Chris Dixon and blockchain optimism in ‘Read Write Own’

“I have observed that both optimists and pessimists seem to leave this world in the same way—but optimists lead better lives.” The quote is from late Israeli statesman Shimon Peres, but I first encountered it while reading the memoir Valley Boy by the outsize venture capitalist Tom Perkins, who adopted it as a personal mantra.

I thought of Perkins, who founded one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic VC firms and was an accomplished yacht racer, after reading Read Write Own, the new crypto book by another, less flamboyant venture capitalist, Chris Dixon. You can read my full review here, but the gist of Dixon’s book is that the internet today is badly broken as a result of Big Tech monopolists, which is true, but that a solution is at hand if we rebuild the web using blockchain technology. This might or not be true, but it is certainly, well, an optimistic view of things.

Such optimism is not a natural outlook for journalists, in part because the job often entails dealing with liars and delusional people, which breeds skepticism. But I tried to put that aside for a moment and accept that maybe Dixon is right, and that blockchain will let us rewire the internet in order to wrest the network back from corporate overlords. It’s not a crazy idea, and Dixon’s book points to a number of reasons why.

One is that some revolutionary technologies take decades to evolve to the point of mainstream adoption. That’s the case with AI, which has been around in one version or another since the 1940s, but finally broke out last year. Ditto with electric cars, which also felt a few years away until suddenly they were everywhere on our freeways. Blockchain, too, is likely to be a late bloomer but, as Dixon points out, the tech has gotten much better in the past few years as developers continue to push the clunkier bits beyond easy-to-use interfaces. It’s not out of the question that blockchain could take a big leap forward and have a ChatGPT-style breakthrough moment in the coming decade.

Another reason for optimism is that some blockchain projects have already grown phenomenally, thanks to network effects—a sign that something is organically popular. Consider that Ethereum, which only fully launched in 2015, has grown to hundreds of millions of wallet addresses, and has a current market cap of over $270 billion. Those numbers are on par with Uber or TikTok, and came without anything resembling a traditional marketing campaign. Remember, too, that crypto users skew heavily young, and that there is now a generation of high school and college kids who know about blockchain firsthand or from their friends.

Then there is the incredible enthusiasm and staying power of blockchain communities even when, in the case of Dogecoin and other frivolous tokens, there is no logical reason for the coins to exist. The feeling of common affection for something is a durable source of motivation—far more so than communities of critics (hi, no-coiners!) who typically dissipate before long because it’s not that fun spending your time hating something.

All of this means Dixon’s dream of a better internet built on blockchain already has a viable foundation, and could arrive sooner than we think. This newsletter will be back to its regular Eeyore takes soon enough, but for now enjoy the unvarnished optimism.

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Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts

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