Writing on Cent is Remembering Together

[Note: get paid to comment on this post on Cent here]

> Writing is remembering.

That is my favorite all time quote from my favorite blog, Fred Wilson's avc.com.

If you aren't familiar with Fred or his writing, he is a VC or venture capitalist (hence the name of his blog, avc) and he blogs everyday.

His writing is really good. It's clear and he shares valuable insights into investing and other things using great anecdotes taken from the companies he's invested in as well as his own life.

But I don't open up avc.com every morning just for Fred's writing - or even primarily because of it - for me it's all about the discussions that take place beneath the daily articles in the comment section.

Reading through the discussions and debates that crop up beneath Fred's articles is more than a diversion or entertainment. It's more like intellectual sustenance. In a way it's almost spiritual. It's food for my soul.

But I've also found that the more I consume the hungrier I grow for more *real* conversation. I want to engage in more discussions. I want more feedback. Way more than Twitter or Medium or Facebook or even my own daily blog has been or is capable of providing.

As a non-famous normie, though, there just hasn't been a way to get that kind of real thoughtful engagement easily or consistently.

And why should anyone - not just me or you - expect others to donate their valuable time? To listen to another perspective? Or understand a different side of an argument? Or listen to a new song? Or read today's blog entry? People just don't typically do that.

But what if you let people know that they could get paid if they read, listen or think deeper *and* engage with your blog, song or argument?

In the case of my daily blog, if I were to attach a bounty to incentivize readers to engage with my writing, my writing would still be remembering for me, but it would turn into a remembering together with others. That is powerful, especially if it's applied to other ideas and content.

So that is what I plan on doing. I'll post whatever is top of mind for me each day and attach a bounty so that you can get paid for engaging below the post. Until tomorrow yall.

Fee-based Revenue Models on Web 3.0

So, let's say you're developing a DApp with a fee-based revenue model.

And let's say that your DApp actually becomes that killer app for crypto.

What would stop any other potential competitor from simply copying your product and eliminating fees?

Thoughts on Enzypt.io

I just finished reading the first two installments of @BrianXV's animated Cold Storage series, and they were pretty freaking good.

Although he published the stories on Enzypt.io a week or so ago I wasn't able to read them until now because Enzypt doesn't provide support to mobile Web3 dApp browsers like Coinbase Wallet or Trust. Enzypt does that because those mobile browsers apparently don't support in-browser downloads. And that's a shame because mobile is all I use and it's the most convenient.

Anyways, I finally booted up my wife's notebook, paid for @BrianXV's stories, downloaded them and read them.

There is something special about what Enzypt is doing. Something futuristic. Something so right. I love how 100% of payments go to the content creators. I love how the content lives on IPFS and is essentially uncensorable.

But Enzypt also definitely feels like a single feature; not a fully fledged product. There is something missing. If Enzypt gets combined with something else (what that 'something else' is I have no idea...) it could be a game changer.

For some reason my mind goes to podcasts when I think of Enzypt. Hmm I dunno. I'm tired and my thoughts aren't getting any clearer, so I'll stop here, for now.

New Cent Wallet

Finally. Now it's official: The new Cent Wallet, running on those sexy state channels, is a thing. Could we have made it official a bit earlier? Yep. Should we have? Possibly. But the result is the same: Cent has released an awesome product development, and a feature that will be integral in the growth of Cent and other planned future releases.

In terms of UX improvements, after users get past the initial on-chain transaction to deposit ETH into the Cent Wallet, every action - from tipping to bountying to getting paid - is lightning fast.

There are a lot of technical details under the hood of this release though, but Cent's co-founder and CTO Camerom Hejazi does an awesome job explaining those details as well as some of the tradeoffs Cent is making to bring users the best possible dApp ecperience possible today.

Check out that explanation in this Medium article.

Enzypt.io

I had another blog post in mind to write about originally, but thanks to fellow Centian @BryanXV I found out about a really cool new project to write about instead.

As the title of this post makes pretty clear, that dApp is called Enzypt. Enzypt was developed by Melbourne based Flex Dapps and in their own words:

"Enzypt was borne of our fascination for IPFS and distributed storage technologies. Enzypt allows [creators] to encrypt and upload files and their metadata, and create a completely p2p payment gateway for themselves. When money hits the creator's wallet, the files are downloaded and decrypted..."

