you want – it’s a fun ride and you never know what epiphanies you might have or opportunities you might be presented with.  

Below are my top 10 recommendations of podcasts, articles and people to follow for the non-technical newbie . 

LISTEN 

1. The Tim Ferriss Show: The Wonders of Web3 w/ Chris Dixon and Naval Ravikant  

source: Tim.blog

I have been a fan of Tim Ferriss since “The 4-Hour Workweek.” I read his book at some point after graduating college in 2007. His (at the time) unconventional and prescient ideas of “Life Design” and entrepreneurship had quietly infiltrated my mind and would remain a stubborn, sticky thought that would not leave until I could figure out what to do with it. The struggle remains.

He has since evolved and his true genius really shines through in his podcast. Unfortunately, his long-form interviews, full of so much value bombs, can easily get overlooked in a world with such a short attention span.

I highly recommend this episode with Chris Dixon (a partner at VC firm Andreesen Horowitz) and Naval Ravikant (co-founder of AngelList). They really take a sharp, intellectual knife and cut through all the superficial noise out there on this topic.      

2. Bankless: The Ownership Economy  w/ Li Jin   

source: NYTimes

Li Jin, 31, is known as the It Girl in Silicon Valley. I love her take on how Web3 and the ownership economy might bring in the dawn of the Golden Age for content creators to finally reclaim their financial powers back from the platforms that made a ton money off of them. This is a great episode covering most of what she’s written here

3. Where It Happens: The Unlimited Potential of Web3 w/ Alexis Ohanian

source: Insider.com

This was a surprisingly interesting conversation, albeit with tech dudes over tequila – but it’s one worth listening to. I didn’t know anything about Alexis Ohanian, except that he’s married to Serena Williams and the co-founder of Reddit, but he’s someone to follow in this space.   

4. Sharon Says So: Your On-Ramp to Cryptocurrency with Brit Morin

source: Brit.co

I had to include an interview with Brit from Brit + Co on this list. Brit Morin will be one of the major female players to take Web3 mainstream for women with the launch of her BFF crypto community. She takes a very fun, approachable, non-techie POV on crypto. This felt like a light conversation between girlfriends.

Tip: Try listening to these long episodes on a 1.25x-1.5x speed.  

READ

5. NYTimes: The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto   

It’s as comprehensive as it gets from an unbiased POV.  

“I’ve been writing about crypto for nearly a decade, a period in which my own views have whipsawed between extreme skepticism and cautious optimism… I’ve come to accept that it isn’t all a cynical money-grab, and that there are things of actual substance being built. I’ve also learned, in my career as a tech journalist, that when so much money, energy and talent flows toward a new thing, it’s generally a good idea to pay attention, regardless of your views on the thing itself.” – Kevin Roose

6. Creator Economy: Curious Beginner’s Guide to Crypto 

This is another comprehensive guide that’s easy to read for beginners.

“I want to help people make a living doing what they love online. I’m more convinced than ever that the way to make this a reality is through crypto.” -Peter Yang

7. Digital Native: Most People Don’t Know Web3 Exists

Digital Native has some interesting, easy to read articles on Web3.  

“But here’s the thing about Web3: most people will never know it exists. The reason for this is that while Web2 was a frontend revolution, Web3 is a backend revolution. In other words, Web2 reinvented the things that people interact with, while Web3 reinvents the plumbing behind the scenes.” -Rex Woodbury

8. Chris Dixon – Collected Web3 Twitter Threads

After his interview with Tim Ferriss, I’m a fan.  

FOLLOW 

9. Top Twitter Accounts to Follow

I never go on Twitter and actually activated my account for this – because that’s where all these people are. Web3 knowledge will not be found on Instagram – trust me. I love IG but it’s not the place to learn. I recommend following all the above (Chris Dixon, Naval Ravikant, Li Jin, Alexis Ohanian, Brit Morin) and of course Vitalik Buterin, founder of Etereum – where Web3 is being built on.  

10. This blog – Nat3.0 

Thanks for reading and have a fun ride down the Web3 rabbit hole!    

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It’s Going DAO’wn – Corporate Takeover

Okay, not really

“If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together”

source: A. Shuraeva

A dream always starts first with one person. As an individual unit, the advantage is speed, but they can only take that dream so far without a team. As the business grows, so will the team – but not everyone will be treated equally. It will be efficiently hierarchal – executives, managers, staff, interns… a top-down approach, and the wealth will be distributed accordingly. The owner gets most of the profits because, after all, it’s his/her mission being executed. The workers, in return, get compensated for their specialized skills and time.

