🧅The onion approach to web3.
Or anything really. Just focus on peeling one itty bitty layer at a time.
The last time my brain hurt this much was probably a decade ago, when I was trying to learn Mandarin.
My husband and I had found ourselves living in Shanghai with less than a month’s notice and beyond my interest and love of languages, it was pretty clear that learning Mandarin would be necessary if we had any interest in being able to navigate daily life and work with any efficacy.
And so, twice a week, we had tutors come to our apartment in Xintiandi and walk us through tones and characters and pinyin.
To say it was hard is an understatement. For me at least, I had the benefit of having been exposed to multiple languages when I was young…. and very different ones at that - English, French, Hindi/Gujarati and even ASL. That foundation helped develop my ear and made me understand the fundamental differences in how different peoples prioritized different things when deciding what and how to communicate.
So it was easier for me than my husband but we both forget how, as adults, we rarely tax our brains like this once we’re out of school. Learning vastly new and complex concepts.
For the first couple of weeks it felt hopeless. Fast words in clipped tones flying at us. Trying to learn new sentence structures without always relying on the good ol’ “think of the phrase in English and straight translate.”
Turns out, the hardest part was learning how to think like someone that speaks Mandarin, not the actual speaking Mandarin part.
The turning point? When we stopped trying so hard and let it the language start washing over us. We asked our driver to only speak in Mandarin. We would eavesdrop on fellow diners at Din Tai Fung to see how much drama we could make out. It didn’t matter that we didn’t understand 100% of the words or the meaning. The fact that we could understand 5% gave us an anchor upon which we could build the rest, piece by piece.
Slowly, words and phrases and whole concepts started to fall into place. Until by the end of our time, I was the haggling in markets with the best of them.
What does this have to do with anything? Right. My brain. Hurting.
Trying to figure out what the fuss is all about with crypto. web3. blockchain. Whatever you want to call it.
Since last summer, I’ve ben digging and reading and asking questions.
Ten months in, and I’ve realized it’s been the same journey. The first couple of months felt hopeless. Like I had found myself on an alternate planet with people speaking an entirely different language.
But this time I knew: the problem is not the language. The hard part is learning how to see the world as a native speaker does. To see what they see. To value what they value. To emphasize what they might prioritize.
So I stopped panicking about my obtuseness and started focusing on just one layer of the onion at a time:
What is an NFT really, besides a pretty picture? What are all the ways it might be useful?
What would anyone really want a thing to be decentralized? And can it really ever be fully decentralized or is it more of a spectrum?
How can DAOs or any type of organizational structure compensate for the fact that humans will be humans, intent on power and influence and petty dramas?
Why are wallets more interesting/useful that an SSO (single sign on) mechanism?
Is the metaverse just a glorified videogame or is there something more?
By focusing on my curiosity, I started talking to people that were happily living on this foreign planet. And I started to see the world from their eyes. Not on the big picture, just one thin, translucent onion layer at a time.
I still don’t get some of the words or concepts (okay, a lot of the words and concepts). But at this point, I’ve started to construct a frame of understanding of my own. One that is actually built around the things I care about.
So I still understand less about DeFi and staking and all the financial applications but I’m started to get pretty into all things tokens and communities and incentives.
I still don’t have the full picture – though I don’t know how I could – it’s both being built and rebuilt as we speak and it’s also a complex world built over years and I’m still a bit of a tourist.
But no matter. I’ve found my corner of this place and I’m happy to keep exploring, one itty bitty layer at a time.