There are a few more things I'd like to say about the dApp, but I want to put the dApp through its paces a little longer before I go deeper. That plus it's late and I'm beat.

Check out Brian's website (he has a lot of good stuff going on and is a rising crypto-native creator/entrepreneur) here: https://brianxv.wixsite.com/home/enzyptstore.

Bang for Your Buck

I love brevity. And I love clarity.

As Kendrick Lamar said: The simplest shit be more pivotal.

Cent's current one line summary of 'A decentralized & incentivized social network'  is short and concise, but it's not super understandable. It sorta says what it is, but it doesn't.

My current refactoring of this is: An Ethereum-based income generating social network.

The 'Ethereum-based' element replaces the all ambiguous 'decentralized' aspect while we announce the true value proposition of Cent as being a social network that aims to generate income for it's users.

What's missing from this one-line explanation is 'the how' of it all, but to me the fact that it's based on Ethereum is hint enough. That combined with the curiosity I think most people will be struck by when they read that would be just the right combination of clarity and intrigue needed to get new potential users to click through to the site and see what exactly Cent is.

Perhaps.

The ETH Price Death Spiral

If you've looked at the price of ETH recently, you probably feel as down as it is.

There's no sugar coating it: cheaper ETH sucks if you're hodling any.

But don't let it get you too down. If anything, your feelings are probably just a sign you need to re-evaluate some things.

Perhaps you need to work more on taking profits off the table more frequently
 Or perhaps it means you should be more diversified. Or maybe it just means you need to buidl harder and quicker.

There is something big growing in this crazy world of crypto; something game changing. Who knows if ETH will be involved (I think it will be), but something like it certainly will be.

Nearly everyone on this planet is still amazingly hypocognizant of the power if programable money. Value can be exchanged for any actions to nearly infinite decimal places. These transfers of value can be conditional based on thoughtful community stakeholders and curators that form a decentralized autonomous organization.

We have only just passed zero hour, so there is still a long way to go. ETH will probably go lower too, so make sure you take the necessary steps to ensure your feelings aren't pegged to the price of ETH, then charge into the future guided by the light of progress that great projects like Cent are buidling away at.

Why Aren't More People Using dApps?

The reality is that there are only around 9k actual dApp users. Therefore we need to assume that the actual demand just doesn't exist (yet) for dApps or that the barriers that existing demand must surmount [to begin using a dApp] in order to satisfy that demand are too great, or some combination of the both.

Personally, I think it's some combination of those two factors. Telling a pre-coiner today they should be using dApps is no different then trying to sell someone from Mozambique ice in the 19th century - both individuals were hypocognitive of the "new" objects and had zero understanding what value they could provide and thus were ignorant to the fact that they should be demanding anything.

To stimulate demand for ice you don't need to explain the science behind freezing water to someone or even make them wait in front of a freezer for water to freeze. Instead you make them an ice cold, thirst quenching beverage. That's a super simple and super quick way of conveying the value and demonstrating the effect of ice all in one gulp.

Same with dApps today. What's the equivalent of making a margarita for dApps? I think it's Cent. Anyone with an email can sign up and provide a response just like the one I've written and vote other responses up or down just like you do on Reddit - and they will receive cold, hard ETH basically right away.

That does a lot of things at once: it quickly makes something that's been impossible possible, it demonstrates the power of this new tech, and it turns pre-coiners into instant *value* hodlers. That is the only tenable value proposition for dApps today imho. As time goes by that will obviously change.

Cent isn't perfect yet by any stretch of the imagination, but some yuge[sic] changes combined with the introduction of state channels will increase the value proposal for users to a ridiculous degree, thus making a cool beverage even tastier and more refreshing.

Every user of Cent can earn real ETH that they can then use on other more advanced dApps so it's beneficial for the whole space. Other dApps don't do that, and if they continue to focus only on their dApp, they'll continue to struggle with broader adoption.

Limits of Decentralization

If your name is associated with something, that knowledge is a potential central point of failure for that "thing."

As long as the identities of people involved in "decentralized" projects are public knowledge, that is an unavoidable reality.

