Kyle Tut is a cowboy who wrangles data on the frontiers of web3. The team at Pinata
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Blockchain Origins
Time travel with Jon Woodard! Founded in 1987, Wolfram Research is one of the world’s most respected computer, web, and cloud software companies, as well as, a powerhouse of scientific, mathematical, and technical innovation. Bask in the nerdy of this discussion on web3, blockchain, DeFi, NFTs, and artificial intelligence.
Jon started his work with Wolfram Alpha, helped establish Wolfram Blockchain Labs, and with new Wolfram integrations with Open AI, is now helping to active statistical, conversational AI into everything. He is also a generous Techstars mentor and is excited to continue supporting more innovators building tomorrow’s technology, today.
Caffeinated Contribution
Organizational Shift
DAOs are a revolutionary way for connected humans to organize, coordinate, and pool resources without the need for centralized authorities or intermediaries.
These community-led groups transparently establish operating agreements and manage a shared treasury. By leveraging smart contracts, all decisions made by a DAO (“Decentralized Autonomous Organization”) are recorded on an immutable blockchain and governance tokens are used for gathering consensus.
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This caffeinated contribution was written by Alex Myers. This certified futurist is a DAO Agility Coach at Aragon, a web3 platform for building DAOs on open-source infrastructure with governance plugins. Alex is also a web3dsm organizer who believes the more we teach, the more we learn.
There are over 11,000 DAO’s in operation, encompassing $11B+ in treasuries, varying widely in size, scope, and AUM (“assets under management”). All of DeFi utilizes DAOs to govern their treasuries, yet many are simply small groups of like-minded individuals who want to quickly gather, pool capital, and make decisions.
DAOs, like companies, come in many forms. Venture funds, investment groups, grant committees, philanthropy, media, and more. Here are the world’s largest DAOs and here are different types of DAOs.
Besides a wallet and owning cryptocurrency, no technical skills are required to create a DAO. Several no-code operating systems (Aragon, Tally, Colony, DAOHaus, and others) enable anyone to create a DAO in minutes by simply selecting governance capabilities, funding options, and voting requirements. Given many DAO operating systems are open-source, custom smart contracts and powerful plugins can add tailored functionality without additional cost as well.
To join a DAO, new members go through an onboarding process. Once confirmed, members can be given a digit asset, such as an NFT, to verify the details of their participation. Members are then granted access to a communication tool (like Discord, Telegram, or Slack) to collaborate with other members as decisions are made on which projects to pursue.
DAOs are different from traditional companies in that there is no hierarchy and decision-making is done through pre-set protocols and smart contracts. This decentralizes power and allows for more operational versatility. Members can work from anywhere and focus on work management rather than people management. Contributors can work in multiple DAOs and choose to remain anonymous or more identifiable within the group.
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Cheers to this web3 series brewing on the future of how we connect, communicate, and collaborate online!
As hype cycles and funding began to deteriorate in 2022, due to (mostly) macroeconomic forces, DAOs realized that community over performance was unsustainable. Today, sustainable DAOs utilize battle-hardened methodologies like Agile and KPIs to enhance coordination and productivity, while still maintaining a sense of community.
While all DAOs use crypto-assets to establish themselves, the size and scale of a DAO can impact its operations. Larger DAOs require more planning and coordination around governance optimization, commonly breaking into smaller, goal-oriented teams to define their own budget proposals, objectives, and success metrics. Since treasuries are often much more significant, DAOs members expect historical performance and analytics before voting to allocate funding.
DAOs are built on open, borderless, neutral, and censorship-resistant blockchains. This distribution is paradigm-shifting and a big reason for DAO growth. However, such dispersion also exposes DAOs to legal ambiguity. Since DAOs aren’t beholden to country-specific laws backed by traditional business structures (LLC’s, S-corps, C-corps, etc.), they must consider incorporation to minimize liability for members. Smaller DAOs with reduced financial capital are not as complex and more nimble, which allows them to define budgets, proposals, and goals with less effort.
