英国视角下的 Web3 | 法律午餐字节 | 第 4 集

Ben just in the nick of time joining from the UK today it’s been uh what September October since we had coffee in London so really excited to catch up with you we literally haven’t spoken three words since then so I’m really excited I’ve been I think Happy Thanksgiving Happy Thanksgiving probably a couple messages on Whatsapp that’s right yeah but I’m anxious to hear uh what you’ve been doing I know you’ve uh you’ve taken on a new initiatives launching new projects and Ian you have an amazing read on uh the dii uh nft all things web 3 I feel like so um let’s let’s dive in why don’t you give everyone a bit of an intro this is just a 15 minute over lunch chat absolutely um you know we’re catching up over coffee again so so let everybody know who you are and what you’re up to and then uh and then we’ll talk no absolutely hope many thanks indeed Jonathan it’s always uh always good to catch up um following on from the uh why baked beans conversation that we had when we did meet it’s an important question question I since that point um I’ve launched a venture studio um called NETCOM Ventures so I’ve been operating in the the web3 space for a couple years now so we got in touch would have been probably early 20122 I think late 2021 22 um when I was involved more in the in the space um and then since that point I went down a bit of a rabbit hole into Dow governance so Dows are a wonderful idea in principle in practice they fundamentally don’t work at the moment there’s all kinds of issues um around governance around how they operate around how to structure them are they legally permissible I mean I’m singing to the choir here right you already know I describe them as I describe Dows as the hardest organizational entity to structure ever right there there’s no way to unless we’re talking interplanetary connections there’s no way to make there’s no way to make these more difficult to to deal with but I mean there’s potential but yeah so many so many issues absolutely but I mean from off the back of that um you went deep into a a corporate governance Rabbit Hole U which is incredibly exciting as I’m sure many people can appreciate um started reading around Network governance decentralized Network governance Network organizations and off the back of that came across this concept of value Network so instead of a given firm growing in a linear fashion whereby you take in external Capital you hire more people you extend your capacity um to the limit of potentially the capital or the capabilities of the individual you can grow in a network manner so you can plug into existing firms and then enhance their capabilities and okay that’s pretty interesting that sounds a little bit like the way that a dow could theoretically operate and then came across some other industry Partners um who’ve been applying basically the same set of principles to the VC space so looking for ways to take a startup in and instead of it being a case of investing some funds looking for more of a supply chain type approach so we can take an idea in and then give the startup exactly what it needs and then spit out hopefully a functioning product at the end of it so moving away from that 95% rate of startup failure 75% failure rate for funded startups as well looking to improve those odds um slightly so that’s kind of where netcon Ventures came about is there Confluence between corporate governance research Dows VC and just networking as a whole yeah sounds like a The Venture Studio model that I came across the last couple of years I feel like it maybe it’s just I wasn’t paying attention or maybe it was it was happening and uh I just didn’t know the right people but I feel like that you know like you said that’s the idea there you know money goes in it’s not necessarily friendly to the founders uh you sometimes it’s hit and miss with the with the VC Studios or VC firms that you’re working with and whether or not they’re going to be helpful um you know and much more much more handholding it it you’re right you eliminate a lot of the barriers that are going to be thrown up uh you know through startups life and then of course your expertise in web 3 being able to bring that in is gives you that really interesting Niche it’s been fascinating from um just learning what the the common struggles are because the majority of Founders when they’re looking for third party Capital investors most of the time they’re looking for Value ad um there was a study that was run um in the UK a couple of years ago it says like 93% of Founders are looking for Value ad in some capacity and a similar percentage of VCS say that they offer it but then these Founders who engage with these VCS were then surveyed um basically asking did you get what you were sold um and 60% or so of the founders said they felt though they’ve been duped um introductions right it’s like a a roller deex it’s basically a meme at this point it’s like you can introduce you to these various people um a lot of the time Founders aren’t getting what they’re sold as so value ad is something that’s actually lacking so that’s been really interesting to learn about and Founders especially firsttime Founders didn’t have such little negotiation power that you know this has got to be God send for them to to run into someone like you with uh you know with the idea that we’re here for for the long run what’s uh what’s your take on uh Bitcoin jumping up and jumping up and jumping up I mean that’s uh that’s been certainly Domina the news what’s it has it made a difference in your in your personal professional life the last few months uh things have got busier um it’s interesting a lot of the the stuff that’s been