That isn't necesaairly a criticism as much as it's a reality and tradeoff. I mean, if you were on the Peepeth team, for example, and some user posted kiddy pron[sic], you wouldn't be able to simply use 'blockchain' as an excuse not to do anything. Just as they do now (since the team is identifiable) they allow for admins to delete such content. And no one can be mad at them for doing that; but that means they can only describe their product as 'censorship resistant' and not 'uncensorable'.

That leads me to believe that the most powerful applications will be developed and released into the wild by anonymous devs. In that situation, any "value" will then accrue exclusively to end users (that may or may not include the original devs, and if it does, no one will be able to distinguish them from other users) so as to limit the liability issues that any dApp dev team faces.

Token Extensibility

Extensibility. That's a word I've been hearing more and more lately, and I'm sure we'll soon be hearing seemingly all the time in the not too distant future.

Unfortunately it isn't the easiest term in the world to intuit.

Thankfully though crypto has Bryan Flynn, an awesomely clear thinker on all things NFTs, who has in a recent article provided what I think is the best example that clarifies what token extensibility actually is: Access.

"If users obtain a token in their wallet, they can unlock new features or tokens in other dApps. Tokens which were once worth nothing, now are worth the equivalent of whatever feature/token it unlocks."

For example, say you have a CryptoKitty. And say I have a dApp that is looking to attract a bunch of crypto-familiars. Since every CryptoKitty owner is a crypto-familiar, and since ownership is provable, I can provide something of value just for CryptoKitty owners who sign up to my dApp using the ETH address that their CryptoKitty is tied to. That token can then be used as an avatar. And it can be tied to all the work/actions they carry out on the dApp. But they can use it on other dApps too.

We live in amazing times. And things keep getting better and better.

Degree for the Internet

On Cent's Telegram, Summers Haley left a comment suggesting that setting up a TCR (Token Curated Registry) could be a useful way of helping to improve the quality of sorting on Cent. TCRs are definitely going to be super interesting, but I'm not sure if their time has come yet, particularly when it comes to a project like Cent.

As it stands, industry incumbents and those with established reputations/credentials stand to gain the most by getting their name on a TCR, but the incentive(s) to join any TCR is unclear as of now. Also the politics and management assumed by TCRs seem to contain a ton of slippery slopes (e.g. determining who should be kicked off, deposits withheld, etc...).

For a much larger number of individuals around the world lacking such reputations/credentials, even if they have something unique to offer, it seems a bit cruel to demand they deposit something (that they probably don't have).

That said, the social signal that those lists can and will broadcast is super interesting. And what kind of signal would they broadcast? For individuals, getting their name on a list would probably be akin to what diplomas have done for decades: signal that one has what it takes to follow a set of arbitrary rules for a non-trivial period of time, perhaps with some specialized knowledge to boot.

Cent sort of does this already with the leaderboard. Users are ranked based on their 30-day earnings. Behind the rankings though is an ETH address that's basically a record (or proof) of work they put in and got paid for. Instead of a diploma that is a signal of some future potential, the Cent leaderboard generally, and the work that individuals do specifically, provides proof that users have been able to consistently draft responses that are sincere enough and of a significant level of quality to get paid based on the validation and approval of their fellow Centians.

Proof of being able to consistently do something with sincerity and at a sufficient level of quality in the digital realm: that's basically the equivalent of a degree for the internet. If there isn't value in that for any individual who puts work in on the internet, or for the site or organization they belong to, then I'm not sure I know what's up and what's down anymore.

Cash, Privacy, & Digital Social Primitives

"There is a reason why people used cash to transact. It was private and only the two parties engaging in the transaction knew about it."

   ~ Michael J. Casey, 'Privacy is Vital to Crypo - and the Global Economy'

While what Michael J. Casey wrote may be true, in addition to privacy, cash also made it easier - by orders of magnitude - for anyone to earn a living by being paid in cash, instead of an unwieldy commodity for example, by simply doing something for someone who had cash. By extension it was likewise much easier for someone with cash to attract a larger group of potential workers for whatever task they needed to have carried out.

That said, a key shortcoming when it came to cash was, and still is, it's fundamental lack of force or ability to guarantee that the exchange of cash in advance of services rendered brings about the expected outcome or that a cash payment following services rendered is really made.

