All that is left are opinions and world views. Why opinion? Because we're at the edge of the super-highway on-chain world. Everything — attestations, identities, transactions — is live already onchain.
You might think neat, now we need a super app! But, the concept of the super app needs rethinking. It’s a bit outdated, by the very nature of the on-chain world. Chains are the super app. Deal with it. It's not just about an all-encompassing interface; there's has to be more. If everything is on-chain, opinions will be the only thing that's left.
I realized this looking at wallets and web3 social clients — they all show the same stuff and it’s boring as hell. Why pick one over another? The answer lies not just in better UX or the right corner radius, but in having an opinion.
Interfaces need to be opinionated. Your interface is your brand, and brands are intentionally curated; curation is THE moat. Everyone can copy a feature, but building a culture around a point of view is kinda hard.
This is crucial because everything good in Web3 gets forked and reused ad absurdum. The same old story like in good old web2: Snapchat stories, TikTok reels — formats can be copied, but not as easy as culture and its wold-view.
What exactly is an opinion in this context? It's the curated content and activities we bring to people. I don't want a random feed or timeline; I want what matters to us as a community of like-minded users. This obviously differs for everyone, and that's okay.
But what we all have in common is, access to this shared, verifiable data layer onchain, which allows anyone to build or at least select their lens or perspective.
When building a social app or wallet, leaning into the multiplayer aspect of Web3 means choosing your community, your culture. Interfaces must reflect that.
A MetaMask feed feels different from a Uniswap feed or a Family Wallet feed,... Differentiation in onboarding more people will hinge on strong opinions, strong worldviews, and not just account abstraction. We buy into worldviews, no matter if it’s network states or tokens going up.
Culture is the moat, and you can't just stick to create something super vanilla all the time. It worked for Apple because there were no alternatives. But with alternatives that access the same pool, opinions and world-views are vital.
Think about timelines, feeds, search and recommendations, as thought leaders, and we desperately need new ones, co-created with the community. A dapp's opinion will evolve as much as its community does. Some interfaces might do best with a strong POV; others might be more vanilla. At least vanilla is a choice not a default.
We should look at the same on-chain world but through different lenses. And that is not just okay; it's exciting and, probably in some cases, even terrifying. Having a point of view allows us to create not just novel but user experiences that matter.
So when we design for web3, think about the culture, community, brand you represent, and obviously about the UX (better, faster, smoother transactions) too. Infuse your worldview into every piece of the experience as you do already, but don’t forget the activity or content feeds.
Welcome to the days of content feeds fed by algorithms based on curated opinions.
The best feeds will be about what they leave out. If you want to build a client that's just spam, why shouldn’t you? We need to choose our algorithms, our opinionated experience, our view onto the on-chain world. And if it's not for you, just train your own one. The data is already there, just not intentionally curated by you.
RM for Zeitheist
