# Network Effect Articoli collegati

a16z Crypto Partner: Cash Flow is the Moat

Cash Flow as the Moat: A Playbook for Crypto Founders Historically, the most enduring businesses have been built by positioning themselves within the "flow of funds"—facilitating the creation and transfer of value in a network and extracting a portion of it. Cryptocurrency is the first modern technology natively built for this purpose. For startups, failing to architect products and businesses to leverage these principles means missing a major opportunity. Blockchains are inherently network businesses. Each transaction settles on a shared ledger, and every new participant strengthens the underlying network for all. Well-designed network tokens amplify this by aligning users, developers, and validators around growing the network, with value flowing back to contributors in a transparent feedback loop. This model is not new; companies from railroads and Standard Oil to Google, Meta, and AWS have thrived by inserting themselves into critical flows of value (goods, attention, compute). Financial markets make it even clearer: firms like Visa and major market makers generate immense revenue not by predicting markets but by being in the path of transactions. The combination of fund flow and network effects creates one of the most durable business structures. The high margins in traditional finance (payments, custody, lending, FX) represent prime targets. Crypto founders have the opportunity to build the next version—programmable, instant, global, and natively in the flow of funds. The frontier extends beyond finance to areas like computing/GPUs, AI training data, energy, robotics, and space—markets without entrenched intermediaries, ripe for building new, efficient value rails on programmable infrastructure. Founders should ask: Are you in the flow of funds today? Does your revenue scale 10x with the value of activity on your platform? Where in your target market are profit margins highest relative to value created? The opportunity is clear: embed your startup into the new flows of value and let the network effects accumulate.

marsbit9 h fa

Don't Worry, USDC and USDT's Public Chains Won't Shake Ethereum

marsbit02/27 12:23

Public Chain Moat Only 3/10? Alliance DAO Founder's Remarks Ignite Crypto Community Debate

Alliance DAO founder qw (@QwQiao) sparked intense debate in the crypto community by claiming that Layer 1 blockchains have "limited moats," rating them only 3/10 in terms of sustainable competitive advantage. This triggered strong reactions from key industry figures. Dragonfly Capital partner Haseeb strongly disagreed, arguing that Ethereum’s decade-long dominance despite well-funded challengers proves its strong moat. Others, like Multicoin’s Kyle Samani and researchers from Ethereum and Circle, questioned whether liquidity alone constitutes a real moat, with some calling it fleeting and unreliable. In response, qw elaborated on his moat rating framework, giving traditional giants like Microsoft, Apple, and Visa perfect scores (10/10) based on revenue models and infrastructure, while rating top crypto projects around 5/10. He notably rated Bitcoin at 9/10, citing its unique founding story and Lindy effect, but deducted a point due to uncertainties around security and quantum threats. The debate expanded into what truly constitutes a moat in crypto. Critics argued qw’s framework overemphasizes current revenue and undervalues network effects, trust, and technological ethos. Defenders of blockchain moats pointed to elements like developer ecosystems, brand strength, switching costs, and application diversity as core defensive attributes. The article concludes that the crypto industry is still young and small compared to traditional finance and tech giants. Rather than fixating on abstract moat concepts, the priority should be solving real user needs at scale, driving adoption, and expanding overall market reach.

marsbit12/13 03:06