So, societies developed social constructs to help enforce transactions such as: legal systems and contracts, banks, bonding requirements, escrow transactions, degrees, certifications, CVs, identification cards and so on. All of these pre-digital third-party institutions, rules and social proofs served as proxies for trust; the same trust that cash intrinsically lacked.

Now though, the world has just recently been introduced to cryptocurrencies, which are (for some at least) not only intrinsically trustless, but they allow for trust to actually be programmed on top of them in the form of automated smart contracts.

But without sufficient privacy in the form of fungibility in money, or to borrow Michael's clear prose, "...[the] unspoken agreement between market participants that information about a product's history is not only hidden but is actually lost," money loses its "moneyness."

Or so goes a major critique of cryptocurrency as currency, at least as of today.

This critique applies to the many individuals who connect to traditional institutions like banks to either buy cryptocurrency/tokens or convert them into fiat. Where the critique falls apart though, is when individuals open a virgin digital wallet and *earn* cryptocurrency (e.g. on a site like beta.cent.co).

In other words, when cryptocurrency remains as digital money, when it is exchanged natively (i.e. over the internet either via a smart contract or between parties who utilize digital wallets) its "moneyness" is just as good as the paper kind, with the added benefit of being able to be sent to anyone that is able to send or receive digital messages, anywhere (including space).

When it comes to earning money today, whether it be our next job in real life or over the internet, it is implicitly assumed that we will get paid by way of one or many or all of the pre-digital third-party institutions, rules and social proofs mentioned above. To keep things simple, I think that because of that implicit assumption, most people are trying to insert those pre-digital third-party institutions, rules and social proofs into and on top of the fundamentally new and different digitally native crypto-worlds that are unfolding upon the digital universe. To me, however, that seems a bit like if someone from 19th century Philadelphian high society ventured into the lawless Wild West expecting to be able to force Victorian era modes and manners of living upon everyone and everything.

Instead, what I envision as being a more likely early outcome is this: across these new crypto-worlds, digitally native reputation based on some human aspect that is either impossible to account for and keep track of now, or simply not valued that highly by society - or some combination of the two - will begin to manifest and become the first key, digital social primitive on top of which an unimaginable future will arise.

This reputation will be portable and provable to anyone, and will become the universally attainable, clear and straightforward key to earning a living in the digital realm. As an illustrative example of how that would happen and what it may look like, let me take Cent as an example, and project out onto its current reality a few eminently reasonable hypothetical changes. [Note: if you are unfamiliar with Cent, please go through some of my previous posts, or at the very least please read [this article] before reading further]

Let's imagine that the work-based bounties, or the bounties set mainly by businesses and organizations seeking some minimum number of workers to sincerely complete surveys, take polls, or some other series of simple, straightforward digital work, that are already appearing on Cent today become a real thing. All of a sudden tens of thousands of dollars begin to pour into the platform in the form of bounties. But there is a quality control problem: Since any Centian (Cent user) is able to reply and sort responses to any bounty, the quality of responses and accurate verification of those responses - to say nothing of the total number of responses - is simply far, far below the expectations of what the businesses and organizations are expecting.

So what's Cent to do? First they identify the facts. A small segment of active Centians has been consistently responding to work-based bounties sincerely. Another segment of users respond sincerely, but selectively to work-based bounties. A larger portion of users respond sincerely to semi-formal and playful bounties regularly, and the remainder are sporadic responders or low quality responders.

After identifying these groups, Cent leadership decides to restrict the ability to respond to and evaluate responses to work-based bounty posts to the group of users who have demonstrated "regular and consistent sincerity" across previous bounties on the platform. As a practical example, Cent could say that only users who were in the top 10 of at least three bounty post responses over the last 3 months, which let's say is a small number of only around 400 or so users, will be able to participate in and earn money from work-based bounties.

Put yourself in the shoes of a CEO from one of the nearly 75,000 blockchain startups operating on not simply a small budget, but with an even smaller network and even fewer precious seconds to waste - a couple hunderd dollars here or there for feedback or product testing or whatever carried out nearly instantaneously by fifty to several hunderd reliably sincere responders is a no brainer.

