went to Oxford for a formal dinner
it was this pretentious 4 course high society meal
and there it was… dubai chocolate was on the dessert menu
mind blown 🤯
Today, we’re launching Pond AI Studio and Pond Markets—new offerings to support early-stage AI projects, founders, indie developers, and aspiring builders.
From infrastructure and token launches on @base to go-to-market and acceleration—it’s all here now, in one platform.
Building this point out a bit more...
Crypto’s history is full of ambitious attempts to “rebuild Web2 on Web3”. A decentralized Twitter, a blockchain Airbnb, a P2P Uber. The pitch decks are slick. The intention is good. But in most cases, the result is underwhelming.
Why?
Because using a blockchain shouldn’t be the feature. It should be the foundation. The simple truth is this: if crypto doesn’t fundamentally improve the user experience or unlock a new use case, there’s no reason to rebuild an existing Web2 product onchain.
Why? Because most Web2 products already have:
Fast UX
Trusted infrastructure
Enormous network effects
Clear, centralized paths to dispute resolution
When you take that same product and put it on a blockchain, you often trade all of that for
Higher latency
Worse UX
Poorer performance
Governance ambiguity
And no new user benefit
Decentralization is not a value proposition on its own, it’s a tradeoff. And users only accept tradeoffs when they get something better in return. Instead of asking, “Can we build X onchain?”, We should be asking: “What products are fundamentally better when they’re built on crypto rails?”. Some examples where the answer is yes:
Stablecoin payments → open, borderless, censorship-resistant financial rails
Prediction markets → censorship-resistant access to truth-seeking financial primitives
Tokenized social graphs → transferable reputation and programmable incentives across platforms
Each of these use cases works because they leverage the unique properties of blockchains: Trustlessness, Permissionlessness, Composability, Programmability, Global accessibility. These are not nice-to-haves. They’re requirements for the product to even exist in its best form.
Forget Recreating. Start Inventing.
I spent nearly a decade working in traditional financial markets, where efficiency, speed, and user trust are built into the system by design. If there’s one thing that experience taught me, it’s this: you don’t move value onto a slower, clunkier, more complex system unless there’s a very good reason. The only reason to build on crypto rails is if they unlock something new. Not just because they’re novel, but because they offer properties that the old system simply can’t. That’s the bar. And it’s the one we should be holding ourselves to in this space.
the @formacity fellowship is high signal.
our cohort is filled with kind, smart and helpful people. the content is also banger.
last time I did something like this with @beondeck, i made friends for life.
couldn't be more excited