Net started as a simple idea and grew into something that's hard to explain in a way that captures all of it. So I want to try.
At the start, Net was just an onchain, immutable messaging protocol. Free to use, no servers, no database, no gatekeeper, where anyone could read and write data on the blockchain in a structured way. I built it because no one had really made a credibly neutral, censorship resistant, easy way to store and read indexed data onchain, and I wanted that to exist.
Once the protocol existed, I kept exploring what you could do on top of it. That turned into the bazaar, profiles, Botchan, token launching, storage, upvotes, the CDN, and more. All of those store their core data on Net, and over time other people started building their own apps and agents on the protocol too.
A lot of these started as experiments, and that was the point. Attention in crypto moves fast, and for a long time I cared less about long-term retention than about whether we could make something genuinely worth being early to, even if its moment was short.
And a lot of our experiments have worked. Net was one of the first places you could buy NFTs on chains nobody else supported, one of the first places people and agents could message fully onchain, a place to signal what's trending, and a place tokens have launched and traded their way to #1 on dexscreener. All of this, at its core, built on Net Protocol.
Some of those experiments caught a lot of attention for a window. Some didn't. A bunch still run today in a much smaller capacity, and I think that's completely fine. Part of that is a choice and part of it is just honest about what Net is. Fully onchain experiences with no database are harder to make as fluid as a normal app, and most people don't actually care that their data is immutable and lives outside a company's servers, even though that's the part some of us find most interesting.
If we ever hit something that shows real long-term retention, great, we'll lean into it. But that's not the bet. The bet is being the place where the interesting onchain experiments happen first, and the credibly neutral backbone everything can fall back to. If the apocalypse hit and only the blockchain was left standing, Net Protocol and the Net suite of onchain utilities would keep running exactly as they always have. There's real value in that.
So here's roughly where my head is at now. On top of the protocol, I think Net is best understood as three things. There are the utilities, the first-party experiences like the bazaar, profiles, Botchan, and onchain storage, which are fully onchain, usable by anyone, and permanent. There's the ecosystem, the third-party builders shipping their own apps and agents on Net using our docs, our increasingly open-source code, the CLI, and agent skills. And there's a third thing I've only recently found the right word for.
Net has always run on experimentation. It's been the culture from the very start, and it's the thing that's made it fun. We try things onchain knowing some will catch on for a week, some for a year, and some will quietly become utilities the way the bazaar did. I don't think I ever called this anything in particular, but looking at it now, it's a studio. That's what we are. It's where the energy has always lived and where it goes next. The agent skill for Net is one of these experiments. What comes after, time will tell, because Net has never had a roadmap and still doesn't. Nothing is priced into $ALPHA, because there's nothing to price. That isn't something I'm working around. It's how this has worked from the start.
What's permanent is the protocol and the data on it. What gets built on top is open-ended. Some experiments fade, some catch on and become real, and I can't tell you in advance which is which. That's the point of experiments. The foundation underneath them is the part that doesn't move.
Net Protocol is the part that lasts forever. The Net project is the part that keeps finding out what onchain can actually do 🟩
I’m not investing in $LFI.
I’m investing @MLeeJr
I’m not investing in $BNKR
I’m investing in @0xDeployer
I’m not investing in $DRB
I’m investing in @grok
Get it?
The CEO of Coinbase believes the financial system needs “open protocols that reduce middlemen”
Net Protocol is a proven open protocol with 0 middlemen that has powered $1,000,000+ in value moved across tokens, NFTs, and more
Are you paying attention? 🟩