Why technology?
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Greetings all,
In this week’s episode of Ventures, my guests Jesse Bryan (https://twitter.com/JesseBryan), Mike Anderson (https://twitter.com/mikeyanderson) and I discuss updates about their startup, Alphi (https://alphi.xyz). We talk about why digital asset ownership is important, how/why Alphi is helping to organize information in the metaverse, how/why to contribute, and how/why to participate in their Leadership Academy to level up your skills in the Web3 space.
Technology
Throughout all of human history, there have been massive struggles with survival, mainly via war, famine, and disease.
At best, “technology” - for most of the world - has helped us live longer, healthier, happier, and more productive lives.
From the invention of fire to the invention of the Internet, however, tech has always been used in parallel for unhelpful purposes. Fire burns down people’s houses. Guns kill innocent people. And the Internet spreads crime, hate, and mental health issues.
When I’m faced with conversations about “Why NFTs?”, I find myself coming back to the root question: “Why technology?”
Well - hopefully - as I state above, technology helps us live longer, healthier, happier, and more productive lives. This is “why” we invent, build, and spread technology.
Now, an “NFT” is just a unique (non-fungible) token on a blockchain. It’s technology. People right now are using it mainly for art collections and group membership, but soon your favorite loyalty program, real estate transaction, physical good, concert ticket, restaurant table, video game item, etc… will leverage NFTs as their underlying infrastructure/technology layer.
So - to put it another way - NFTs are coming whether we like it ‘em or not.
Now - hopefully - there will be entrepreneurs who use this technology for good. And, we’ll need a trusted source of information to help us determine what is good and what isn’t.
This is where Alphi comes in. I’ve invested in this startup not only because I believe in the founders and the type of company they will build, but I believe that for value creators around the world to gain access to their (buying) audience, we are going to need more helpful “Do your own research” (DYOR) sites that the LLMs and search bots will pull information from.
The reason why ChatGPT and Google can’t compete with Alphi is because Alphi’s information comes from behind closed doors to bots. It’s humans that will need to convey this information (this “Alpha”), and be sufficiently incentivized to do so.
Thus, what is really born here is a new business model for the Internet (Web3). How can we incentivize humans to produce helpful communal information AND get paid in money and status for it? Well, the answer is a new form of loyalty program that NFTs enable. When you gain “XP” in Alphi, this gives you access to all kinds of perks, including future NFTs that are a part of Alphi’s own lore/collections.
I predict we’ll see this model applied to many other areas, including science, politics, religion, sports, etc… (basically anywhere that Googlebot can’t easily access, but where people in a group/community are willing to share information with everyone else).
Have a great rest of your week!
~Will