MoneyNeverSleeps: Blockchain Going Mainstream | Andrea Miele, Fabien Arneodo and Nick Mason | Techstars Web3

What’s the mainstream adoption path for blockchain?  I asked three of the founders from the Techstars Web3 class of 2024 for their insights this week, including Andrea Miele, Co-Founder and CEO of The Colony, Fabien Arneodo, Co-Founder and CEO of SportSyncTech, and Nick Mason, Co-Founder and CEO of ProofSpace.

As William Gibson, author of the 1984 book Neuromancer, famously said: “The future is already here, it’s just not that evenly distributed”. I think of this quote every time I get pushback from naysayers on the long-term usability of blockchain technology.

In the intro to a recent episode with the first group of 4 founders from Techstars Web3 we talked to about common misconceptions about web3, I referred to the estimated less than 20 million daily active users of crypto. Crypto in all of its shapes and forms is accountable for the overwhelming majority of the use of blockchain technology around the world today.

Recently, Lex Sokolin from the Fintech Blueprint (shout out to Lex!) summarized things nicely by pointing out that the daily active users of major blockchain protocols such as Ethereum, Binance Chain, Polygon, and Solana increased from 5 million to nearly 8 million this year. Whether we’re talking about 8 million daily active users or 20 million users, with blockchain, we’re only in the ballpark of the number of Robinhood daily active users or the population of the Netherlands.

Given how much of my time I spend in crypto and blockchain it feels like we’re already mainstream, and that the future is already here. But, back to the reality of today and our 20 million daily active users, we have some work to do.

We’re on a trajectory with crypto adoption similar to that of the internet in the 1990’s, and if the growth projections hold water, blockchain by association will become ‘mainstream’ during the 2030s. That’s a 10-year range, so what’s the timeline to where more of humanity with internet access are using blockchain daily than not?

In terms of adoption, what are the things we need to do more of (or less of) in web3 to trigger blockchain adoption by web2-only users? Do they even need to know they’re using blockchain?

LINKS:

Connect with this week’s guests on LinkedIn:

• Andrea Miele: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agriffin717/
• Fabien Arneodo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabien-arneodo/
• Nick Mason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-mason-762316b/

Follow this week’s guests on X/Twitter:

• Andrea Miele: https://twitter.com/NFTeafor2
• Fabien Arneodo: https://twitter.com/FabienArneodo
• Nick Mason: https://twitter.com/nick__mason

Learn more about each founder’s business:

• The Colony: https://thecolony.xyz/ | https://twitter.com/thecolonyxyz
• SportsyncTech: https://www.sportsynctech.com/ | https://twitter.com/SportSyncTech
• ProofSpace: https://www.proofspace.id/ | https://twitter.com/proof_space

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