How are blockchains creating value for humanity? Why is Web 3.0 important? :: with Andrew Cronk

In this episode of Ventures, my guest Andrew Cronk (https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewcronk/, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at https://figment.io/) and I discuss Web 3 and blockchains beyond price hysteria, energy-usage debates, and influencer shenanigans. While everyone has been distracted by current events, the Web 3 builders continue to push the technology forward in a way that is genuinely compelling for our future. We talk about Proof-of-Stake, building a Web 3 developer community, technologies that exist today for decentralized apps, NFTs, Helium Network, what the rest of this year looks like for Figment, and much, much more. 

Visit https://satchel.works/@wclittle/ventures-episode-48 for detailed notes and links to resources (videos, articles, etc…) mentioned. 

You can watch this episode via video here.

In this episode we cover the following:

1:55 - Will’s tee-up for the conversation and why he enjoys having Andy on the show, why coin price and market dynamics aren’t as interesting as what blockchains are going to enable for humanity.

2:33 - Andy intro, background of https://figment.io, their bet on Proof-of-Stake, and the products/services they’ve developed for the community (Hubble, DataHub, Figment Learn, etc…)

5:44 - Why proof-of-stake? Why did Figment double-down there? (seems like 99% of new blockchains are launching with proof-of-stake, so not a bad bet)

8:51 - Defining Web 3. Semantic Web. Looping in AI/XR. How does Andy think about and define Web 3?

10:40 - What can we - the collective developer community - do right now? What tech is available? Is it possible to build a fully functional Web 3 decentralized app? 

15:42 - What can a group of 300-400 people use on Web 3 right now to organize and communicate? 

19:58 - Logging in with identity in a Web 3 way, high interest in building Web 3 dApps, https://ceramic.network/ 

20:50 - Possible to store chat data on-chain? Or in a Layer 2-3? 

23:30 - Are there chains right now to put data on publicly? FileCoin/IPFS, Arweave, Sia.Tech’s SkyNet.

24:25 - dApp developers are going to need to query a database (e.g. a relational database, SQL  databases), what’s available around this in Web 3? 

26:06 - The nuance: where your application logic runs. Much more like a serverless paradigm. 

27:10 - Figment’s new fund: https://figment.io/resources/figment-capital-16m-fund-to-grow-web-3/ 

29:28 - Supporting companies in different ways as part of the investment thesis (similar to https://www.protaventures.com) 

30:25 - Similar to Bezos asking about what can be done with the Internet to scale selling books, what are ways that blockchains are enabling new tech? 

33:00 - A lot more happening around mutualization (insurance). Nexus Mutual. Unslashed Finance. 

34:20 - A discussion about the Helium Network. The future of 5G penetration into cities/towns with Helium, the raw source of their bandwidth, StarLink, etc... 

37:50 - What’s next for Figment? They are hiring! → https://figment.io/jobs/ 

40:37 - Anything else that listeners should know about or questions that Andy has in this space?