The revealed-preference marginal value of privacy/security/data portability for median users is really really low. This might be the biggest blocker of protocol tech (I’m now using protocol instead of blockchain, crypto, web3, web5… it seems the most accurate category descriptor)

Delver at contraptions.venkateshrao.com, running summerofprotocols.com, host of /gloom ☀️

A related problem I think is decentralization makes for more features faster but worse UXes. Nobody wants to periodically unbundle and rebundle behaviors around affordances of a quicksand ecosystem of apps and special clients. Searchcaster is nice but search is too central to be marginal. Needs in-client 🔎 UX

WordPress is a good example of partitioning into a strategic core and a plug-in ecosystem with widget/theme/block/skin structure. Integrated UX around distributed capabilities. It’s complex and took 15y to perfect, right at cusp of obsolescence. 

Protocols need to speedrun such evolution in 5 years.

3 ways around this:

1. Increasing the stakes (eg money, passports tied to self-custody)

2. World gets a lot more crazy/apocalyptic 

3. Someone invents a use for protocol tech that’s upside use value rather than downside insurance

Reluctant anti-utopian | Breaker of things | https://necopinus.xyz

I think I just got nerdsniped by late 90s multiagenct systems research. They’re fundamentally more interesting, expressive, and plain fun

I wonder if protocol people all have an origin story where one of these values failed in a big/important way.

E.g., I got obsessed with data portability after I lost years of writing & art due to a bad backup.

But for most people existing centralized gardens work just well enough that they never get seriously burned.

The corollary is they don't want to be made to think, i.e. anything that gets in their way of achieving desired outcomes (e.g. cat videos, rage porn, thirsting, etc) is going to be a big turn off. I think some friction can be good tho, it weeds out the NPCs and keeps the well clean.