What makes a brand a web3 brand?

What makes a brand… a web3 brand?

Is it when there’s an NFT? No. Solana is a web3 brand and has no NFT. Plus, plenty of NFT projects are insular, non-collaborative, and ‘web2 brands in web3 clothing’.

Is it when it has any kind of on-chain asset? No. The Matrix made an NFT (remember?) and The Matrix is not a web3 brand.

Is it when it collaborates with / builds on other brands? Close! But no. OpenSea is a platform… but so is AWS. Metamask brings lots of experiences together… but so does Super Smash Bros.

So what makes a brand a web3 brand?

Independent, collaborative force-multipliers.

I’ll explain…

AWS (Amazon Web Services) brings things together linearly. It unlocks new experiences, but only with itself, and not peers at the same layer.

Super Smash Bros does the same thing, but on top. It unlocks new experiences, but only atop its own infrastructure, and only at the time of launch.

Facebook’s metaverse has the same problem. Meta’s plan for the metaverse isn’t much more ‘web3’ in spirit than Super Smash Bros is.

For me, ‘web3’ means independent movement around infrastructure layer and experience layer. Your assets can bridge base layers and collaborate among top layers at will. And the brands that make them are fiercely open to inclusive collaboration.

A web3 brand understands that we’re stronger together than apart… That having freedom of movement around the aforementioned grid makes every block better… That it’s not your brand vs my brand. It’s your brand multiplied by mine, multiplied by tomorrow.

That’s the approach I’m taking to the web3 brand I’m involved in building right now.

I’m excited to share more about it with you.

And I hope more web3 brands embody the spirit of what web3 is capable of. For brands, for people, and for the change we each seek to make.