Depending on the size, composition, ongoing activity, and how a treasury is funded (seed funding, ICOs, airdrops, grants, etc.), taxation and regulatory compliance is another presiding element for DAOs. This is especially true if a DAO is generating revenue by charging fees and distributing them back to token holders, as they could be redefined as securities and create taxable events. In short, the larger a DAO becomes, the more professional legal support, financial strategy, administrative attention, and overall leadership is required.
As we consider the future of work, DAOs have the potential to revolutionize the way organizations are structured and operated. DAOs re-imagine human coordination to be more equitable and transparent. With exponentially improving blockchain technology, alongside network effects, joining and contributing to DAOs will become a self-sustaining cycle of growth. As the world digitizes and becomes more decentralized, DAOs are poised to become a powerful force for change, disrupting traditional institutions and fostering a new era of innovation.
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You’re now ahead of the curve! Welcome to Web3 is a shareable reference and follow the Web3 tag for more reflections flavored in futurism.
Caffeinated Contribution
Non-Fungible Fabric
Ownership is a fundamental principle of web3. NFTs (“non-fungible tokens”) are digital assets supported by smart contracts that connect to a blockchain. Each NFT is unique, which allows code to autonomously apply, track, and transfer digital signatures and verifiable ownership.
With cryptocurrency supporting the economy of web3, NFTs can be thought of as property within this space. Leveraging the immutable nature of a blockchain, NFTs allow anyone to instantly verify authenticity or trace provenance through the history of ownership.
Extra Shot
This caffeinated contribution was written by Will Schneller. This artist turned founder, graduated from Iowa State University and is now an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Drake University. As a curious creator, volunteer organizer for web3dsm, and owner of Totality – #14, Will has been exploring web3, AI, and how community brings it all together.
The hype of Beeple’s $69M NFT sale led to an explosion of interest in 2021, but the first NFT-like implementation can be traced back to Bitcoin’s Colored Coins Project proposed, in-part, by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Butrin. Within this 2013 project, the process of making something distinct, like a fungible Bitcoin, was scrutinized by adding metadata into a coin. Smart contracts that include trackable metadata has become a critical component of NFTs. The most common standard for representing ownership of non-fungible tokens, is ERC-721, which has been battle-tested with the most recognizable NFT collections and is continually being refined.
There are two main misconceptions with NFTs. The first is that an NFT is only digital art. This overlooks one of the most powerful attributes of NFTs — flexibility. NFTs are web3 primitives that can represent nearly anything. They allow us to weave together a future that removes the barriers between the physical and digital worlds. The second is that an NFT is only a URL. While some NFTs use generative algorithms to write an image or other types of data directly to a blockchain, most NFTs reduce computational costs (which translates into higher gas fees) by innovating around the theory of ordinals or hosting larger elements of the asset on a decentralized storage system. The token itself goes beyond simply being a pointer and acts as an immutable record of ownership on a decentralized ledger. In an environment where code is law, the entire network recognizes and enforces your ownership via consensus.
Each NFT has no exact equivalent, but they can still evolve. How a token is organized within a collection, where it’s created, who collectively governs the network, and what future states may unfold, gives each NFT its own life cycle.
Before creation, NFTs are often organized into collections, regardless of how many tokens are minted. A blend of “token” and “economics”, tokenomics determine issuance, supply, and any mechanisms that will either reduce supply or incentivize holding. Since NFTs are immutable, a collection’s tokenomics should be carefully considered. Testnets allow for experimentation in the development stage, which aids in NFT development. While coding smart contracts directly into a blockchain is the most powerful, cost efficient, and flexible way to create NFTs, platforms like OpenSea, Thirdweb, Crossmint, and Manifold aspire to make NFT management more accessible.
To begin life on a blockchain, an NFT first needs to be minted. During this creation process, smart contract functions are executed. This assigns token IDs from the collection and may perform metadata randomization before broadcasting the ownership record over the blockchain. Mints can be public, or limited to allow lists. To reduce the potential for scams, allow lists (also called “whitelists”) collect, prioritize, and manage interest using wallet addresses from potential NFT buyers. The release of NFTs within a collection can be done all at once, scheduled over time, or perpetually open. Highly anticipated collections can cause congestion on a network, creating gas wars in which buyers can push their transactions to the front of the queue by paying higher fees.
