Thesis 2: Building new primitives to power new experiences

"Primitive" is a term proudly used by Web 3 builders to describe a piece of modular software (and maybe down the line hardware too!) that can be used across multiple application or protocol settings. People love primitives because in an open-built setting, they can stack new use cases permissionlessly on the original stack and expand with more features.

Liquidity primitives:

• LP tokens born out of the AMM liquidity served as a liquidity lego that increases capital efficiency via liquidity borrowing and lending protocols;

• Liquid staking tokens like stETH have unlocked new ways for stakers to increase their capital efficiency and new market liquidity based on previously locked value;

• veTokens enable market pricing of liquidity and more market-driven distribution of liquidity for trading pair pools and further governance/bribery tools built on top of the vote escrow model; etc.

Social primitives:

• NFT profiles have been used on EVM blockchains and favored by some developers as they are transferrable and updatable. They serve as an onchain identity token that can exist across multiple applications. Lens and Cyberconnect have adopted this system of identity for tens of thousands of users;

• Onchain credentials (POAP, SBT, OAT, etc.) in their current instantiation have been used as a badge for onchain and offchain event attendance and proof-of-contribution that could be used for retroactive rewards. Millions of credentials have been claimed on various badge systems such as Galaxy and QuestN;

• Public Key Account (PKA) is a primitive that is long-existent but yet less utilized as it is not as modular in integrability as NFT profiles. However, it is a much more adopted primitive as tens of millions of users are already using Web 3 wallets and own these accounts. Its primary challenge in being a more favorable social primitive would be the modularity of onchain data associated with the wallet account; etc.

Primitives are infrastructural software that powers application-level software. Without new primitives, there would not be new applications that provide new experiences, value, and opportunities for users. There are still significant primitives needed for the mass adoption of Web 3 and the features that are currently in demand by Web 3 native users.

We are cultivating a growing pipeline of primitives to achieve that goal:

• Composable NFT / Dynamic NFT: based on the Move Object Model, NFTs that can interact with external environments (metadata, onchain data, or any other Move objects) can empower new use cases such as interactive and upgradable in-game items, dynamic PFPs, identity and profile, new SBT use cases, etc. We believe this will be the next NFT meta. See Composable NFT.

• Mini-apps: based on the open-source H5 framework, mini-apps can play a powerful role in helping communities launching more assets and experiences directly in a social network. We are currently creating an H5-based mini-app standard that offers 1-click UX with transactions to empower more developers and communities to launch more assets and experiences. See Mini-app.