The crypto industry faces numerous challenges from different sources. Whether it's government, venture capitalists, or the old guard, there will always be someone telling us that we're wasting our time.
The recent saga involves Jack Dorsey and the old guard virtually shitting on Web 3 through their tweets. The message has caught like wildfire, and many others are weighing in.
It's a rather interesting thing to behold, as, in most cases in life, we have people who made their wealth through something cast aspersions because others might.
I guess from Jack's point of view, it's rather hypocritical for Web 3 to benefit from the activities of venture capitalists. However, while I think that's also hypocritical from him, I think he's a long way off the truth.
On the surface
In an interesting situation, we have Jack and other Web 2 billionaires claiming web 3 is just the venture capitalists' plaything.
In his own right, he's right and I sure as hell can't teach him about money. However, he's speaking as an outsider.
Venture capitalists will always do their thing and that's normal. They'll throw money at opportunities and so would I, if I had the means.
This doesn't take anything away from the fact that web 3 is about the community and as Justin Sun learned, you can't buy a community.
Just fork off
Any community that can be bought wasn't a community in the first place. You can call it anything you like but that wasn't a community.
Steem, for example, proved this point effortlessly when threatened. The community simply forked away the threat and now we're better than ever.
The bond that exists within the community goes beyond the money and stakes we hold. The bond is an abstract rooted in our minds, branching into various projects that feeds off the center and at the same time, nourish the center.
Naturally, there will be competing and jostling for position within the community but the ironic part is that, as long as the competition is healthy, at the end of the day, the community still wins.
Do you even DAO bro?
To understand what DAOs mean to a community, you can take a look at what we have on Hive. It's not a perfect system but it's growing and with time, things will get better.
Hive's DAO is particularly important to this conversation because of what it represents, particularly in wake of the hotile takeover that we fought off.
In the not-so-distant past, we had what we could refer to as a venture capitalist of sorts in Justin Sun try to "by off the community". In his bid to take control of what was then the biggest and most popular crypto community, Steem, he took the role of a venture capitalist.
I must admit, I was somewhat swayed by his actions, especially as he started putting Steemit on TV. However, his actions were against the community because instead of claiming ownership of his stake alone(Steemit stake), he claimed ownership of the community.
I'm not going to lie, it took me a while to catch up to reality. However, many who already knew the character that is Justin Sun sprung to action and so the battle of stakes began.
Going toe to toe with a billionaire in a money battle wasn't easy but at the end of the day, the community emerged victorious, as his stake was eventually forked out and then Hive was born.
The stake Justin Sun bought was the pre-mined steem or founders stake, if you may. Think of it as the creators rewarding themselves for creating the community.
After the fork, all that stake was still on Hive, because the transition to hive was on a 1:1 ratio of Steem to Hive. However, that pre-mined stake now resides in the DAO, where we vote on proposals to access it.
We learned from that debacle and introduced some fail-safe mechanisms to prevent repetition.
Are there VCs among us?
This brings me to the point of the conversation and one that Jack fails to understand. Hive, as an example, is a community that can't be the plaything of any venture capitalist because they'll just get forked off.
In the community, we have actual millionaires and probably some billionaires playing their part and doing the best they can with their stake. They don't really have a choice because there's a system in place to ensure the community doesn't get overrun.
So while we could call them sleeper VC agents, that's all they'll ever be. So, yes, Jack is right, VCs have vetted interest in Web 3 platforms because VCs can tell that this is the future of the internet and they want to front-run the rest of the world.
However, communities are already aware of this, and as the Steem hostile takeover saga and Hive blockchain has taught everyone, communities will be fine in the long run. In fact, all the VCs will do is buy coins from the market and all that money goes straight back into the hands of the community. The house always wins.
Contact & Support
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