An excerpt from RenderATL's Culture & Code podcast Episode #4: The Future of Web3 with Harper Reed (@harper):
Ashley:
I've seen a lot recently on Twitter and other platforms about the pushback regarding web3 is, that it's really hard to get into it basically is what a lot of people feel because of all of this lingo. Even learning what an NFT for me was very difficult until I actually saw in a tangible concept. So, how do you anticipate if it will at all? How will you anticipate it to be easier to get into that in the future?
Harper:
It's a hard question. I mean, my first time I looked at NFTs or not NFTs, but looked at smart contracts was in 2017. And I remember very specifically sitting and looking at this and just being like, "This is impossible. No one knows what the fuck's going on here. This is a nightmare." And what changed for me, I think this is what changed for a lot of people is suddenly there was an application that I could wrap my head around. And I think it has to be, I think if we, as creators, oftentimes do a bad job of describing what we are creating. I think part of it is I remember it's actually I think fun to watch people describe to people NFTs. Like say, "Okay, I have a JPEG, it's worth a lot of money. What does that even mean?"
That doesn't mean anything. That's not a real thing, you know? But you try and really describe what it means. And the problem right now is that we don't know. I think the issue is that there are people who are able to get into this, like my brother or all the people around us that we know that are successful in this space. And a lot of that has to do with luck, more than has anything to do with anything else. It has nothing to do with skills. That doesn't mean that the people who are in it aren't skillful. It doesn't mean that they don't have skills, but being in the right time, in the right place is not a skill that you can practice for. What it does mean though, is that there are a lot of opportunities for skilled people coming up.
I think that part of the problem that we have is people already in here is we aren't very good at describing what we need and what the world is going to become. We don't know. What ends up happening is, and I saw this, I onboarded my team into Ethereum. Most of my team hadn't used Ethereum before I kind of dragged them in. There's a lot of hurdles. Gas, gas is a hurdle. I don't know how many times I heard swear words and then gas, just in the slacks or in the video calls. There's a lot of concepts that are very unique and complicated. There's a lot of things that seem like magic that people are like, "What does this even mean?" Could it air drops, like someone would get a big air dropped.
They're like, "Why? Where does the money come from?" There's all these question. Taxes, nobody knows what's going to happen there. All these things, there's a lot of legality. So it's very complicated to try and for people even inside, I think it's complicated to try and figure out some of these concepts. So, if you're outside, it's 10 times worse. The concern I have is that we aren't doing enough to make it accessible. I don't think this means building things for people who don't know or building new user stuff, but literally make it accessible.
And then there's the other thing, which is that there's a lot of gatekeepers. There's people who don't want it to be accessible because they themselves are finding success. They know that if they bring other people in that they won't have as much opportunity. I have always felt that the more people that are here in this party, the better. I don't ever think it's been better when it's smaller. So I look forward to more people being in there, but I do think there's a lot of things we have to solve and we have to figure out how to fix these things.
This was an excerpt from Culture & Code, a podcast brought to you by RenderATL that is focused on leveling up your tech career and exploring new technologies.
You can listen to the full episode and read the complete transcript on our website here.
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