TL;DR:
Crypto and the 3D internet will shape future online experiences, but they currently overlap little.
Long-term crypto adoption requires creating appealing future consumer experiences.
Platforms like Roblox show how young users develop expectations through immersive environments.
NFT collectibles gain value when showcased in relevant spaces, already happening on platforms like Roblox.
The onchain economy's success depends on matching new experiences with current consumer behaviors.
There are two parallel consumer technology trends that fascinates me. Crypto is the first (obviously). The 3D internet is the other. Both will play significant roles in shaping future consumer experiences online. And considering we spend so much time online, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say these technologies will shape our lives.
Considering this, it’s still surprising to me how small the intersect between these to trends currently is.
To move the needle on crypto adoption tomorrow we surely need better wallets and smoother onboarding experiences.
But, to move the needle on a ten year timeline we need to create the type of experiences that future core consumers are likely to crave.
Everyone talks and writes a lot about consumer adoption of onchain apps and services. We should spend more time considering consumer adaptation; how do we mold onchain experiences into something consumers want.
Thinking within this framing also means we actively look at current signals of want. Some are pretty obvious.
The iPad Babies
This is a picture from a post of mine from last year:
It illustrates how the “homepage of the internet” changes over time and across generations. Fortnite and Roblox are as (or even more) important than Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. At least if you’re considering how to target, attract and retain future spenders (young consumers).
This is a related graph of Roblox adoption:
The graph can be explained in very simple terms:
The iPad babies grew up.
The most powerful growth mechanic for any consumer product is to compound young users. This strategy requires three steps:
Attract young users (likely early adopters)
Adapt to retain these users as they age
Adapt to be relevant to attract next wave of young users
The 3D internet (or Metaverse??) was all the rage a few years back. While there’s less hype, the thesis is still strong. Roblox has 300M monthly active users(!).
60% of these users belong to the sub-16 age bracket.
Fortnite have equally strong numbers.
There’s a whole generation of internet consumers that are growing up getting used to the internet as a 3D game-like environment. This behavior shapes their expectations of services and product they engage with in the future.
NFT Status Games, but Bigger
Let’s zoom in on one part of the onchain economy; digital objects and collectibles. A big part of the original NFT collectible thesis was that increasingly digital consumer will want to customize how they show up online (like we do in the physical world).
This thesis is still relevant. As I argued in a previous piece, for an object to have status value we must have relevant places to showcase these objects. In hindsight this was, and still is, a disconnect in crypto.
Inside Roblox, the thesis is already blooming. Users buy all kinds of digital swag, dress up their avatar with it and go hang with their internet frens.
The average Roblox user spend 2.5 hours per day on the platform. It’s not a game platform, its an online destination for fun, games, socializing, communications and (increasingly) commerce.
Roblox (the company) is investing significantly to build out their platform across three key dimensions; communications, creation and commerce.
Immersive Onchain?
There aren’t many projects (that I know of) that are attempting to build immersive, social, 3D spaces on crypto rails.
Sandbox is one of them, but according to DappRadar had 2K users in the last 30 days. Being well capitalized and patient may do them well, if they can find/build a strong distribution engine.
Bored Ape Yacht Club and the Otherside platform has been ridiculed by many over the past few years. It’s no longer the shiny star of the space. Alas, I’m bullish the immersive platform they’re building. Especially if they (long term) position this as a destination for far more people than ape holders.
The challenge with building immersive, spatial internet interfaces and experiences is that they’re far more complex and capital intensive that spinning up a progressive web app with a wallet integration.
Ending note
For its long term success, the onchain economy is dependent on attracting (and compounding young users). This is especially important since this technology introduces new base primitives to the internet experience (like asset ownership). Primitives that break with the patterns that billions of internet users have learned from decades of using the internet (in the for-rent state).
In order to do this, the products built must be presented in the contexts and with the experiences that consumers are already showing through current behaviors that they yearn for.
Crypto is already a MMORPG with very low fidelity gameplay. We need to add higher fidelity front ends as we go forward.
PS If you know about teams that are building immersive, onchain platforms I would love to learn about it.