going on behind the scenes that hasn’t changed so the the people who are building are still building they’re just building with slightly more noise around them um as the focus does seem to be coming back to the industry uh that’s really the only thing that’s changed there is more of that passive interest it does seem like people are starting to move quicker it does feel like there’s that sense of urgency is now starting to come back um it feels like there’s a little bit less justification for existence um as spot ETF approvals and the likes of Black Rock $9 trillion do of assets under management getting involved in I mean it’s a pretty big vote of confidence for the industry as a whole and the technology um so a lot of the loudest naysayers um don’t really have a huge amount to say now has that affected my day-to-day on a on a personal basis not really there’s just more noise to sip through now yeah it’s been interesting for me I feel like the the clients I had a lot of inquiries in 2022 2023 was quieter uh but the projects that were still building you know that had good projects they kept building just quietly they were less focused on fundraising more more focused on their product and I feel like as as We’ve Ended 22 or ended 23 and ended 24 that uh suddenly everyone’s got a little more money than they did you know their crypto is their crypto is is worth more and so they say well let’s let’s deploy a bit it’s interesting one other startup that I’m working with um they’re still they have a product but it’s pre pre Revenue pre- customers and uh and one of the founders said to me he kind of wished that Bitcoin had stayed low because uh he wanted he wanted to get money in and then appreciate from there he didn’t want the appreciation to happen outside the company so different perspectives based on on the interest and on you know capital and what’s in the what’s in the wallets yeah I mean you raised an interesting point there as well um I think as the industry continues to mature um and as the The Fallout from ETF approval comes in you’re talking about Bitcoin is a treasury asset there right um this is what that founder was looking to accomplish I think it’s going to be interesting to see how that as a effectively as a use case um really changes going forward because I think a lot of the the smarter more plugged in startup Founders will start looking into novel ways to to manage treasury not just in the blockchain and web 3 space but in other areas of Technology as well I mean there’s a lot of talk around Ai and blockchain for example um there are so many tools out there composable tools that allow you to basically build your own Financial Adventure that if you’re running an early stage startup and you’re looking for novel ways to manage your Treasury and ultimately manage cash flow there’s a huge amount of opportunity out there it’s just understanding it that’s the uh the challenging thing I feel like yeah I mean you and I had talked about education a lot and I know that had been your focus when you’re working on your math um how do you feel like education has changed even in the last even in the last couple of years and obviously it’s got to be more it needs to be more the messaging needs to be better we need more consistency because as the price goes up uh we have more adoption you know we have kind of up these Peaks and troughs but I feel like overall everyone’s getting more used to it you know you hear a term you read about it in the headlines a thousand times and and eventually people get curious enough that they really want to start understanding do you feel like our education uh material are are widely available are they good enough or where do you feel like there are gaps right

now I think it’s the the same issue that we’ve had really for a couple of years in that there is a huge amount of fantastic technical education out there so if you’re a developer um and you want to get started in the ecosystem as a whole there’s a huge amount of information out there about what you can do where you can build how you can build it um existing communities that you can plug into existing projects that you can contribute to but if you’re looking more for the the business education side so like what is the bottom line impact of implementing say smart contracts as a aspect of management for example there’s not a huge amount of information out there at the moment um so I think that’s what the biggest issue is right now loads of Dev Talent loads of developer education but getting it into businesses getting it into organizations in a way that’s actually going to have an impact on corporate structure or revenue or any of the other factors that are outside of development that’s what’s lacking right now I mean what’s your perspective on that as well what do you think the the issues are there yeah the education I feel like I feel like people got a little I don’t know if it’s saturated got a little tired for a while you know and certainly that correlates with the drop in price I would say you know as the market drops people’s interest correspondingly drops because suddenly the let’s take nfts for an example you know this this startup I mentioned their whole business model is based on nfts um fortunately for them it’s on finding new utility for existing nft portfolios so it’s not necessarily creating nfts it’s not creating Hy bround nfts it’s saying you have these existing assets what more can we do to make these uh give these more utility to people and I feel like uh you know web 3 is fundamentally about Connections you know the technology underpins we’ve we’ve tried to level the playing field among people and give people equal voices uh or at