And so very soon these Centians begin to earn hundreds of dollars *a day*. Mind you, all this money, in the form of bounties and user earnings, is visible to all users. So you better believe the responses and curation of the semi-formal and playful bounties rapidly impoves in terms of quality and sincerity as everyone vies for the chance to become a Centurion and earn some serious money.

It's key not to forget that while the money of the work-based bounties may be attractive, the work is pure work. And as pure work it is draining. The semi-formal and playful bounties, by contrast, are not just fun but they are constructive as well in a creatice, social, and financial way. If regular users are able "prove themselves" (i.e. that they are capable of consistently providing sincere responses) by having fun, then Centurions simply continue to prove themselves across each work-based bounty and then have fun.

Over time the types of work-based bounties will probably change. Just as there is demand for educated "specialists," so to the demand for Centurions with very specific reputations and reputation patters (i.e. the history of their performance within the various crypto-worlds) as more and more complex work is able to be carried out digitally. If work-based bounties become more complex, it would only be natural that the semi-formal and playful bounties become more niche and complex. I'm imagining something like a Reddit-esque site but with some unimaginable twist...where Centurions will come to blow off steam and socialize - almost like a bar, except they get paid and continue to prove themselves.

If you've followed me to this point, thank you. Bounties are nothing new, and there are mutliple bounty networks besides Cent that are trying to grow their businesses today. Where Cent distinguishes itself as something completely different from everything else, is in the incentivized social network that has formed around it and proven itself as being something that is genuinely delightful and enjoyable.

Pairing that with the traditional work-based bounties, allows Cent to actually grow a pool of passionate and dedicated workers whose growing numbers helps improve and make the site more and more valuable for everyone else. And it is out of this growing pool of workers that I have caught the first glimpse of that first provable, digital social primitive: a reputation for sincerity that individuals can build for themselves without having to rely on any pre-digital third-party institutions, rules and social proofs.

The Gig Economy & Truck Drivers

I've been thinking a lot about truck drivers lately. Not because they're the primary example given for jobs at risk of total elimination due to automation; but more so owing to the nomadic and isolated nature of the work they do.

I'm not sure if there is another job today that could be more instructive or worth studying for potential parallels to the future of gig economy work than the trucking industry generally, and truck drivers specifically.

What I've really been thinking about are the infrastructure and businesses that play a large role in any trucker's life. I can think of three main ones: trucking companies, weigh stations and truck stops.

The company secures, co-ordinates and distributes work assignments to every trucker in that company. An important distinction that I am not clear on is if truckers are generally employed with one company, or if they have contracts in place with multiple companies. My guess is the former.

The weigh station operates ostensibly as an evaluation center - checking to make sure they are following basic rules and are functioning properly.

Truck stops, on the other hand, serve multiple purposes for the truck driver outside of acting as a re-fueling point. Broadly speaking, they also supply truckers with leisure, sustenance, very basic entertainment, opportunities to socially engage with other truckers, as well as vice. Truck stops are basically non-alcoholic bars for truckers.

I'm not a trucker, so I can't say for sure, but I imagine truck stops are very, very important to truckers. If they disappeared, I'm not sure how trucking could remain a form of work someone could repeatedly engage in and sustain over long periods of time.

If you think about the infrastructure (both digital as well as physical) being set up for the workers of the gig economy, there are barely any "companies" established let alone weigh stations or the equivalent of truck stops. When it comes to the gig economy, it makes sense to focus on those infrastructural aspects first, or at the very least in tandem with whatever design or plans one has around work and workers in the gig economy.

Jobs: Work, Social & Play

If you've ever watched Madmen, or are older than 50, you know that the workplace used to be a place where work, social and play all occurred and co-existed.

Owing to multiple factors, not least of which being the great many abuses that took place in the name of "fun," play was the first element to be steadily extricated from the workplace. Professionalization is the euphemism that is often employed to signal this change, especially in startups that want to shed their "sophomoric" image and signal they have become a place totally focused on work and the generation of profits.

At most jobs today, regardless of what the leadership or PR departments might say, the demarcation between work and 'social' is also getting starker by the day. The work/life balance that most employees demand and many employers claim they provide speaks to this. That said, while it may be a shell of its former self, the social aspect of work cannot be fully eliminated from jobs that require employees to work out of physical offices.