What inevitably happens to workers (especially those at the bottom) is they get burned-out, uninspired or unmotivated.

source: pixabay

The greatest disruption to the workforce happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether people were laid off or chose to quit – it broke up our autopilot routines, and forced us to take a step back and reflect on our lives and careers. This most assuredly led to the Great Resignation, Big Quit or Great Reshuffle of 2021 (and a spike in divorces/breaks-ups, but I digress).

Individuals care just as much about growth, flexibility, autonomy and meaning in their work, as much as compensation. Most companies know this and have invested a lot on improving work culture, work-life balance, and opportunities for growth within their organizations. But what may be really missing are a lack of autonomy and ownership (sure there’s stock options, but let’s be real – it’s just not the same).

DAOs (decentralized autonomous organization) attempt to solve just this. It proposes to flip the entire corporate structure on its head – a bottom up approach.

This one was hard to write about and keep light. Most articles out there really got into the economics and (unbuilt) technology of it. There’s so much to be said for something that’s theoretical and experimental. But that’s the beauty of it all – we don’t really know for sure how DAOs will look like in the years to come.

What I know for certain is it can turn off a lot of non-techie people (like myself) in trying to get to the heart of how it can be an absolute game changer. I will narrow this discussion down to its parts at a bird’s-eye view. If you want a deeper dive, I recommend this comprehensive article from The Generalist as a starting point.

Decentralized 

There is no CEO. A group of people agree to a set of rules which are written in the code of smart contracts. The self-executing contract can rid of unnecessary meetings and administrative tasks, as actions can be programmed to run when a condition is met.

For example, a DAO is in the business of investing in NFTs (eg., PleasrDAO). Tokenholders can vote on which NFT will be their next investment. Once a majority vote is casted (condition is met), the smart contract can automatically move forward and make the purchase (action executed) with the DAO’s crypto wallet. For this to happen within a traditional company, meetings may have to be held and tasks to be delegated. In this hypothetical, an actual person doesn’t need to go into the OpenSea NFT marketplace – it’s all built into the smart contracts. In theory, the DAO can run itself and eliminate self-interested leaders.

Autonomous 

Freedom to govern itself. Individuals can choose to contribute in ways they think best.

Access to DAOs can be achieved via social tokens. As the DAO grows, so does the value of the tokens. This provides a financial incentive for individuals to be invested in its success in the long term. Everyone is an owner.

“Essentially, DAOs are owned by the people who create value in them…DAOs empower a broad ecosystem to take action and create value on its behalf.”

-The Generalist

Organization

A group of people come together to collaborate on a shared purpose and mission they care about.

source: K. Subiyanto

The biggest question is how you can even begin to trust strangers over the internet. It also doesn’t help that members can join with pseudonyms. It may level the playing field, especially if they’re a public figure, but some people can take advantage of that anonymity when personal reputation isn’t on the line.

Full transparency on the blockchain would be a start to build this trust. Every action taken is recorded and open for everyone to see. Most importantly, it cannot be tampered with (it’s immutable). Ideally this encourages individuals to act accordingly and follow the rules. If anyone violates the rules, the smart contract might be triggered to lock the individual out of the DAO.

I would say a successful example of trusting strangers to execute on a shared mission, currently in the Web2 world, is Wikipedia – anonymous volunteers collaborate to create a living digital encyclopedia for everyone – for free.

source: Wikipedia

Anyone can go in and edit (within community guidelines) and a consensus must be reached, because there can only be one article on such topic. It’s self-policing and relies on its community for fact-checking. This should in theory reduce issues user-generated platforms face (like Facebook and YouTube) with misinformation, fake news or conspiracy theories. If anything is ever made by the people for the people (and actually works) – it’s this.

A problem it does face, is it runs on non-profit grants and donations. We’ve all at some point seen the red block pinned to the top of every article asking for donations or Wikipedia is in danger of being shut down. An interesting question to pose is how Wikipedia would look like as a DAO 🤔

What can go wrong with DAOs?

Probably everything – and it did with the first DAO that entered the scene – TheDAO (I know, so original). Launching in April 2016 as a venture capital fund, it became “one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns in history.” By May, it had 11,000 investors and 12.7 million ETH or $150 million (today it would be valued in the billions).

In June it was hacked with 3.6 million ETH sent to a holding account. Fortunately, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin stepped in and was able to put a “hard fork” in the Ethereum network – which basically splits the entire blockchain at that moment in time, with the new version entirely wiping out the hack event – the one we all know today. Nonetheless, that left behind a bad rep for DAOs, followed by a long “DAO winter.“ People are finally slowly building in the space and gaining some traction.

