Is Crypto the Answer to Walled Gardens
Crypto has always been a solution chasing a problem. There are lots of interesting vibes in the space, but the actual material value added is suspect. The line go up pseudo-investment, the cult like nature for the vibes, and the appeal to a generation that feels locked out of traditional systems all compound to appeal to a wide audience. All legitimate answers, but I want to see if I have found an actual answer to the usefulness of blockchains. The end of the walled garden.
A walled garden is a closed web ecosystem. Google play store, discord, and minecraft are all examples of a walled garden. They are all for profit companies that control their users interaction. They may allow addons, but they attempt to enclose the content generated on the site within the site. Protocols like email are safer, but companies like Google can still influence these protocols via a strategy of advocacy => advancment => absorption. They first advocate for the protocol through building product solutions, they then advance the prtocol to the point where competitors can't compete, and then finally absorb the protocol with them as the gatekeeper.
Crypto has been somewhat better in this regard. Sure it still requires a skillset, but many crypto solutions are much better in this regard. Ethereum has the EIP system where community members continually propose alternatives. Most projects are open source, and forks of projects are totally possible like sushiswap forking uniswap. Crypto is still riddled with scams no question, and this openess welcomes that, but the point I am making is that crypto has been more open to this than ever before.
I've been milling on the implications of this. One easy example is video games. Currently, all video games are essentially walled gardens. Playing Minecraft doesn't help you in Fortnite. Building for Minecraft doesn't build anything for Fortnite. I wonder if you could have some standard protocol for transferring digital goods between games. Perhaps using metadata, texture files, and something else. Then when that content is used in other games, you get paid for that. This could also be different maps, usernames, or reputations. Perhaps we might see a gamepass that spans multiple games.
What the incentive is for games to do this? Walled gardens come about not only for ease of creation, but also for business protection. Businesses want a moat around them, and your entire social life staying on world of warcraft, or your emails on gmail ensures business safety. As a tangent, many chat apps could easily implement standard messaging protocols to seemelessly work across apps, but choose not to for this reason.
One reason might be early traction. Allowing users to keep their identity when they move to your system makes it easier to gain users. Many users may see this as the list of products there willing to even use. This gives you exposure to an existing die hard fan base. Another reason might be ease of monetization. You instantly have a massive set of in game purchasable content ready for users to buy. You would likely have to give a large percentage back to the creator, but this still allows for ease. Lastly, is not having to go through a middle man. Google play and the Apple app store give you access to closed in users in exchange for taking a huge cut. A more open system allows you to avoid that cut for any exclusive content.
The thing is, I don't know if crypto is necessary for this. Presumably, you could have an open marketplace with a standard api that does this. Sure it goes against dEeCEnTralIzatIon, but there isn't anything stopping this from occurring. Sure it could create a strong financial incentive, but there isn't anything guarenteeing it. Of course, there is the simple question of if this is even necessary, if people are willing to pay, or if it is monetizable. Companies like brain trust give me hope that something like this can exist. Where if this is implemented via one company, it's still possible it can be community owned to some degree.
I still like this direction better. At least this is using crypto to try to solve a legitimate problem. I genuinely don't like that Google and Facebook get to dictate the future of technology. I don't know if people will pay, I don't particularly love crypto, but I could see it being used for a different business model.