The old adage “if you can’t beat them, join them” has definitely been a theme over the past 18 months. As decentralized technologies continue to be built in an unstoppable distributed way, big money is trying to find ways to get involved. Or at least ways to not have their lunches taken from them over the next several years.
So now that we’re seeing venture capital firms acknowledging the movement and making investments into the space, it remains to be seen how capitalistic mentalities will collide with TRUE decentralization After all, if independent developers want the purest form of empowerment, they will keep building systems in a completely distributed fashion. This means no money from anyone can intercept the path they’re on.
That said, there are still plenty of ways for existing tech companies to play nice in the sandbox and build upon all of the innovation.
For starters, we’ve already seen Jack Dorsey’s perspective when he was with Twitter. Twitter is already a user-based idea chamber. Supporting users by letting them fully own their content and transact on the blockchain seems like a natural progression.
Similarly, I believe Kickstarter is now at the forefront as well. Last month, Kickstarter announced the creation of a protocol organization that will develop a web3 protocol for the crowdfunding of creative projects.
That’s exactly what web3 needs and is a perfect fit for Kickstarter to mold into.
The question on everyone’s mind, though, is how do these companies monetize when they transform in this way? I’m sure I’ll write a separate post about that in the coming days.