We hear a lot of people announce a ‘problem’ that ‘Web 3 has no utility’. Maybe we need to unpack this a bit. In context, let me say I mean products that relate to the Web3 space, which are not a cryptocurrency.
There are probably three groups of people that are critical to the existence of any product. Those who invest (financiers, not HODLers or degens), those who execute, and those who buy.
One of the problems with online platforms, particularly LinkedIn and X, is the people that seem to be making the most noise, neither constitute major funders, product owners, or ‘rock star’ buyers.
I don’t get the sense of how this supposed ‘lack of utility’ has actually impacted them first hand.
‘Products in Web3 have no utility’ seems to be a staple topic that gets regurgitated, along with the importance of ‘story telling’. I previously covered ‘story telling’ with a narrative that without placing product at its centre, it becomes irrelevant.
Moving on, I would say, storytelling is fine, but there never seems to be a deeply illustrated ‘story’ with multiple experiences, that showed me where someone had a Web 3 utility challenge with products, either funding it, creating it, or owning and trying to use it. It’s usually headline declaratives from folk with no tangible engagement and consequently, no story to tell.
Back to the dawn of humankind, there was a need for three things, food, clothing and shelter. This is the cornerstone of utility that still exists today.
Some folk realized they were no good at hunting, no good at skinning hides and fashioning garments from them, and no use at discovering new caves. They still had to make a living somehow. So, they managed to make dyes from readily available plants and minerals and make cave drawings. Others articulating things in front of camp fires at night, with waving hands, body movements, gestures and grimaces.
As they improved control on vocals they developed speech and language, and STORY TELLING began. Articulation skills led to ACTING. Other control abilities led to MUSIC. Social skills from language blended with successful battle strategy led to social hierarchy and the birth of POLITICS.
No pensions. If you couldn’t usefully integrate you died. Older warriors earned their meat by training youths and creating sparring tournaments, leading to SPORT.
This is the ethereal world began for survival of people who either couldn’t or didn’t want to compete directly in what put food in their belly, clothes on their body, and a roof over their head (3 necessities).
They began to bring their ethereal crafts to the 3 necessities, and clothing emerged with features that no longer prioritized protection, and regulating body temperature for ‘The Naked Ape’. Catwalks can exhibit the most unwearable of garments. Homes were sold aesthetic features; it was no longer someone’s ‘castle’. They became adorned with highly prized ornaments – Ainsley, Wedgewood, Waterford Glass; Souvenirs of iconic events; Paintings of ‘Renowned’ Artists; Antiques. Simple acts of cooking became Artisan ‘HAUTE CUISINE’
Our problem in our complicated world is that we see product utility, and solving a problem within the narrow extent of what it is being applied to. You can put wings on a pig, but it is still a pig. It could be argued that utility, and problem solving, when applied to a situation where the line of integrity to the ‘3 necessities’ is broken, is absolutely no utility or problem solving at all.
They have a new football design which can’t deflate, puncture, and has no compressed air in it. Is this solving a problem? Football is 22 grown adults running around a field, kicking a piece of animal hide which has been sewn into a sphere.
In answer to challenges with cigarettes, a product was developed called vapes.. but what is it really bringing? Slightly short of 600 years ago, some Englishman spoke to Native Americans who he found inhaling burning dried vegetation in a chalice.
They found the leaves, rolled them into a thin pencil-like shape, got people to stick them in their mouths, and set fire to the other side.
How is offering an improvement to this model linking with the ‘3 necessities’?
And yet, globally, both Football and Tobacco are collectively trillion dollar industries.
So this uninformed talk about product utility and problem solving in web3 collectible/tradeable products is an illusion.
Every iteration of Human Kind thinks the product dynamic within a new technology is different. The reality is, it is just a continuum; all the way back to those who discovered fire, and invented the wheel, who felt the same way too.
Rather than looking at product utility and problem solving, it might be a good idea for retail-end web3 focusing on collectibles/tradeables to be looking at historic evidence on subjective concepts of quality, exclusivity, dedicated human effort, and luxury.
Quality – Quality comes at a cost. Package the product with tokenization which has significant fees and takes time to mint. Tokenize on blockchain cores with higher security and decentralization. High TPS, low minting cost architectures are the enemy of quality.
Exclusiveness/Luxury – Unique tokenization protocols that have coding structures foreign to what can be accommodated on wallets like MetaMask, Coinbase, Trust or Rainbow, and require their own dedicated wallet.
Dedicated Human Effort – No 10k runs of cheap PfPs on algorithms, each product must individually evidence human effort.
These are the things that matter.
No Utility, No Solution ? No Problem !
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