@base builder #001; onchain cities w/ OAK & city3

As an IRL builder working to integrate crypto rails into an existing business I think @jessepollak has half the picture re: "Bringing the World Onchain". However, understanding and moving on the second half is crucial to success.

1. The half that think @jessepollak has right now... Crypto's super power lies in how efficient it is at translating qualitative value into quantitative value. In college, I wrote a 60pg thesis on "qualitative vs. quantitative dialectics" so I truly appreciate this perspective.

2. I see this manifesting in the push toward content coins. It makes sense. Content coins are a pretty interesting experiment in the qualitative -> quantitative value flow. But, I'd argue they're not wildly more efficient than previous crypto experiments in this arena (NFTs, Memecoins, etc), nor do they have any novel edge in creating sustained success.

Base

4. There is a whole 'nother qualitative -> quantitative value problem that crypto (and particularly /base) is well equipped to solve. The @base team brushed up against this last year, but faced significant headwinds and maybe decided to re-allocate resources before getting to the root of the problem/opportunity.

5. Before the new Zora launch, the "bring the world onchain" mission was focused on merchant payments. I know this well as I own a company which launched USDC on Base payments as part of onchain summer. The roll out was ambitious and I applaud the team for taking on such a massive endeavor. But it was less than optimal

6. That's ok though. Optimal solutions for difficult problems are rarely (if ever) found in the first iteration. What often is found, however, are new problems. Sometimes those are technical problems (and we found plenty of those) but more interesting are the systemic problems, as they tend to reveal opportunity.

7. I think this is where the @Base team missed re: the push for merchant payments. Which is interesting, bc the systemic problem/opportunity is the exact same one currently being pursued under the "bring the world onchain" banner... the qualitative -> quantitative value flow.

8. I think the base team (and myself, at the time) saw onchain merchant payments as the solution to a problem. They really aren't. Interchange fees are a problem, but they don't really cause pain. Merchants are incentivized to swallow them (due to leaning into network effects) and customers don't know they exist.

9. What is a problem though is the qualitative -> quantitative value dilemma for community based small businesses. Onchain payments are not the solution to this, instead they are massive, wide-open doorway to the solution, a perfect trojan horse.

10. [TIL that you can only publish a 10 cast thread. lol. so I'll add the others as I go.] So this begs the question of what is the qualitative -> quantitative value issue that stablecoin payments can act as a trojan horse to deliver the solution?

11. Many of the businesses creating the greatest qualitative value (local
cafés, barber shops, comic book stores, mission-driven startups) are also the ones most starved for capital (quantitative value). And these are the exact businesses that Base targeted (organically) for merchant payment solutions!

12. However, they do not need a solution for payments (sure there could be optimization, but the "problem" is solved). What they need is a solution for capital formation. They need a path to turn their immense qualitative value into quantitative value. In short, they need to be able to "coin it".

13. PE/VC backed brick & mortar concepts don't create the qualitative value that "mom & pop" neighborhood businesses can. They're built on high churn & creating profits for shareholders rather than delivering value to the community. Yet, community businesses are forced to compete w/ them & even tether prices to them

14. Many of these business struggle to keep their doors open as a result, despite having a loyal following & being seen as pillars of the community. To truly compete with their well capitalized counterparts, they need to be able to leverage their greatest asset, the qualitative value they create.

15. This is where @Base has a unique opportunity. Stablecoin payment flows become frameworks for curating lists of customer wallets for tokens that can be multi-purposed, acting as loyalty rewards tokens, fan tokens, revenue sharing, even governance.

16. I call it "CLIC" Community Led Investment Capital. Customers can support their favorite local places by buying into their token. Small businesses get a much needed, highly-efficient capital formation rail. Customers get a whole new loyalty experience and get to invest in something they love but still enjoy high liquidity and not have to be an "accredited investooooor".

17. @jessepollak or anyone else who's interested... I have a wireframe already built for this, plus over a decade of Main Street entrepreneur experience and a pretty extensive background in crypto public policy to sort through the regulatory issues. I also have the Invaluable help of @colinrives and @chintan.

3. These onchain experiments in creating qualitative to quantitative value discovery/capture are powerful primitives, but they're, in someways, a solution in search of a problem. The internet (even w/o crypto) has been pretty decent at creating revenue streams for dedicated, talented creators. Onchain solutions can optimize this, but they aren't unlocking anything new, just creating a more efficient path to an already achievable goal.