Why is Web3 decisive and what are its advantages? Discover Chris Dixon’s 5 best tweets about Web3!
Chris Dixon is one of the most influential figures in the Web3 industry and a partner in a16z, a Venture Capital fund active in the crypto world and founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Dixon is known for his commitment as a Web3 popularizer. For years, he has been proposing interpretations and points of view on the evolution of the Internet, also through interesting threads on Twitter. His Twitter profile, cdixon.eth has almost 900,000 followers and is a reference point for enthusiasts in the field. Let’s take a look at Chris Dixon’s 5 best tweets on Web3!
1. Why is Web3 important?
Presenting Dixon’s best tweets about the Web3, one can only start with ‘Why Web3 matters‘. In this tweet, in order to define the importance of Web3, Dixon begins by presenting the difference between centralised and decentralised companies and the tendency of Web2 companies to create benefits for users only during their first phase of life. After this phase, in Dixon’s view, users become just a ‘greedy source of data’. The main criticism in the tweet relates to the attitude of traditional companies, which according to Chris Dixon discourages innovation. Web3 platforms on the other hand, being totally owned by the users who use them, are not subject to this problem. Users are incentivised and work together with the platforms with the aim of expanding and growing the project of which they are an active part. The tools used to make this happen are tokens, both fungible tokens and NFTs. Chris Dixon firmly believes that it is necessary to redistribute the power and value on the web to users.
This tweet, written in 2021, has become an important testimony in the history of Web3. It is precisely this post that accurately defined the phases of the Internet, allowing, among other things, the interpretation and understanding of what Gavin Wood meant when he first coined the term Web3.
2. The strengths of Web3: dApps and NFTs
The second tweet is also about the transition from Web2 to Web3. Blockchain, according to Dixon, in this historical period is the equivalent in terms of innovation of mobile applications in the period from 2009 to 2012. Chris Dixon defines dapps on the blockchain as the IT frontier of the millennium. He goes on to say that the strength of dapps is that they can be modified, programmed and improved by third-party actors because they are open source and permissionless. Dixon brings up as an example of dapp’s potential, the DeFi summer of 2020, the period in which the first wave of decentralised applications broke out and which saw the birth of Uniswap and Compound. Creating inclusive, fair and transparent financial services is indeed possible thanks to dApps. Dixon is positive about NFTs, describing them as an opportunity that can offer content creators and developers better economic conditions than what Web2 platforms used to offer. In conclusion, the tweet asks what trends will dominate the immediate future. Web3 social networks, DAOs or metaverses?
3. Making a start-up by watching a series
This tweet refers to the series ‘Winning Time – The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty’ produced by HBO. The series tells the story of the rise of the Los Angeles Lakers NBA team starting with the takeover of historic owner Jerry Buss, who through his entrepreneurial skills transforms the team into an unbeatable dream team. More than the prowess of NBA players Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Chris Dixon seems interested in the entrepreneurial component of the TV series. He calls it a great show about start-ups.
4. Chris Dixon joins the Board of Directors of OpenSea
The tweet announcing the entry of the Web3 popularizer to the board of the world’s most famous and used NFT marketplace could not fail to be part of this selection! The announcement took place right on Twitter, specifically on the profile of OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer.
Opensea’s decision to welcome Dixon is not too surprising, the latter being one of the most famous and respected Web3 disseminators and a venture investor with a lot of experience in the field. Among the projects he has been involved in as a financier and advisor are Uniswap, Avalanche and many others. Through the tweet, he said he was thrilled to be able to join the board of a giant like OpenSea, and that he was very happy to be able to continue working closely with David Finzer. In fact, the two met in 2021, when the fund in which Chris Dixon is a partner, a16z, decided to invest in OpenSea, and since then they have been working closely together, constantly comparing notes.
5. The controversy with Minecraft: don’t clip the wings of developers
We end Chris Dixon’s list of the top 5 tweets on Web3 with a bang! The entrepreneur commented on the decision of the famous game Minecraft, developed by Microsoft-owned Mojan, to avoid any kind of NFT integration within the game. Dixon stated, in a polemical tone, that apparently Web2 companies can change the rules for developers at any time. Later, in response to his first tweet, he again poked fun at Microsoft, pointing out the inaccuracy of a sentence within the document containing the announcement.
The phrase in question ‘an NFT is a unique, unchangeable digital token that is part of a blockchain and is often purchased with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin’ is indeed inaccurate. NFTs are not typical of networks such as Bitcoin’s, but are instead usually created on blockchains that allow dapp development, such as Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche.
