MVTs before MVPs
And a worthy alternative to Ethereum
What do Stripe and crypto games have in common? They are both democratizing earning potential for the underdogs.
An Ethereum alternative as gas wars rage
From Almanack, by Nat Eliason
💰 As NFT popularity surges, so do Ethereum gas prices. Solana is emerging as a solution.
Solana’s DeFi ecosystem is fast, cheap and independent. No gas worries, no bridging from Ethereum.
While there aren’t quite as many options compared to Ethereum (…yet), it’s a perfect place to start if you’re considering going deeper into crypto.
If interfacing with Ethereum’s Layer 2 become easier, Solana could lose some of its competitive advantage.
Play to earn
From The Jungle Gym, by Nick deWilde
🎮 While China is restricting online gaming to 3 hours a week, new play-to-earn games are doing the exact opposite in developing countries around the world.
Axie Infinity rewards time spent on the game with real-world value crypto tokens, in many cases more than doubling a person’s income from previous, minimum wage jobs.
Games with the biggest payouts could potentially set a new world-wide minimum wage.
The best platforms will be those that hide any feeling of ‘work’ and keep users highly engaged.
Tournament fever in the NBA
From Huddle Up, by Joseph Pompliano
🏀 Average viewership of the NBA fell to pre-2017 levels. The NBA is looking to address this.
They are planning an in-season tournament, giving each player the chance to walk away with $1 million in prize money.
It’s modeled after tournaments run in European soccer leagues
Is $1 million enough to motivate our worlds best players to take part? The median NBA salary sits at $2.96 million.
Viewership will only increase if fans receive intense action-packed games which players actually take seriously.
Focus on MVTs before MVPs
From First Round Review, by Gagan Biyani
📈 It is possible to test if people want your product before making the product.
Test specific hypotheses of a market plus their credibility with MVTs (Minimum Viable Tests). MVT’s don’t try to look like the final product but are instead tests which must pass for a business to succeed.
Find you value proposition (keep ideas very simple)
List risky assumptions (#1 is assuming you have something people want)
Test the atomic unit (one risky assumption at a time)
If there’s no path to success, avoid the urge to move forward. MVTs won’t prevent failure, but they will increase chances for success.
Stripe and the creator economy
From Creator Economy, by Peter Yang
💳 Stripe wants to be the financial home of creators.
Key points are: diversification of income, ease of accepting payments, ease of sending payouts anywhere in the world
Stripe doesn’t believe in a one-size-fits all world and is continuously listening to creators’ diverse needs.
Too early to say how creators will feel about whatever they end up offering.
Extra Reading
The growth loop of billion-dollar companies (Lenny’s Newsletter, by Lenny Rachitsky)
Navigating Web 3 (Divinations, by Nathan Baschez)
Atlassian deep dive (First 1000, by Ali Abouelatta)
Diamonds are not forever (The Curiosity Chronicle, by Sahil Bloom)
Taking advantage of retail investors (Napkin Math, by Evan Armstrong)