Once minted, NFTs can be exchanged in many ways. They can be bought and sold using cryptocurrency on marketplaces like OpenSea, Blur, SuperRare, or Foundation. Marketplaces provide key infrastructure which, in addition to facilitating trade, aids in collection discovery. They can also be transferred via an airdrop, which is when NFTs are gifted into a digital wallet. Airdrops provide a creative way to share assets with each other, with senders usually paying any gas fee.
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Pay close attention when using your wallet to complete signature requests. Signing a malicious smart contract can grant token approvals for all assets in a wallet. One common hack is packaged in NFT airdrops. If you receive an unknown NFT in your wallet, do not interact, transfer, or sell it as these actions can activate unwanted access. There are many stories of epic heists, so do your research and stay vigilant.
Once acquired, you’ll receive the NFT at your wallet address. Despite the token appearing in a wallet, it’s not really in your wallet; your wallet is like a web browser for the blockchain. Using a wallet address, you can see NFTs you own, and due to the transparent nature of public blockchains, you can also see other people’s collections.
While creator compensation and basic commerce has been the most publicized aspects of NFTs, with over $40B in transaction volume in 2021 alone, there are also ways to extend the life cycle of NFTs. Concepts like “burning”, and “staking” create extensions to what an NFT can become. When an NFT is burned, it’s sent to a null address for which nobody has the private key. Burned tokens are effectively removed from circulation and reduce the initial collection’s supply. This action can support the tokenomics of a project, while also adding depth to ownership within an NFT collection. Another concept is staking, or the act of locking an NFT in a specialized contract that prohibits transactions. Staking also reduces the circulating supply, but does not permanently reduce the size of the collection, as an owner can reclaim the token. Staking is often used as a way to incentivize holding for long periods of time and often yields rewards.
Alright, we’ve covered what an NFT is and how they work. Let’s pour into some current applications of NFTs, such as digital art, curating collectables, celebrating ownership within video games, administering membership benefits, managing events, enhancing security, and even raising financial capital for a new business.
To date, digital art has emerged as the most common use of NFTs. Artists can now monetize their work, push creative boundaries, and even earn royalties on secondary sales. Platform take rates have thankfully plummeted, which further extends the runway for artists to stay creative. Art buyers also appreciate fewer intermediaries, verifiable provenance, and new ways to connect with the creator. Along with access to art, NFTs can also help identify authenticity alongside the dynamic rise of machine learning and generative AI.
Collectables are also being enhanced with NFTs. Sports memorabilia, trading cards, toys, clothing, accessories, or classic cars can now be supplemented with digital assets that go further than a linked QR code. NFTs can add discoverability, more ways to socially trade with fellow collectors, and have enabled creative ways to digitally interact with physical items. For example, imagine buying a fresh pair of shoes that come with an NFT. Whether you decide to wear this prized possession IRL or not, using the connected NFT, your upgraded character can now rock these collectable kicks in your favorite video game. This is just an example, but the convergence of online status and identity makes NFTs a prime way to create communities where people feel a sense of belonging.
Speaking of gaming, NFTs provide a natural fit for gamers to celebrate ownership and authority in video games. Currently, in-game items, whether consumable or cosmetic, are effectively rented by the players. If a game developer shuts down the servers, these treasured items would vanish. In a web3 world, NFTs would support more lasting ownership. A few early examples are blockchain-based games like Cryptokitties and Axie Infinity, but consider when in-game items in Minecraft, Fortnite, or Call of Duty, are NFTs that can be transferred between players and different games. Web3 is inherently permissionless and interoperable, so innovative tools and conventions need to be created to foster these harmonious initiatives. While there’s more to be done, we are seeing more trust-minimizing technologies championed by industry leaders like Yuga Labs and Polygon, who are focused on unlocking such compatibility at a fundamental level.
Beyond entertainment, NFTs offer a decentralized method to managing memberships and associated benefits. A few examples include NFTs that grant access to events with commemorative NFTs, such as POAPs, serving as artifacts to mark the moment. Like a ticket, NFT ownership can also grant access to communication platforms like Discord, decentralized autonomous organizations (“DAOs”), and commercial copyright licenses, enabling token holders to create products or services with built-in network effects. Founders can build real-time brand equity in a crowdsourced startup and established corporations like Starbucks, Lowe’s, and Reddit are inventing new ways to add value, enhance security, and deepen brand loyalty using NFTs.