The splitting of the constitutional elements of the workplace - work, social and play - as a way to create the purest form of distilled work possible would seem to have its apotheosis in gig economy jobs that have begun to come online over the past few years. In the so-called gig economy the job is work, and work is the job. It should go without saying, but the workplace-as-family has no home in the gig economy.

While jobs have been made play-less over the last half century or so, it's my belief that the social aspect of the office has made work bearable. The British and American versions of the classic TV show 'The Office' make this clear - in a very ironic way to be sure. But just try to imagine what the gig economy equivalent of 'The Office' would look like. If they made it about Uber drivers, for example, well, it'd just be fooking depressing.

And that's kind of the rub, for me personally at least, when it comes to the gig economy and its future prospects. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely think the gig economy is where the overwhelming majority of new jobs will be created heading forward. That said, I think it would be an incredible mistake to simply play forward the trend of the work maximizing and social/play minimizing workplace that originated in and has been propagated throughout the world by the West.

What if, instead, there was a way to bring the social and play elements - without their past problematic baggage that led to their respective minimization and extirpation from the realm of work - back into the gig economy which is the future of work?

What if, amidst the slog of isolating digital work, the gig economy worker could sit down at the equivalent of a digital bar and simultaneously tap into that social connection and lost play?

Furthermore what if that digital social and play facilitates, bolsters and contributes to digital work of that gig economy worker?

I am envisioning something along the lines of a digital weigh station (the evaluation centers of the quintessential 20th century nomadic worker, the trucker) that users will be able to use to verify certain basic or minimum requirements in addition to everyone's favorite local watering hole where digital laborers can connect and have a little fun. And that is exactly what I see Cent positioning itself as, all the while strengthening its vision of allowing anyone to earn money anywhere by providing their knowledge and creativity, Madmen style.

Cent Updates About to Roll Out

We have a new update for everyone^^

It's been a busy week, and the time to roll out updates and new functions is almost here.

I'm really excited about the new functions that will be added today, especially the new logo, ability to tip in app and the social share widget that will make sharing great content from responses possible for the first time.

With each successive update that I've been a part of, I've found that more so than the headline additions or changes, it's the small changes or updates that leave me feeling most satisfied. This time the simple addition of showing lifetime earnings and total number of responses has me super stoked.

There are still a few last minute items to finalize so todays post will end right here. But check back to beta.cent.co in a few short days to catch all the new new [sic] we have for you.

Types of Bounty Posts on Cent

On Cent, despite - or maybe because of - the fact that there is only one bounty smart contract, it is amazing to see the wide range of applications that different users are able to imagine using such a seemingly simple tool.

What's more amazing is that distinct but complementary categories have formed around certain specific and repeatable types of bounty posts.

So far, in a broad general sense, I have sussed out three main categories along with a fourth 'other' type of bounty.

Those three main categories are:

1. Work-based bounties
2. Semi-formal bounties and
3. Playful Bounties

The fourth or other bounty is the traditional 'winner-take-all' bounty, which funnily enough, currently isn't (yet) possible on Cent.

Work-based bounties are bounties that put a premium on compliance and speed of completion with relatively little demand for creativity on the part of the fulfilling party. These bounty posts are looking for some non-trivial number of responses that meet their minimum requirements and are willing to provide a uniform award for each completed response.

A few examples of work-based bounties that have made frequent appearances on Cent include: posts asking Centians to user their referral links and provide proof, follower boosts (i.e. posts that ask Centians to follow them on whatever SNS they are using like Twitter), polls, surveys, and targeted feedback.

One degree removed from the relatively straightforward and joyless work-based bounties are what I call semi-formal bounties. These bounty posts definitely have a target in mind that delineates the range of acceptable feedback, but they provide a higher degree of freedom to the responders to be creative. These bounties work pretty well based on the existing bounty distribution method that Cent employs now: top answers (currently limited to 10) receive a percentage of the bounty that corresponds to the percentage of total up votes they received from users who sorted the responses from best to worst.

Some good examples include the weekly BOTI bounty that asks as many users as possible to submit what they think is the best of the internet from the previous week, as well as general recommendation bounties (e.g. what are some awesome under-the-radar Netflix shows), competitions like the current cryptoground bounty [here], and general idea sourcing bounties. In short, these are bounties that are looking for something where that something is unknown until many other people each show you examples of what you wanted to look for (but didn't know you wanted).

