Founding Higher was not at all what I expected meme making to be. From an instance of ‘hey this could be a cool meme’ led into 1000s of people, one million+ micro-transactions, and a nine figure valuation from a community created tokenization of said meme (with a subset of holders I think many would be surprised to know about).
Throughout the frenetic pace of March -December I solely focused, in hindsight, on putting one foot in front of the next; trying not to slip off the uncharted path. I feel we did a reasonably great job at this first chasm.
Now the meme that was Higher, has become Higher Network. And it’s not until these two weeks off that I finally had space-time to make sense of our own intuitions.
Open source code is a common mechanism in crypto. Daos use it, chains use it, protocols use it. Things like Sushiswap only existed because of osc from Uniswap.
As such, I need not rehash the philosophical implications of osc. Instead, I’ll use this time to introduce what Higher has truly become from my vantage point. An open source network.
Beyond hyperbole, here are the tangible markers of this theory already manifest:
CC0 intellectual property
Open design frameworks
Open distribution channels
Free market token-ownership
Still developing sure, but yet to be market proven? That would be a disingenuous read on the past nine months of work.
Higher is an open source network. It affords ip, design frameworks, narrative frameworks, distribution channels, and ownership in the market portal of its philosophy (0x0578d8A44db98B23BF096A382e016e29a5Ce0ffe).
Anyone can build on top of what Higher has built thus far. Anyone can buy into the financial vehicle as well. No gatekeeping via canonical assets. No gatekeeping via reproducible resources. It’s got network effects and open channels to leverage them.
The Theory Part
The real fun is just beginning from a certain lens. To have pinned down the terminology, is to have pinned down a direction. We will help steward Higher into category definition and leadership of this market eventuality.
Market. Eventuality. This is the theory part.
Higher is an osn. It has all the pieces to continue pursuing this new category as well. But I wonder if it’s an instance of collective brilliance, or a pioneer of a new type of network effect. Nuanced, yet significant, differences arise when comparing an osn to a dao. I wrote about this unknowingly in April 2024.
Due to said nuances, I theorize that memecoins are slowly maturing consumer thinking into an appetite ready for open source networks at scale. Including, but also beyond, Higher.
The Network Company is how I will test this theory in the market.
Not only will we continue to focus on Higher’s trailblazing. We will analyze, assist, and selectively help scale other osn.
The reasoning is multivariate:
More open source networks = More open source networks
OSN theory has a chance to usher in a new era of internet abundance
There is no better way to learn than to be in the mix of things
As such, The Network Company’s mission is developing, scaling, & modularizing open source networks. Higher is #0001.