If we accept that our world is becoming increasingly digitized, there’s a natural fit for NFTs to enhance products, services, and verifiable value. In the neon future, it’s not crazy to think NFTs may soon power simple assets like concert tickets, but also critical belongings such as birth certificates, college diplomas, real estate titles, and more. As web3 matures, the challenges of digital money, property, ownership, and commerce may introduce new barriers, but mainstream adoption into more advanced economic constructs can seamlessly reshape today’s barriers into tomorrow’s non-fungible future.
Brewed From Within
Welcome to Web3
Back in the 1990s, we were dialing up and waiting on snail mail to avoid paying for every minute of access to the world wide web. This early version of the internet was built by developers and primarily delivered content in one direction. Websites were static and really only available for people to read. This read-only experience can be thought of as web1.
By 2005, most business owners had computers and had started to see the value of having a website. The ability to read content on the internet remained, but an option to write into cyberspace introduced dynamic websites where content could be updated. Bulletin boards, e-commerce, and social media also emerged. With the expanding capability to read and write online, anyone could share content without knowing how to code. This stage of the internet with read+write can be thought of as web2.
Within web2, supercomputers landed in our hands. This social integration with machines accelerated access worldwide and ushered in our connected era.
While such affinity allows us all to do more with less, immense power (and liability) was earned by big tech companies that controlled the world’s data. A dependency on convenience fed these web2 giants, which offered free access in exchange for more data. Big tech boomed through 2020, but trust wilted as humans became the product.
Investors demanding profit from big tech shifted ideals away from attraction and more toward extraction.
Tech giants became gatekeepers and left a stalling world of users feeling dispensable and disenfranchised. The internet had linked our planet, but power had become centralized.
Web3 is an umbrella term that describes the future of how we will continue to connect, communicate, and collaborate online. Guided by principles that suggest the internet is best when it’s decentralized, web3 technologies strive to be transparent, distributed, permissionless, proportionate, and verifiable. If web1 was read-only and web2 was read+write, web3 can be thought of as read+write+own.
What does it mean to own your online experience? Instead of another profile controlled by an individual company, we now traverse cyberspace with our own digital backpacks. Your digital assets are personalized, verified, and shared within any online environment, but privacy, content, and audience remain contained. As we move throughout the internet, our digital presence sticks with us instead of being lost on yet another centralized server. Enhanced cyber hygiene is needed when we own more of the experience online, but this paradigm shift returns ownership to the people who make cyberspace special.
As with anything new, this frontier brought fear, confusion, bad actors, and strange projects that felt like a prank. The challenges of building into the unknown suppressed mainstream growth, but this is how adoption curves work. Onboarding remained wonky, good ideas failed, AI burst back onto the scene, and the world had gotten comfortable with web2. Considerable progress came from traditional tools, and the growing pains of web3 led to an intermediate stage. Web2.5 was needed to move people through new layers of understanding. It took time, but winners made the experience feel like web2, with sufficiently decentralized technologies under the hood.
Over time, experimentation has led to more platforms that allow users to retain ownership as they move throughout cyberspace. Whether this is the first time you’ve heard of web3 or you’re a crusader leading the charge, pour another cup of curiosity and let’s introduce a few common terms that will make this nerdy narrative more approachable.
Decentralization – Sufficiently transitioning from single authorities to proportionately deliver verifiable ownership, access, control, transparency, communication, and governance to many stakeholders.
Blockchains – Decentralized immutable systems that record transactions with transparent logs on a dynamic ledger. There are private and public blockchains with different interfacing layers. Transaction fees cover the costs of the computing, electricity, and verification required to interact onchain.
DeFi – Acronym for decentralized finance, which weaves cryptocurrency into the existing financial industry.
Cryptology – The study of code. Within this context, cryptology supports security through cryptography. A theoretical debate is how this form of digital security will hold as quantum computing continues to mature.
Cryptocurrency – Mechanized money. Fungible assets used to support economies and immutable transactions between stakeholders online. In 2026, there are countless cryptocurrencies that total ~$4T in market capitalization, with Bitcoin maintaining the largest market cap (~$2T).
