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This is a dilution of the word gas-lighting. Yes, that deck has the dual purpose of "rationalizing" their investments in web3, which don't need rationalizing a

This is a dilution of the word gas-lighting. Yes, that deck has the dual purpose of "rationalizing" their investments in web3, which don't need rationalizing at all because they are insanely profitable, as they pump their prior rounds with new investor money in future rounds, as they really leverage the anti-dilution provisions of their OpenSea investment hard. Every rebuttal written web2 in that article applies to web3 as well: > YouTube gets to charge 45% because they’ve built a platform that directs billions of users to watch videos they’re likely to be interested in. If you don’t need your video-hosting platform to help you acquire viewer traffic, then you don’t need to share as much of your revenue. OpenSea gets to charge 2.5% because they've built a platform that directs hundreds of thousands of users to browse NFTs they're likely to be interested in. If you don't need your NFT marketplace platform to help you acquire viewer traffic, then you don't need to share as much of your revenue. Its whatever. I'm glad they released the deck. It is worth scrutinizing simply by questioning the source, but treat it as an informative piece to dig a little deeper in. "Oh no some figures in a slide deck couldn't be compared 1:1" eh, okay. that's all that is.

Liron 4y ago
I admit it's a slight stretch, but I do think there's something gaslighting about it. The reader is expected to think they're reading a valid argument put together by a top research analyst whom they can trust to follow basic standards of competence, and not notice their own inner voice objecting that the numbers on the slide are logical non-sequiturs that wouldn't even be acceptable in the context of a high school class presentation. I don't get what context could possibly make OpenSea's take rate vs YouTube's take rate make logical sense. If a realtor charges a 3% commission to help sell your house, are they less extortionist than Meta? If Robinhood charges 0% commission on trades, are they less extortionist than OpenSea? I would say it's gaslighting to the extent that "the emperor has no clothes" is an instance of gaslighting.
- vmception 4y ago
  Your primary point is about the metrics for free services. They obviously cant be compared 1:1 to services that charge any commission. We agree about that. There are many people that feel like their data should be valuable, so that sentiment allows for us to relate to Meta and Robinhood’s “take-rate” being 100%, because they arent giving us a cut of the data. That slidedeck was merely hopping on that sentiment.
nhinck 4y ago
>Every rebuttal written web2 in that article applies to web3 as well: Yes that's kind of the point. It's actively dishonest to attribute the difference to web3 vs web2. If OpenSea thought they could get away with taking a 45% commission they would do it.
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  The reason OpenSea can't charge 45% is that it's web3, which entails being "open database". Competitors like LooksRare can appear out of nowhere and transact with the exact same data (the ethereum blockchain) and compete on price. OpenSea does have some advantages of network effects and has been able to mostly fend off LooksRare, despite charging a 2.5% vs LR's 2% marketplace fee. There's no way they could have done so if they charged 25% and users could save 23% on every transaction by moving to LooksRare. Similarly, if Airbnb were "open database" and anybody on the internet could build a competitor that used the same data set, there's no way they could take the high fees they currently do. They don't have to, since they're web2, though. All the data about hosts, guests and ratings is in their database and they don't have to share it with incumbents. Social media companies would feel this, too. A huge part of their lock-in is that they own the social graph. It would be a very different situation if that data were on-chain and anyone who wanted to could write a different front-end to surface the same data (some cloning the look and feel closely and other choosing to surface different subsets of the data in different ways).
  - Liron 4y ago
    Shared data is a choice any company can make in web2 or web3. The ability to share data in a blockchain rather than an API and regular downloadable data dumps changes nothing about the strategic business implications of shared data. For a detailed example of what I mean by business dynamics being unrelated to the database layer, see my post about Twitter vs a hypothetical web3 version [0] [0] https://medium.com/bloated-mvp/why-web3s-shared-data-across-applications-doesn-t-matter-e0281d3f70d2 https://medium.com/bloated-mvp/why-web3s-shared-data-across-...
    - 4y ago

Liron 4y ago

I admit it's a slight stretch, but I do think there's something gaslighting about it. The reader is expected to think they're reading a valid argument put together by a top research analyst whom they can trust to follow basic standards of competence, and not notice their own inner voice objecting that the numbers on the slide are logical non-sequiturs that wouldn't even be acceptable in the context of a high school class presentation. I don't get what context could possibly make OpenSea's take rate vs YouTube's take rate make logical sense. If a realtor charges a 3% commission to help sell your house, are they less extortionist than Meta? If Robinhood charges 0% commission on trades, are they less extortionist than OpenSea? I would say it's gaslighting to the extent that "the emperor has no clothes" is an instance of gaslighting.

vmception 4y ago
Your primary point is about the metrics for free services. They obviously cant be compared 1:1 to services that charge any commission. We agree about that. There are many people that feel like their data should be valuable, so that sentiment allows for us to relate to Meta and Robinhood’s “take-rate” being 100%, because they arent giving us a cut of the data. That slidedeck was merely hopping on that sentiment.

nhinck 4y ago

>Every rebuttal written web2 in that article applies to web3 as well: Yes that's kind of the point. It's actively dishonest to attribute the difference to web3 vs web2. If OpenSea thought they could get away with taking a 45% commission they would do it.

AlchemistCamp 4y ago
The reason OpenSea can't charge 45% is that it's web3, which entails being "open database". Competitors like LooksRare can appear out of nowhere and transact with the exact same data (the ethereum blockchain) and compete on price. OpenSea does have some advantages of network effects and has been able to mostly fend off LooksRare, despite charging a 2.5% vs LR's 2% marketplace fee. There's no way they could have done so if they charged 25% and users could save 23% on every transaction by moving to LooksRare. Similarly, if Airbnb were "open database" and anybody on the internet could build a competitor that used the same data set, there's no way they could take the high fees they currently do. They don't have to, since they're web2, though. All the data about hosts, guests and ratings is in their database and they don't have to share it with incumbents. Social media companies would feel this, too. A huge part of their lock-in is that they own the social graph. It would be a very different situation if that data were on-chain and anyone who wanted to could write a different front-end to surface the same data (some cloning the look and feel closely and other choosing to surface different subsets of the data in different ways).
- Liron 4y ago
  Shared data is a choice any company can make in web2 or web3. The ability to share data in a blockchain rather than an API and regular downloadable data dumps changes nothing about the strategic business implications of shared data. For a detailed example of what I mean by business dynamics being unrelated to the database layer, see my post about Twitter vs a hypothetical web3 version [0] [0] https://medium.com/bloated-mvp/why-web3s-shared-data-across-applications-doesn-t-matter-e0281d3f70d2 https://medium.com/bloated-mvp/why-web3s-shared-data-across-...
  - 4y ago