The Everything Token

My thoughts on reading The Everything Token

I recently finished reading The Everything Token by Steve Kaczynski and Scott Kominers. This book added a bit more to my hopes of a future heavily involved in blockchain.

Scott regularly hosts talks with the blockchain community and worked with Starbucks on their NFT-based rewards program Odyssey. Steve is on the research team at a16z and a professor at Harvard Business School. Both are fantastic communicators who break down complex topics in an approachable manner.

What's The Book About?

NFTs have the reputation of being expensive JPGs, but they have so much more potential. The Everything Token sheds light on their true potential. They can be much more useful than simply a method to document digital ownership.

Steve and Scott break down potential into three parts: The Next Digital Revolution, Ascending The Staircase, and Putting It All Together. Each of these parts builds on the previous.

The Next Digital Revolution

I found this part to be the most meaningful in the book. It wasn't new information per se, but it did rekindle some of my initial hopes for blockchain.

Living In Someone Else's Apartment

I've come to realize that society has stumbled into a strange place, at least here in the circles that live online. We've moved into the metaverse. I don't mean the three-dimensional world that my previous employer, Meta, is hoping to bring about. I’m talking about the digital world we exist in right now, here in this article and in many other aspects of our everyday lives.

Many of who we are and the personas we invest time in are digital, and we don't own them.

That's a scary thought. The authors use the metaphor of renting and furnishing an apartment. All the items you bring into the apartment must stay there when you leave.

Our digital lives are becoming more like this as well. We furnish our profiles, and if and when we choose to move to a new place, we must leave everything behind, all of the memories and work we put in to start fresh.

That's a concerning thought. Why can't we take what is ours with us?

One solution to this issue is ownership through digital tokens, and NFTs can be those tokens. Blockchain technology enables provable ownership of digital assets, but that's not all.

You Wouldn't Download A Car

Maybe you remember the old days when piracy was the scourge of the internet. Ads like this were common.

The worry of piracy illustrates one of the fundamental issues with digital media: You can make infinite identical copies with little effort. While the music industry struggled with this issue until streaming made piracy mostly obsolete, the ability to duplicate digital items still exists.

The authors discuss event tickets and the massive amounts of trust needed to buy them on the secondary market. Purchasing a physical item is easy: You exchange money for the item, and you know that you are the only person in possession of it.

Digital items don't have definitive owners. If you buy anything digital, you must trust that the person selling it to you didn’t just make a copy. I’m not sure about you, but I’ve had some dealings in the past in digital marketplaces, and I would not want to rely on the trustworthiness of the individuals I was interacting with.

Ascending The Staircase

Part two of this book steps from the abstract world of what NFTs can do and their ability to display ownership into the practical.

Scott and Steve do a fantastic job of illustrating just how useful NFTs can be. Tokens are great, but once you start to add utility to them, that's where the magic starts to happen.

Holy Utility Batman!

Cool, so I own this NFT thing, but so what? It’s just some 1s and 0s on a bunch of computers.

Without utility, it’s just a token pointing to some data that belongs to a wallet. Sprinkle in a little bit of utility, and everything changes, just like that kid with butter on his corn. What types of utility could there be? There are a few recurring benefits that are in use today.

Experiences: admission to events like concerts and conferences.

Opportunities: influence story arcs and access special locations.

Intellectual Property: use and license your NFT imagery.

Discounts: access to paywalled content or reduced rates on products.

Digital Goods: in-game items or digital content.

Physical Goods: redeem digital tokens for real-world items.

All of these are real benefits. They might have different valuations, but they are examples of what is currently being done with NFTs. They are much more than expensive pictures of monkeys.

Putting It All Together

While the last section of the book provides a detailed roadmap for launching NFT projects, my primary interest lies in understanding their broader implications and potential.

What's Next

The Everything Token pushes the idea that NFTs should be used for everything, as the name implies. While that’s possible, I fall back on my view of intentionality in technology. Anything digital that could be owned could be an NFT, but that doesn't mean it should be.

I'm inspired and excited to see a future where digital ownership is common, but I still believe technology shouldn't be applied to everything.

Only apply it where it adds value and makes sense.

If you are interested in blockchain and what it could mean for our future in an increasingly digital world, read this book.

What are your thoughts on the potential of NFTs and blockchain technology? Share your opinions and experiences in the comments below!