Playful bounties represent pretty much every other bounty on Cent. These bounties have no real clear target response in mind - they simply want responses. And they can be super fun for both the bounty poster and responding user. The current bounty distribution model on Cent works great for these bounties too.

In terms of loose examples, open-ended posts that don't seem to ask for anything (e.g. blog post, rant) and super subjective questions (e.g. what's your favorite 'x'?) fit the bill perfectly.

Now how will the product of Cent develop now that these categories have become apparent? That is the question.

State of the dApps

I tweeted this last night:

The reality is that the state of the dApps, as of June 2018, is still super early days.

Just check out these stats from DappRadar:

The technology underlying dApps (i.e. the entire web3 ecosystem) is just as revolutionary and powerful as David Winer's RSS was for podcasts. A key difference is that the former has attracted billions of dollars in (speculative) investment to push development into warp speed.

So whereas podcasts had to fight an over decade long battle before they became a part of mainstream behavior when they were thrust into the world's conscience by the stratospheric success of 'Serial', dApps should, at least in theory, hit an inflection point much, much sooner.

In 2017, podcasts in the US raked in around $314 Mil or about 86% more than they did in 2016, and are expected to continue growing *all around the world*.

Despite podcasts and the revenue they are generating representing a fraction of the $17.6 Bil that commercial radio raked in over the same period, they are an unstoppable force whose creative and experimental potential is only just beginning to be realized.

For me the semi-centralized dApp Cent is like Adam Curry's podcast in 2004. It's so different from what came before it, but it's familiar enough to not to be alienating, and it can only work on top of this brand new technology. It's a POC for dApps in general, and is something that could become something much bigger.

dApps are still early days. To know that and still see their potential though could make all the difference in a year or so...🚀

Vacation Planning

Today will be spent getting any last minute supplies needed for a little summer vacation my wife and I will be taking for a week starting Monday over in Japan.

I'm super excited.

For me at least one of the joys of traveling is the plane ride to and from wherever the destination is, especially when you can listen to music along the way.

It's been my experience that certain songs just sound better on planes. That's why I have a 'flying playlist' where I've added songs throughout the years that are awesome to listen to in-flight.

But I'm looking to add to that playlist, so I posted a bounty on Cent asking fellow Centians what their favorite songs to listen to while flying are. If you have some songs, go [here] and leave me your recommendations and help me sort up the best reaponsea so far. It'll be worth your while since you'll be getting paid.

Delight

There probably isn't a more overused word in the world of tech startups than the word 'delight' and all of its derivatives. And for good reason; if users aren't delighted using your product you will absolutely fail.

But what is delight?

There are a few products that I remember experiencing delight when I first used them: Nintendo NES, Gameboy, Tomegotchi, iPod Touch Mini, Facebook, Kakao Talk, avc.com, Twitter, Instagram, and most recently Cent.

The delight I experienced when I used those products could be boiled down to three elements: a laugh, a smile and a good feeling.

Each person will express these three elements in their own unique way - and completely different elements may constitute their own experiences of delight - but one thing is for sure, it can't be faked.

Fake delight will sustain you a couple days, weeks or maybe a month max. Genuine delight on the other hand, that shit is like rocket fuel. Months, years even in some spectacular instances, will seem to fly by while you continue to be delighted.

If you are working in a company that makes something that delights its users, hang on tight. And if you're worried that maybe you're the only one who is experiencing delight, make sure you distill the elements of your delight from the product down and then optimize and market for that/those elements relentlessly.

Video of the Week No.1 - CryptoKitties & Fred Wilson

I don't normally watch a lot of Youtube, so when I do watch something on Youtube (that's not a music video) that almost certainly means it's share-worthy.

Over the past week I was daily checking Youtube to see if the talks from Token Summit III had been re-broadcast yet. They were finally released yesterday, including the talk I have been most eager to watch: Where CryptoKitties Are Going, a talk between Fred Wilson (USV) and Dieter Shirley (Crypto Kitties).

They discussed all things NFTs (non-fungible tokens), the state of development on Ethereum, and of course CryptoKitties. It was a great talk and is indeed share-worthy. You can check out the full chat here.