In the winter I tripped, fell down a rabbit hole, and unexpectedly found myself in some of the most exciting social circles I can remember. I’ve been in technology for over a decade at this point: long enough to have once been wide-eyed and optimistic, to have spent many years wandering through a period of alienation, and to have seen the light once more.

In every direction I turn I see kind, generous, collaborative, conscientious, visionary geniuses. Somehow I tricked them into being my friends, too.

Today I look into the future and see the glimmers of the utopian society I first hoped technology could bring about. “How naive you were!”, I’ve sneered at myself in the years since as a handful of exploitative & extractive corporations strengthened their domination of the industry.

Today that cynicism feels like an ancient memory, just like the period of deep burnout that seeded it.

Legacy Silicon Valley’s fatal flaw is its zero-sum competitiveness necessitating unbounded growth and the crushing of competition. We have an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

All of the bleeding-edge web3 projects are powerfully aligned and inherently better as part of an ecosystem than in isolation. Rather than compete, we collaborate: a technical “Yes, and…” benefiting the whole world rather than trying to own it.

In this world there is so much alignment already, and yet so much uncharted territory we get to joyfully explore together in the years ahead of us as see how virtuous our circles might become.