i hear a lot of founders say "in a gold rush, build shovels!". i don't think this analogy works in crypto.

gold is gold, there's nothing to innovate with it. on the other hand, crypto social still has miles and miles of space to innovate.

by the time you've built shovels for the gold, people will have realized the gold actually cures cancer, or can be used for space travel, or can be used for extremely novel online content experiences powered by livestreams and tokens.

I'm not sure what exactly should we understand by the shovel here. But supporting infras sometimes becomes more profitable than the actual product itself. Imo Neynar is a good example. Used by a ton of products building on FC. A good example of a shovel that found pmf 🤓.