Coordination is the next META ✨

after 3 years working in the web3 ecosystem as a hobbyist (2015-2017) & 5 years working in the web3 ecosystem professionally (2017-2022), i’ve seen a lot of projects rise & fall.

increasingly, i think that an important meta belongs to the ecosystems that are best at coordinating/funding their public goods.

let me break that down:

Meta can be used as an acronym for “most effective tactics available,” and calling something “meta” means that it’s an effective way to achieve the goal of the game, whether it’s to beat other players or beat the game itself. [source]

public goods are goods that are non-excludable and non-rivalrous to ecosystem participants.

in a digital ecosystem, open source software, education, security, are all forms of intellectual public goods. softer things like “vibes”, good onboarding, or otherwise positive sum cultures, are cultural public goods.

so when I say the “meta” belongs to the ecosystem that is best at coordinating its public goods across social distance, what i mean is “coordinating your ecosystems public goods is an effective tactic for creating value, which leads to winning in market”.

in uncoordinated ecosystems, there is no incentive to work on public goods, so agentic actors only have a rational incentive to create things they can personally profit from. a social norm is established that people work only in their own self interest, which creates a vicious cycle which is hard to unwind… which leads to a tragedy of the commons where public goods are not available or if they are available, they are not well-maintained.

in highly-coordinated ecosystems, the opposite is true - there are incentives to work on public goods, so agentic actors have a rational incentive to create public goods. a social norm is established that people work in each others interest, which creates a virtuous cycle. which means that there will be more well-maintained public goods created.

why hasn’t anyone solved this problem?

the thorny problem is that public goods do not have “customers” like private goods do, so there is not a effective + scalable mechanism for coordinating funding to the public goods that are good (but not the bad ones).

with web3 era coordination tools i think that all changes.

which produces a new meta.

i think that this meta matters a lot in highly competitive ecosystems.

  • if you’re trying to build a better NFT ecosystem, you’ll need people to work on your ecosystems public goods.
  • if you’re trying to build a L1 ecosystem, you’ll need people to coordinate the delivery of your ecosystems public goods.
  • if you’re trying to build a L2 ecosystem, you’ll need people to coordinate the delivery o your ecosystems public goods.
  • if you’re trying to build a DAO ecosystem, you’ll need people to coordinate the delivery o your ecosystems public goods.
  • if you’re trying to build a media ecosystem, you’ll need people to coordinate the delivery of your ecosystems public goods.
  • if you’re trying to build a DEFI ecosystem, you’ll need people to coordinate the delivery of your ecosystems public goods.
  • if you’re trying to build an ecosystem of any type, you’ll need people to coordinate the delivery of your ecosystems public goods.

i’m bullish on coordination. i’m bullish on public goods. i’m bullish on web3 era tools that coordinate funding to public goods.

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further reading:

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