least corresponding voices based on their input but certainly you know we put that out there and so I feel like uh the more people get involved the more education they need um and and the noise of the price just the the it’s so interesting with this with the the market price go always dictating people’s confidence in the in the technology it’s I would say it’s really the first time that I’ve paid attention to the to how a market dictates customer sentiment you know it’s just something that I’ve never really had on my radar before never been at at the Grassroots of something so fundamentally interesting and different like this is and and I suspect for a lot of us I mean I’m 42 and for a lot of us uh you know we were young enough through the the.com Bust It was kind of on the radar but not really you know the housing crisis bust in in ’08 I I was still in school and still didn’t feel like I had a great grasp on things and all the interconnectedness of the global economy so maybe I’m just at the point in my life now where I feel like I have enough data points that I can start forming good opinions about things whereas before I was just kind of grasping at straws so I don’t know if my my instance is typical you know you and I spent a lot of time learning about web 3 and we continue to learn about web 3 and so I would say we’ve got to be on the on the Forefront of that and and I’m not a and I’m not a coder right so as uh you know people with coding skills who can certainly go in and and start mining you know you mine some kind of new coin and if it goes somewhere great and they’ve got a good portfolio of of potential assets that grow so different motivations different skill sets so it it is interesting to see the the way that web 3 has drawn in so many different groups of people yeah and I think the the conversation around price is always an interesting one right because if you if you stop viewing tokens as tokens or coins as money right and start viewing them more through the lens of um effectively stock tickers right so these are all representative of an underlying company well not all some of them aren’t but I think the fact that there is so much discussion of price it would be like if the only thing that you spoke about in regard to say apple or Invidia or Microsoft was the share price if that was the what dominated the conversation day in day out it’s kind of understandable why the the the business application and the more serious use cases um haven’t been forthcoming because if you’re entering an industry and the only thing that people have talking about is effectively the stock prices not the underlying not what’s actually going on then it’s potentially a little bit difficult to get into um right and and with Bitcoin surpassing silver right didn’t Bitcoin become theet I mean that I don’t know if any of us saw that happening all the Bitcoin Maxis for sure but I was surprised I mean I that was just this week or last week when I read that headline and I thought that is I mean that is significant yeah and I mean just the amount of innovation that happens as well like it’s difficult to keep up with um have you been following along with what’s been going on with orinal at all inscriptions and ordinals in on bitcoin very very little I know I know enough to be mildly dangerous but what why don’t you give me a prim quick tell me what I’m missing sure so the one of the long-standing criticisms of Bitcoin um was the while the harving um whereby block rewards are reduced on a sequential basis um at set intervals does contribute to the digital scarcity right there is a finite Supply um one of the longstanding criticisms is that ultimately over time because block rewards getting smaller it means that the incentives to maintain the security of the network um are also going to be diminishing with time as well so there’s been a lot of talk around how do you increase transaction fees to the level that miners are still being incentivized um to maintain security there being paid for the hardware that they’re using the energy they’re consuming and ordinals have basically ended up being a way to do that so it allows you to inscribe data on individual Satoshi um such that you can attach script files to one aspect of a Bitcoin transaction um which allows you to then create fully onchain nfts um there’s no references to things like ipfs or R we for example you’re not hosting the data on a third party um service is actually there but this is also going on at the same time as you’ve got like the ETF approval going on at the so you’ve got so many different things happening all at the same time um that it’s it’s impossible to keep up with and that’s just one specific subsect of the industry then you’ve got different industry vertical that are appearing as well like decentralized physical infrastructure and then ordinals and inscriptions appearing on all of the chains as well just as see if they can so I get it there’s no there’s no shortage of things and uh always tell people I always tell people pick what you’re interested in if you like art if you if you like Finance you know track your favorite tokens if you like Tech find the most promising projects and and figure out what they’re doing well well we’re we’re already over time it 15 minutes goes quickly and and certainly I’m very uh very glad that you joined me today before forward to catching up again and and uh wish you well will definitely be in touch likewise Jonathan many thanks for having me and hopefully I’ve shared some tidbits of maybe useful information for the audiences as well absolutely absolutely thanks Ben we’ll see you beautiful Cheers

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