Impact

the price of insufficient decentralization

when the user comes first, you get to choose what you see in your feed, what notifications you want (or don't want) to see, etc.

when centralized platform's interests come first, feed & notifs will be determined by whatever helps the platform make money.

that's how it works on X, and that's what we're importing here

Solving public goods value capture. | /impact | book.abundance.id

"But Mike, if we do what benefits the user, how is the platform ever going to be financially sustainable? We need growth!"

In web3 we can build economic incentives around maximizing user experience, and creating alignment between the platform & the user.

Using a web2 business model will only lead to centralization

This is perhaps one of Dan's most important casts re: farcaster in the past year.

It confirms my thesis that:
1) Merkle doesn't have a sustainable business model for FC in mind
and 
2) FC is squandering its competitive supremacy (having an open graph) by trying hard to be an X/twitter clone with a crypto wallet

The great thing about protocols (over centralized platforms) is that you can create a sustainable model where the interests of users ALIGN with the interests of the protocol (more on that here: https://paragraph.com/@abundance/time-to-put-the-user-in-the-center)

This is not that.

Merkle's current approach indicates that it will be using centralizing vectors (algos, subscriptions, etc.) to keep users "locked-in." 

A better approach would be favoring decentralization - where anyone can build their own client, app, and so on, and plug into a vast interoperable ecosystem powered by the open graph.

I mean you can also be a "customer" on X, it's not a big difference if the platform is a monopoly or designed to lock you in..

Pi-chi.eth Artist /animeoutcasts
Hosting: /sakura /kyoto /anime-manga /farcasterunion

https://portrait.so/pichi

I mean you can also be a "customer" on X, it's not a big difference if the platform is a monopoly or designed to lock you in.. 
https://farcaster.xyz/abundance/0xd1f34516

Good news is I’m not a user for much longer. I’m about to be a customer. Big difference.