The Web3 Playbook: Using Token Incentives to Bootstrap New Networks
The killer app of the internet is networks. The web and email are networks. Social apps like Instagram and Twitter are networks. Marketplaces like Uber and Airbnb are networks. Networks get more valuable with more participants, which is great when they are at scale, but cuts the other way when starting out. This is the bootstrapping problem. In the Web2 era, overcoming the bootstrapping problem meant heroic entrepreneurial efforts, plus in many cases spending lots of money on sales and marketing. Because bootstrapping networks is so hard, it’s likely that there are many networks that should exist — that would improve our collective well-being — but don’t because no one has figured out how to bootstrap them.