Tateando a próxima grande onda
Um dos VCs que respeito, Fred Wilson, escreveu recentemente sobre a “consumer opportunity” em crypto.
Ele acha que essa oportunidade vai ser maior do que os atuais casos de uso de crypto — isto é, maior do que trading especulativo e DeFi:
We’ve known for a while that crypto is the next big tech architecture. We’ve known that once the wave breaks on the shore, there will be enormous opportunities unleashed. Like the web. Like mobile. Like the PC.
But what has been hard to see is the opening. It wasn’t trading/speculating, although that has been huge. [...] It wasn’t DeFi, although that has also been huge.
What we have been looking for is the consumer opportunity to emerge. Until you have billions of consumers around the world using a technology, you don’t have a new wave to ride.
No mesmo post, ele explica de onde acredita que consumer crypto vai eventualmente emergir:
I’ve always thought the opening would be at the intersection of gaming, online communities, and social networks. Why? Because those are the mainstream consumer experiences where geeks tend to be the first adopters.
Mas como vencer os incumbents super poderosos em gaming e redes sociais?
Para ilustrar como ele acha que isso vai se desenrolar, ele traçou uma analogia com futebol americano. Seria preciso uma “abertura” e, segundo ele, essa abertura estaria surgindo em torno dos famigerados NFTs:
But it is hard to take on the existing gaming companies with a new architecture. The user experience around new stuff always sucks and who wants to play a game with a shitty UI? It is also hard to take on the existing social nets. Why would someone with a million followers on Instagram or TikTok or Twitter leave those behind for a new social net? So the existing incumbents are the defensive line. They look impenetrable. Until they aren’t. That’s when the opening emerges.
The opening is emerging around NFT experiences, [...] But not the NFTs that Sothebys sells for $69mm. Not even the CryptoPunk that sells for $7.5mm. But when a party emerges online that anyone is invited to attend and the 500 person group picks up a punk with a party hat and they all change their social network avatar to this, well that got my attention.
PartyBid is cool. [...] TopShot is cool. And so is Axie. And so is the Bored Ape Yacht Club. But what is cooler is that these NFT experiences are operating at the interaction of gaming, communities, and social nets. And they are not taking on any of the incumbents directly. They are building on top of them all.
Esse exemplo do PartyBid ressoa bastante com os supostos “movimentos grassroots” que Chris Dixon havia mencionado em julho — e sobre os quais escrevi em meu post de ontem, O que NFTs teriam de especial?.
Fred Wilson, no entanto, faz questão de deixar claro que ele não acha que NFTs são the next big thing. O que ele acha que é próxima grande coisa parece estar começando em torno de NFTs:
I am not saying NFTs are the next big thing. I am saying that consumer experiences built on a crypto stack are the next big thing. I am saying that NFT experiences are showing the way. They are the left tackle that you can run behind into the opening. Where enormous opportunity exists.
Wilson parece mesmo convencido de que crypto permitirá a ascensão de algo além da especulação desenfreada.
Se isso vai mesmo se desenrolar ao longo próximos anos, como será?
Uma pista é como Chris Dixon articulou em um post em fevereiro deste ano:
NFTs are still early, and will evolve. Their utility will increase as digital experiences are built around them, including marketplaces, social networks, showcases, games, and virtual worlds. It’s also likely that other consumer-facing crypto products emerge that pair with NFTs. Modern video games like Fortnite contain sophisticated economies that mix fungible tokens like V-Bucks with NFTs/virtual goods like skins. Someday every internet community might have its own micro-economy, including NFTs and fungible tokens that users can use, own, and collect.