Smart Contract – Code-based agreement that establishes terms for how a transaction is executed for stakeholders involved. Like a bridge from a blockchain to digital assets, smart contracts also frame automated governance, arbitration procedures, and more.
Dapp – Acronym for decentralized application. Like other apps, but a Dapp lives on a decentralized network that uses wallets (versus profiles on a corporate network) to combine the user interface with an individual smart contract, which connects to dynamic data onchain.
NFT – Acronym for non-fungible tokens. NFTs are digital assets that represent ownership. Each NFT has a smart contract that then connects it to a blockchain. These smart contracts apply, transfer, and track digital signatures and verifiable ownership. Non-fungible means something is unique and cannot be replaced. In contrast, cryptocurrencies are fungible, as they are mutually interchangeable.
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The Roasted Reflections NFT Collection will always represent a neat technological experiment from 2020. It resulted in the creation of creative tokens owned by savvy/supportive true fans, who then unlocked front row seats and networked ownership with others. Studious, but fun stuff!
Minting – The process of locking a cryptographic asset (such as an NFT) into a blockchain. Transaction fees may be required, and blockchain hashing tracks the provenance for everything onchain. Lazy minting is when a digital asset is not fully minted until a transaction occurs.
Digital Wallet – A software tool to access the web3 world. Wallets store digital assets (ex: NFTs), interact with dapps, and host public/private keys. The wallet’s unique address is a hexadecimal string that refers to locations on a network, which are generated from the wallet’s private keys. This secures data transfers, cryptocurrency transactions, and digital signatures. A wallet address can be shared like a public email address, while private keys and seed phrases should always remain private.
Airdrop – Giveaways sent to digital wallets. Airdrops provide a creative way for people to share assets with each other, with senders paying the transaction fees. Be skeptical of an airdrop from unknown sources. Like clicking links or opening attachments in emailed spam, there are poisonous airdrops that can force access to your digital wallet when a malicious item is transferred. To be safe, if an unrecognized airdrop lands in your digital wallet, leave it alone.
Rugged – When digital property is lost or stolen, often malicious but not always deliberate. Being rugged is a bad thing, but it’s wild in experimental environments. Have fun in the rabbit holes, but exploration is done at your own risk. Be diligent with digital hygiene and tread lightly to stay safe in any digital realm.
DAO – Acronym for decentralized autonomous organization. These member-owned groups operate through code with less hierarchy. DAOs often share treasuries and governance, with projects defined by a collective goal.
Metaverse – Interoperable environments where users can interact from anywhere, with augmented and virtual reality ushering in more immersive experiences.
Protocol Networks – Open systems, like email, the web, and RSS that are funded and controlled but not owned by software developers or network stakeholders. In contrast, corporate networks are owned and controlled by companies instead of communities.
Zero-Knowledge Proof – In cryptography, a zero-knowledge proof is a protocol in which one party (the prover) can convince another party (the verifier) that a given statement is true—without conveying to the verifier any information beyond the mere fact of that statement’s truth. The logic in zero-knowledge proofs is that it becomes trivial to prove possession of the relevant information simply by revealing it; the hard part is to prove this possession without revealing this information (or any aspect of it whatsoever).
Tokenomics – The study of how digital assets create incentivized value within social economic frameworks.
As jargon alarms sound, remember, prevailing concepts are still being built. There are fewer industry standards, terms are not fully authenticated, and regulation is far from perfect. As web3 concepts move through different adoption life cycles, early adopters will continue to bake terms that help translate the ways in which different technologies work together.
Amid such efflorescent activity, it’s helpful to remember that much of the new jargon describes existing ideas that are being enhanced with advancing technology.
Money, for instance, is the oldest story humans have used to exchange value, yet this form of currency has evolved and will continue to do so. Secure access to a shared database is old hat for web2 wizards. We lived in Sim City long before the metaverse; everyone has flight and concert tickets landing in their phone’s digital wallet; and communities always thrive when they are sufficiently decentralized and still brewed from within. This does not thwart the magic of web3. It makes emerging technologies easier to adopt.
Brewed From Within
#76 📖 Technology
V2.0 – 100% HUMAN