A popular one today is the Friends With Benefits (FWB) DAO, as described in the NY Times – “a group that has been compared to a “decentralized Soho House” and a V.I.P. lounge for crypto’s creative class — is succeeding at generating hype and making money.” Basically a decentralized, digital world of what Anna Delvey wanted for ADF. IYKYK.

source: Netflix

Launching in 2020 and raising $10 million, FWB now has around 6,000 members. Among other creative projects, FWB is currently developing their first physical product – a yerba maté drink. I know, so millennial, but I kinda love it.

TAKEAWAY

There’s still a lot of experimentation and infrastructure that needs to be built out in this space. It all sounds fascinating in theory, but there are lots of holes to patch up and work to be done to make this vision a reality.

Corporations have issues of their own, and DAOs may attempt to solve some of them – but that introduces a whole set of problems of their own. How DAOs evolve in the future might be entirely different than what the Ethereum Whitepapers envisioned in 2014 – it might even be somewhere in between the spectrum of centralized vs decentralized, autonomous vs dependent. A hybrid that we can all get comfortable with.

With that, I’ll leave you with this interesting excerpt from BanklessDAO:

“We’re leaning toward a more fluid way of working, where individuals will follow their interests, collaborate on multiple projects simultaneously, and not have the constraints of working at a single company. At the same time, these individuals often need to collaborate with others to achieve their goals and don’t want to work independently for the rest of their lives….

The next generation of workers might start their professional career in a DAO, starting by simply vibing into these tokenized communities, helping to grow the projects they love, getting paid for having fun, and ending up never working for traditional companies.”

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Web3 – Do We Care? Do We Want It? Do We Even Know What It Is?

Web3, or Web 3.0, was quietly riding on the coattails of all that NFT hype in 2021, but is finally gaining attention in its own right in 2022. When the layperson like myself hears something about – the third generation of the internet that’s decentralized, operating on the blockchain with cryptogenic tokens, like NFTs and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) – my eyes immediately glaze over and my monkey mind takes a front seat.

source: I.L. Natividad

But now we have to really start listening because it’s driving new conversations, and we can’t be the dummy in the room that doesn’t know what’s going on.

Let’s get up to speed with why this Web3 has been an aspirational (albeit vague) vision for the tech and crypto crowd for so many years now.

We’ll have to take a quick ride down memory lane (the ’90s) of how we got here.

WEB 1.0 
READ-ONLY

source: Pixabay

I remember it all too well – the WorldWideWeb – the first generation of the internet. After school I would rush to the one large and bulky computer we had in the living room – before my other 3 sisters got a chance to get to it.

That all too familiar slow dial-up noise reaching a crescendo while we patiently waited for a connection to form.

nostalgia

There wasn’t much to do on the internet for a 13 year old those days anyways – it was just basic read-only informative webpages – but it was innovative and exciting.

WEB 2.0
READ-WRITE

The entrance of Web 2.0 came during Y2K and dominated our teenage years to current adulthood. It’s the internet we all know today – dynamic and interactive. No longer were we staring at static, informational pages created by individual users – now we could contribute and interact with others on different platforms – we entered the Social Internet.

The great promise of the internet was to remove the middleman – you no longer needed permission. Aspiring musicians no longer needed to wait around to get signed by a record label, they could share their music on YouTube or Spotify. Writers didn’t have to find an agent to secure a book deal, they could self-publish. Artists didn’t need to wait until they die for the world to recognize their work, they could share it on Instagram.

But did we merely replace one type of middleman for yet another? Web3 proponents would say so. Tech giants like Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Facebook (Meta), and Apple became this digital era’s middle man – but with much heftier pockets.     

source: L. Fotios

Do you recall a point in time as young adults when we were skeptical if anything was free? There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Nothing in life is free. 

At some point we got used to almost everything on the internet being “free” and god forbid if we had to pay for any information or apps.

Then something clicked – “If the service is free, you are the product.”  

source: Fauxels

We soon realized our personal data and online behavior were being tracked and sold to the highest bidder. Advertisers were fighting for our attention and these platforms will do anything to keep us online – and who doesn’t love free?

Web2 critics believe this is an era of centralization with these tech giants amassing way too much power, building platforms made for advertisers. They see Web3 as a way for people to finally break free of this monopolistic control and gain back sovereignty. Creators and consumers should not only own their personal data, but the value of the content they created, which contributed to the success of these platforms in the first place.

