In this week’s issue:

• Touch Grass: Do You Even Web3? A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding WTF We’ve All Been Talking About

• Hodl Me Tender: 🔥 Web3, Crypto + AI Jobs of the Week

Hodl Me Tender: 🔥 Web3 + AI Jobs of the Week

Looking for your next move in (or into) web3, crypto, or AI? Here are some fire openings for this week, all remote, all posted in the past four days:

• Akash Network is on the lookout for a Software Engineer 🔥

• Lazer needs a Senior Payments Engineer - Crypto to join their team

• Consensys is looking for a Release Engineer - MetaMask 🔥

• Trilitech needs a new Director of Marketing

• QuickNode is on the hunt for a Director of Enterprise Sales

• Written wants to find a Social Media Manager 🔥 

• Boundless needs a Discord CM—is it you?

• Re7 Capital needs someone to do DeFi Business Development for them

• Symbiotic is looking for a Senior Smart Contract Engineer

• Want to be a Content & Social Lead at Aragon? Get it.

Want to see your company's job listed here? Reply to this email and lmk.

One thing you’ve probably noticed is that everyone talks about web3 like it's some mystical future state. But really, it's just the internet growing up and learning to share. Which means it’s people growing up and learning to share—a generous, possibly utopian take, but still.

To back up, web 1.0 was like reading a really long, hyperlinked magazine—plus email, which was actually one of the OGs of decentralization. No single company owned email—you could send from anywhere to anywhere. For everything else, you could click around and consume information, but good luck trying to add your own thoughts without learning HTML and buying server space.

Web 2.0 gave us the ability to create and share—hello Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. Suddenly everyone could be a publisher! Except in reality what we all became were unpaid content creators making Mark Zuckerberg richer while he sold, and continues to sell, our data to the highest bidder.

The internet's awkward teenage years (aka where we are now)

Web3 is supposed to be the "you actually own your shit" version of the internet. Instead of Meta owning your photos and posts and social graph (followers), you own them. Instead of Spotify deciding whether artists get paid, smart contracts handle it automatically. Instead of banks controlling your money, you control your money.

At least that's the theory.

Chris Dixon's read/write/own elevator pitch (but make it make sense)

After reading most of Chris Dixon's "Read Write Own" really slowly (like, let me read that paragraph over again… ok one more time), here's how I might explain web3 to someone at a coffee shop, or a rave:

Web 1.0: Read-only internet. You could browse GeoCities and send emails and feel very sophisticated.

Web 2.0: Read-write internet. Web 1.0 plus you could post on MySpace and feel very important.

Web 3.0: Read-write-own internet. You can post and own your content/data/digital assets instead of just renting space on someone else's platform. Byeee, corporate intermediaries.

The "own" part is the revolutionary bit. Instead of building your entire business on Instagram and then panicking when they change their algorithm—or waking up to a restricted LinkedIn account, which happened to me over a month ago and still hasn’t been resolved—you can now build on protocols that you actually have a stake in.

What web3 actually looks like in practice (when it works)

Some of the best web3 experiences are the ones where you don't even realize you're using crypto anything. These include but are not limited to:

Blackbird.xyz: You tap a puck, earn points, get restaurant perks. Behind the scenes, those points are blockchain tokens and your membership is an NFT, but most users have no idea and don't care.

Brave Browser: You browse the internet and earn BAT tokens for viewing ads. It's just a browser that pays you instead of selling your data to advertisers.

Farcaster: You post and interact like Twitter, but you actually own your social graph and can take your followers (here, it feels more like community than followers) with you if you switch apps. Growing pains for sure, but way cooler than web2 social.

Mirror.xyz: Writers publish articles and readers can collect them as NFTs. It's like Medium, but creators actually own their content and can monetize directly.

The magic, and tbh wider adoption, seems to happen when blockchain tech disappears into the background and you're just using a better version of something you already understand. Which, it turns out, has a bit to do with skeuomorphism. A term I recently learned about. Which basically says we’re all basic bitches who flock to the comfort of familiarity.

The gap between web3 theory and web3 reality

Web3 in practice can often look nothing like web3 in theory. I say this as someone who is a huge proponent of web3, and who really doesn’t know shit about shit yet. I digress.

Theory: Decentralized ownership means no single entity can control or censor your content.

Reality: Most people still use centralized exchanges, centralized wallets, and centralized platforms that can absolutely freeze your assets if they want to.

Theory: Smart contracts eliminate the need for trusted intermediaries.

Reality: Most DeFi protocols are controlled by small groups of developers who can update the code whenever they want.

Theory: You own your data and digital assets.

Reality: Your NFTs are usually just URLs pointing to images stored on regular old servers that could disappear tomorrow.

Are we building a decentralized utopia on top of the same centralized infrastructure we were trying to escape from? I think the answer is yes and no and I don’t really know.

So why am I still here despite the contradictions? A few reasons…

First—we are all living, breathing contradictions. Every last one of us.

Second, after six months of writing about web3 weekly, here's what I've learned and what I value most of all: it's not about the technology being perfect right now. It's about the direction we're moving. The long game.

Traditional social media platforms can decide your content violates their terms and delete years of work overnight. Web3 platforms can't do that (in theory). Traditional payment systems can freeze your account because you bought coffee in the wrong country. Web3 payments can't be stopped by any single entity (again, in theory).

The "in theory" part is doing a lot of heavy lifting right now, but the experiments are getting more interesting.

The financial sovereignty piece: Being able to send money anywhere in the world without asking permission from a bank or government is pure gold, even if the user experience currently sucks. For people in countries where currencies are regularly devalued or governments have too much financial control, this isn't just convenient—it's genuine democracy at work. It’s accessibility and, well, a sliver of freedom.

The creator economy piece: Artists and writers actually owning their relationship with their audience instead of renting it from platforms that can change the rules whenever they want. I've been on Farcaster for a couple months now and the difference is wild—you own your social connections, so if you want to use a different app, your community comes with you.

The governance piece: Having a say in how the platforms you use actually operate, instead of just complaining into the void when Twitter changes their character limit.

And these are just the tip of the web3 iceberg. With wider adoption most likely happening the same way most technology adoption happens: gradually, then suddenly, then we'll wonder how we ever lived without it.

PS: Subscribe now if you want in on this arithmetic. Miss the last issue? It’s right here. Also literally none of this is ever financial advice. I’m sharing what I learn through Babe, and perhaps you’ll learn from my mistakes. Hopefully, maybe, who knows, ily.