Halsey Minor has lived many lives. One of the founders of CNET, Minor entered tech media at a time when the closest thing most of us had to the web was a spider spinning cobwebs on an old NES. Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, Minor worked for Merrill Lynch during the rise of the internet in […]
Can you build centralized islands in a decentralized ocean?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. We’re getting back up to full speed this week, so Mary Ann and Alex along with Grace behind the scenes took on our Friday show. Next week Natasha and Chris are back, and […]
5 NFT trends that will bring social media audiences into web3
The true mass-market potential of blockchain will be unlocked with the merger of Web 2.0 and web3.
WTF is .xyz?
If you’ve visited a crypto company’s website recently, you’ve probably visited a URL ending in “.xyz” instead of its cheugier counterpart, .com. From fintech Block, formerly known as Square, to venture firm Paradigm, to blockchain startups like Mirror, .xyz has become the go-to URL ending for many web3 companies. But what does it mean, and […]
Justin Kan’s NFT platform suffers rocky debut as scammer makes off with $150K in user funds
Despite billions in VC investment, many web3 crypto platforms are still pretty hostile places for users new to the crypto world. Case in point, today Justin Kan’s NFT platform Fractal suffered a security breach when a scammer hacked the announcement bot for the startup’s Discord which sent out a fraudulent link to the platform’s more […]
‘Borderless’ crypto networks wrestle with state sanction compliance
Crypto companies may be choosing to avoid marginalized communities rather than devising strategic ways to include them.
South Park Commons, an “anti incubator” founded by early FB and Dropbox engineers, gains momentum
When South Park Commons (SPC), a community of tens of engineers in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood, came together, it mostly flew under the radar, save for a New York Times profile in 2017, a year after it was formed. Founded by Facebook’s first female engineer, Ruchi Sanghvi, she explained at the time that her […]
Web 3.0 can repair the attention-driven digital economy
From imbalanced creator economics and poor security, to centralized control and disgruntled communities, Web 2.0’s flaws have been on full display these past few months.
Ben Rubin explains why the Web3 era of social media will help everybody get paid
After a decade of a handful of social media companies trading what are essentially publishing tools in exchange for serving us all an endless deluge of ads, the winds of change are finally blowing.
Crypto’s networked collaboration will drive Web 3.0
Web 1.0 was the static web, and Web 2.0 is the social web, but Web 3.0 will be the decentralized web. It will move us from a world where communities contribute but don’t profit, to one where they can.