That thoughtful Yelp review you posted, those Facebook chat groups you started or contributed to, that Tiktok video you shared with your friends, that Instagram photo you liked – these are all social capital you transferred to power these tech giants. What did you get in return for these contributions?

source: cottonbro

The creator economy made these platforms extremely wealthy and, sure, a handful of influencers got a small piece of that pie, but the rest of us who played a huge part in creating these communities – we didn’t really get all that much.

To be honest, this was something that never occurred to me. Why would someone pay us for doing any of the above? It was just something we accepted as the norm. Yes, we’re taking away time out of our day contributing to these platforms, but it’s fun and we enjoy it – so naturally we would do it for free. Because if it felt like a “job” we would be getting paid for it.

Enter the visions of Web3 to re-shift our paradigm back to what we once knew to be true – nothing in life is free – and your time shouldn’t be either.

Web 3
READ-WRITE-OWN

Web3 is still a work in progress as there’s not really a clear and comprehensive vision of what it entails. Critics have called it “vaporware – referring to a product that’s announced but never delivered.”

Web3 was a term coined by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood in 2014, referring to a “decentralized online ecosystem based on blockchain”. However, we can attribute part of this vision back to the founder of the WorldWideWeb Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1994, who envisioned a decentralized web for the future.

The ’90s aren’t just making a comeback in fashion!     

source: Olivia Rodrigo – Vogue UK

What he didn’t predict was it being on a blockchain backed by “tokens”.

How might this look like in the creative community?

Imagine discovering a new artist and being one of their first few followers. You support their music, like their posts, and shared with all your friends. Then one day they blow up. If you had their original token they offered to supporters to fund their music, it would have appreciated in value by now. All the value that’s created as the community grows is shared amongst everyone because it was a collective effort.

The platform alone no longer reaps the majority of the rewards and gives just a small portion to the artist. Creators can now connect directly with their audience and get paid to fund their work through these social tokens. It can even be offered for free at the beginning, or for a nominal amount.

This can work the same for other types of services or industries. We are now owners, and the tokens gives us voting rights to collaboratively develop and maintain certain communities. The value of the token grows (like a stock in a public company) when the community grows.

There will be no middleman. The self-executing smart contracts of the tokens remove the need for intermediaries like agents, lawyers, bankers, etc. Personal data will also now belong to the user and stored on the blockchain rather than on third party servers.

And that’s just a snippet of what Web3 believers envision.

Takeaway

I love the idea of social tokens and believe that’s precisely what will reshape the future for creatives. What I am on the fence about is the complete decentralization part.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about having all this collective power with no moderator or authority. I don’t necessarily trust myself sometimes… I mean, how many times have I forgotten a password and reset it only for this to show:

In this decentralized world, am I forever locked out? What if I get scammed?

I also sense that this personal privacy issue might not be a huge dealbreaker to a lot of people. Unfortunately, I’m the type to not think twice and just “accept all cookies” so I waste no time and enter that damn website already. I probably do end up paying for it with all the spam I get on a daily basis, so there’s that.

Finally the problem with no censorship. There are things we can all agree upon as decent human beings that we would not want to run rampant – like child exploitation, terrorism, racism, bullying, etc. – how would this work on a decentralized web? Just have our current cancel culture make these decisions collectively? Scary.

There’s also the question of if every activity and social interaction is basically a financial transaction, how do we build genuine and authentic social relationships? We’re already so glued to our phones, it feels we’ve already lost a lot of that real, physical interaction. Will it only get worst if money is on the line?

source: R. Odintsov

I propose a Web 2.5 – where a Web 3.0 grows alongside a Web 2.0. No one foresees Facebook or Google going anywhere right now and they’ll stay relevant and make sure of it. Remember how Facebook changed its name to Meta out of nowhere? Ok Ron Artest.

It may be quite some time for the envisioned Web3 infrastructure to be built and, even then, the inefficiencies and shortcomings of this “far-fetched egalitarian utopia” will need to be worked out.

My hopes is we can find a balanced medium for the third iteration of the internet, which feels ripe for change.

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Hello World…

Web3, Metaverse, Cryptoverse, or Whatevers

The year is 2030.

The early adopters and Gen Zers are taking full advantage of the crypto space – a space us now geriatric millennials (ugh whoever coined it I hate it too) missed the memo on during the 2020 pandemic and are now just trying to wrap our heads around. A bubble or two might have burst during that time, but they all HODL (held on for dear life) as the third wave of the internet on the blockchain had finally arrived. Web3 was no longer a theoretical, egalitarian utopian controversy of the past.

