A Blockchain Developer’s Guide to Navigating the Future of Web3

Is it possible to filter through the noise to find the signals that actually matter?

Being in the blockchain space feels like oscillating between dizzying whirlwinds of confusion and vomit-inducing neck-slapping.

If you’ve gone through these stages multiple times over the years, yet keep coming back for more like a crazed maniac, you’re probably addicted to the sweet dopamine rush of the potential satisfaction of exploiting a bunch of incipient, cutting-edge technologies that most people don’t fully understand yet.

Yes, I’m talking about industrial leaders and people who invented the technology here – so if you’re a muggle living a fairly mundane life like most of humanity, you have little chance of understanding any of it.

Now, if you’re a blockchain developer who’s constantly learning and building cool tools and projects, you probably have a much better chance of predicting the future than your average street psychic. But remember what Niels Bohr said, “prediction is very difficult, especially if it is about the future.”

This is not about developers getting the future right. This is a bit about developers getting the future wrong.

History is full of endless examples and case studies of the most qualified experts getting exactly what their expertise is supposed to prevent them from making mistakes. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once told USA Today there was “no chance that the iPhone is going to gain any significant market share.”

Consider the fact that many blockchain developers are exhausted, overworked, myopic for their technology stack and of course undervalued.

This means overmatch effect is also at stake here. Suddenly we are all trapped inside one filter bubble (curated by dusty, passionate supercomputers) without even realizing it.

Don’t forget the fact that instead of admitting mistakes or cutting losses, people are also prone to doubling down on a losing idea or project, or technology stack, until it’s too late.

Edison may have invented the phonograph, but how many people know that Eldridge Reeves Johnsona self-taught engineer who realized the potential of the phonograph did something far more significant: he invented the record industry, but no one knows about him.

Just because one is an expert or an inventor of a technology does not mean they are the one who will make it successful or relevant. Don’t blindly trust or follow experts – including in the blockchain space.

The phenomenon at the heart of it all

Pay extra attention and identify all the biases committed on autopilot every day.

Most predictions about the future are wrong. Blockchain will play a crucial role in the future, but not in a linear or gradual way. Blockchain will cause sudden and violent upheavals in ecosystems, technologies, models and beliefs. This is similar to what happens in nature when new species appear.

At the heart of what drives all this change is a mysterious and magical phenomenon known as emergence.

Emergence is what happens when a multitude of small things – neurons, bacteria, individuals – exhibit properties beyond the capabilities of a single individual. This happens simply by making a few basic, binary choices like “left or right?” “buy or sell?” Solidity or CosmWasm?’ Ethereum or Cosmos? Blockchain or SQL? Taylor Swift or Doja Cat?

Even though we are not aware of it, it is happening within us, around us and all over the cosmos… at all times.

Ant colonies are a classic example of emergence in action since the collective intelligence of the colony is exponentially greater than any individual ant. The colony can detect food, know when to take evasive action, and even know the exact number of ants to deploy to obtain food or ward off an attack.

The human brain is another example. Each neuron is not conscious or very smart on its own, but when connected together, the collective intelligence is so powerful and conscious that a person can even think about thinking!

Blockchains are another example. The governance and financial design, the consensus algorithm, the security model, the community’s collective values, and all the binary decisions made by everyone, including every involved developer and community member—all help catalyze emergent behavior. Emergence is studied the easier it becomes to spot in everyday life.

Once someone sees it, they can’t remove it. Any system that exhibits these characteristics is known as an emergent system – which in turn are systems that start with simple parts that make simple choices, then eventually evolve into a complex whole that is exponentially more complicated than the sum of all the simple parts which originally started it all.

And here’s the mysterious part about it: the trajectory of emerging systems is virtually impossible to predict because they are immutable and changing, constant and fluctuating, persistent and changing, inevitable and unpredictable at the same time – basically a freeze frame for how blockchain ecosystems have evolved, will evolve, and is currently evolving right before our eyes.

Emergence is one of the most important reasons Ken Olson, Steve Ballmer, and even Thomas Edison got the future wrong. Pay attention and uncover all the new features and characteristics of the system you interact with and see how you can influence them – especially if you are a blockchain developer building the future of the digital economy.

Because all your “unimportant” binary decisions, like what technologies you use, what you build with those technologies, and who you go with, will definitely degenerate into something completely different and unpredictable as time goes on.

In my opinion, the most important variable a blockchain developer should consider is whether their personal values ​​and vision for the future are aligned with the people, communities and technologies they decide to partner with – not just hypothetically, but actually coded into the very fabric of their chain and ecosystem from the ground up.