what I learned at an Ethereum convention:2

Idea that has lingered #1: tiered accounts

The (above) slide is the UI of a Chinese virtual currency app. The speaker highlighted was how its simplicity contrasted with:

Maybe it should be called Gentle Onboarding? CO(to go with CI/CD)? IMO tiered accounts doesn't sound very nice, but let me describe what I saw:

For this Chinese app when you first sign up, as long as your total balance is below some arbitrary threshold, your account is in a starter tier. A lot of details are abstracted away, you can't do everything, but it's easy and simple.

Then, if you load more money, or want to do more complicated stuff, the onboarding continues.

And maybe this isn't new to you, but I had never heard of this presented in this way before. And of course I researched after writing most of this, and it looks like tiered accounts are very much a thing from IT / sales . I think it could potentially be an interesting pattern in open social.

Recent experience that reinforced this for me:

I'm in Buenos Aires, and someone invites me to an event by sharing a nomadtable link to the event, on that app (which I've never heard of).

It was a 5-15 minute sign up flow. I've had job interviews and dates that have asked for less information.

Why couldn't the engineers at nomadtable have the mindset:

someone finds us from a URL to a specific event. What is the minimum we need from this person (verify not spam. I think that's it?) so we can get them on their way to complete the action they obviously came here for?

That's a software experience I would remember. That would make me more likely to use nomadtable. And oh, you don't have everything you need from me to do every single thing on your platform? Ask me for what you need when I declare that intent! I won't mind!

cynical perspective

Cynically maybe nomadtable isn't using tiered accounts because they know they have something I want (the event on their platform) and so they're squeezing me for my data/lock in this moment because it's when they can get away with it. I hope I'm wrong and being cynical but I dunno.

Idea/Question that has lingered #2: what are the hard parts that could become easy vs what are the hard parts that will stay hard?

During the various panels and talks sometimes I would find myself struggling to follow details as they descended into the weeds of web3. In these moments I often found myself thinking of this excellent piece I read recently:

My first months in cyberspace

Recalling the difficulties and wonder of getting online for the first time in 1995, including diary extracts from the time.

And I found myself wondering: what parts of web3 are insanely difficult right now but could be make 1,000,000 times easier, and what parts just kinda suck?

The Gyford piece is really good and I highly recommend at least skimming it. We've gone from that world to this one in my lifetime. Now, it actually takes effort to not be on the web just by default.