“First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” -Arthur Schopenhauer 

These people seem like they’re all just vibing online and generating income – not working that 9 to 5 grind like most of us still are. NFTs, social tokens, DAOs, individual IPOs, owning a piece of the internet, play to earn, etc. are all commonplace terms… We had Googled it once upon a time back in 2021 when it first hit the mainstream media but got too overwhelmed by all the crypto jargon. So we just got back to mindlessly scrolling through IG and TikTok.

It was, after all, an escape from our jobs – which still sucks 6 years later. What’s another decade or two left of the grind before we reach that retired promise land? Besides it’s way too late now, we’re in too deep. Yet another missed opportunity.

Back to today – 2022.

That first part was just to trigger some FOMO and get your attention.

Don’t worry though I’m not here to onboard you with the latest crypto hype. I’m here to start the conversation of what happens next when all the dust settles and we in fact enter the next generation of the internet. How will this pan out for the creative economy and the future of work?

I’ve been ruminating for quite some time on the evolution of this idea of “work” – the very thing that shapes our existence and identity in society. Yet if it’s what we do for the majority of our lives – why are so many of us unhappy in our careers?

source: A. Piacquado

We’ve heard a job is a jobwork is called work because it’s not supposed to be fun – or your job title doesn’t define you.

At some point around 2010-2020, we witnessed the rise of the full time “social media influencer,” and got a glimpse of what it might mean to actually make a creative living doing what you enjoy.

But we were already on a career trajectory we mapped out in our 20s. So complacency and stability wins over because change is scary for a 30-something year old.

Are we really the cursed generation just trying to catch up with the rapid pace of technology causing multiple industrial revolutions in our lifetime? Not to mention experiencing two Great Recessions and a Pandemic where millions of people lost their jobs. Most must have also had time to reflect on their careers because what came after was the Great Resignation. People either jumped ship to another company or changed their entire career.

The latter is what I’m really fascinated by. The once monogamous career path may be a thing of the past. After all, we aren’t robots and shouldn’t be chained down to a specific role we continue to do until we retire or die (noted other cultures might disagree).

“Be too complex to categorize… specialization is for insects”  -Tim Ferriss

As we get older, it’s easy for us to brush aside ideas that disrupt our current views or doesn’t fit our narrative. Our brain develops habits and doesn’t need to think anymore as we go on autopilot with our everyday routines. Social media and everything we consume these days do not help, with all the algorithms that reinforces the same ideas – keeping us in our bubble.

At the start of the new year, a time when we all make resolutions we can’t keep, I decided that I really needed to just pull myself out of this creative rut I’ve been in for quite some time now. I came to realize my continual hours of scrolling on Instagram through a loop of similarly curated photos of fashion, food, home decor, celebs, and travel for years was not helping my cause but actually creating this rut. My mind needed a big blow across the head so it can build new connections and ideas. I thought what is the least likely thing I would ever do…

For whatever reason, I decided to take a free online computer science class (Harvard CS50) and then activated a Twitter account – since it seems where a lot of these people were hanging out.

I went down a rabbit hole and ended up in a foreign world of technologists, cryptologists, and futurists.

source: T. Miroshnichenko

I was so lost and was tempted to leave this space but something was tugging at me to stay and delve a little deeper.

And when something feels overwhelming and highly speculative you can either make a run for it – or dive in and blog about it until you understand it. I did just that. Blogging is not dead!

source: V. Karpovich

It’s not to say I don’t still love Instagram with all its filtered photos of people’s seemingly perfect lives – why must we be pigeonholed to labels?

I’m a mama to a stubborn 2 year old, lawyer, small business owner, and now a content creator about the future of content creators. Because why not?

1/3 of the people will love you, 1/3 will hate you, and 1/3 dgaf.   

We live in a permissionless economy – let’s take full advantage of it.

Forget that you got your degree in x or spent y years doing z. If you feel you built your foundation on grounds that no longer serve you or make you happy – don’t be afraid to start over and build something new.

Don’t keep building on autopilot until you hit your 40s or 50s and realize damn – I should have just followed my heart and start over 5 or 15 years ago. It is never too late.

Your story can be one of reinvention to reclaim your narrative and reach your fullest creative potential – and the timing is ripe during this pivotal moment in history.   

Nobody is far ahead of the game. If you believe Web3 is around the corner, the game has just begun. By just understanding the fundamentals now, you might find real opportunities you never realized existed.

All this might not have been on your radar – it definitely wasn’t on mine and had no reason to be (liberal arts major / millennial mama in the burbs here).

But now that I caught wind of it and seeing the forest beyond the trees – it has my attention and should have yours.

We don’t know what we don’t know. And now that we know – what now?

Welcome to Nat 3.0.

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