In this episode of Ventures, I sit down with Yannick Folla (https://twitter.com/y_folla) to discuss an introduction to Web 3 for product managers looking to get quickly up to speed to add value to the Web 3 ecosystem. We discuss practical aspects of how to build with DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, decentralized patterns, specific networks, layer 1 vs. layer 2 technologies, and more. We also take specific product development examples within Figment.io’s business and use those as teaching opportunities for a broad audience.

You can watch this episode below or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts (search for “Ventures”).

2:20 - Yannick’s background and story into the Web 3 world, joining Figment, and building products.

5:53 - Assuming the audience is people who already have a basic background of blockchains (if not, check out background reading/listening at https://satchel.works/@wclittle/blockchains) , let’s start with helping Web 3 PMs understand how Figment makes money.

11:08 - Starting with Figment’s staking service, with the products of the staking dashboard and Hubble (https://hubble.figment.io/ ), how did Yannick and team approach building the products for the audiences they serve?

13:24 - Product evolution/iteration nuances of Hubble

14:40 - DataHub (https://figment.io/datahub/) - similar to Heroku for Web 3 - how to educate a Web 3 PM in the context of how Yannick and team have built DataHub

18:39 - User experience needs/opportunities that drove the development of DataHub

20:22 - Figment Learn (https://learn.figment.io/) - how is this available to help train Web 3 PMs and the developers that would be on teams to build dApps?

22:50 - What are folks going to first learn when going through Figment Learn (APIs, Balances, querying, creating a wallet, and posting a transaction)

25:04 - Running through an example of doing a decentralized version of Twitter, how would a Web 3 PM need to restructure their thinking to build such an application?

28:30 - Homework for primitives for Web 3. DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, https://a16z.com/2018/02/10/crypto-readings-resources/ // https://www.matthewball.vc/the-metaverse-primer // Web 3 is coming up to it’s “iPhone moment” and Yannick believes it’s going to be intricately related to the metaverse

31:03 - Aspects/definitions of Web 3 (metaverse, semantic web, blockchains/decentralization). Might be a 4th, a new generation of Internet where the value creators are the owners and capture the value.

32:09 - For a history lesson, why did the original wave of people attempting to decentralize existing Web 2 platforms fail?

34:03 - Decentralized governance - What do Web 3 PM need to know about decentralization/DAOs from a philosophical and practical approach? Multiple different types of DAOs and use cases. Thinking of subreddits as DAOs.

36:34 - What are the DAOs built on? How can someone start a DAO? (Most are on ethereum but gas fees are quite high, which is a problem). // Some are being built on Layer 2 (e.g. Polygon). NEAR blockchain has a focus on DAOs (still early). Aragon on Polygon https://blog.polygon.technology/aragon-brings-dao-creation-management-to-polygon/

37:59 - is this the same Aragon from 3-4 years ago? (Yes) Interesting to see which projects survived and/or pivoted. Anything else that PMs need to know about DAOs? Different token models out there. It’s worth exploring a few different DAOs.

40:28 - Let’s talk about DeFi and NFTs. What are the best tools? Where can people learn more? Look at Uniswap (https://uniswap.org/), Aave (https://aave.com/), and YFI (https://www.kraken.com/en-us/learn/what-is-yearn-finance-yfi // https://yearn.finance/ ) // For NFTs, good place to start is https://a16z.com/2021/04/02/nfts-readings-resources/ 

44:17 - How hard is it to spin up an NFT club?

46:00 - NFT types (ERC 721 & 1151)

46:39 - Anything else for Yannick to add to the conversation? Keep learning. Be active on Twitter (big source of knowledge).

47:43 - Where can people find Yannick online to continue the conversation? https://twitter.com/y_folla