Forwarding the original title: “a16z: Misconceptions about Crypto Assets Applications, the Three Misunderstood Truths”

Just a few weeks ago, Alex Blania, the founder of World, revealed the latest strategic card in front of a full house of crypto bigwigs. While leveraging policy tailwinds to make a splash in the U.S. market is eye-catching, the real stroke of genius is their lightning breakthrough into mainstream consumer scenarios. This marks that Crypto Assets are shedding the “geek club” label and truly entering the battleground of everyday business.

World’s move is quite ruthless: it is actually difficult to fool Americans into using iris scans to exchange for a “real person certification badge”, even with promises of privacy protection (besides, the timing might be too early). But they have quietly done something big: over the past three years, they have secretly laid down three layers of insurance for this crazy plan.

First, create real product value, then sweeten it with tokens.

World also took an old path in its early days: relying on Token incentives to attract new users. However, this method, which is praised as the “successful paradigm of Bitcoin” and later copied by countless projects, is actually a case of reversed causality. In the early tests, World fell into a pitfall— the incentives were too strong; users did come, but the privacy circle and some developers began to criticize: “This is not called growth, this is called using profits as a fig leaf.”

But don’t forget that the reason Bitcoin has come this far is that from the very beginning it provided an unprecedented asset logic: decentralization, fixed supply, and independence from central bank control. Indeed, the miner rewards and the myth of soaring prices attracted early speculators, and later also drew in institutions and nations. However, what the true builders who remained valued was not the “get-rich-quick expectation,” but rather its radical potential as a completely new asset and payment system.

Most of the projects that later copied the gameplay are now waiting for burial in the “graveyard” of the crypto world.

The crypto world is not exempt from the basic laws of economics. Just like any entrepreneurial project, first create a real and usable product, and then use a Token to solve the cold start or ecological incentive issues. Otherwise, no matter how many economic models there are, they are just empty talk.

Blania presented three real pain points this time as evidence: the fields of social networking, gaming, and credit, where bots are rampant and it is difficult to distinguish between humans and machines. Thus, he put the World’s “real person verification” system on the table and clarified why it is worth using your iris to scan a sphere to obtain a “I am a real person” ticket.

In an era where AI is rapidly invading everything, we will sooner or later face the certification requirement of “Are you human?” World is just one step ahead.

Learn to cope with “Infrastructure Reversal”

In the early days of the crypto boom, we all jumped in. When I was designing the Bitcoin experiment at MIT, I genuinely believed that it would completely disrupt the payment and financial systems within two to three years. Ten years later, we have only just begun.

To truly push crypto products beyond the circle, it is necessary to align with the experience that traditional users and merchants are already accustomed to. This means building a bridge between the old systems and new technologies. However, this bridge often requires making some compromises that may seem heretical in the eyes of “crypto purists.”

But at this stage, there’s no escaping it. You must go through that awkward period of “coexistence of old and new”—what Andreas Antonopoulos calls infrastructure inversion. Imagine this: dial-up internet hogging the phone line, the first rickety car rattling over gravel roads, it just doesn’t sound right.

This “technological wall period” makes it difficult for the new system to be widely implemented at the beginning, and it can only patch certain niche scenarios, making it impossible to talk about disrupting the entire system. The AI field also faces similar dilemmas.

World initially tried to skip this stage, directly launching the token as the main character. But now the new version has completely turned around: embracing “infrastructure inversion”, returning to product usability, and moving more steadily and deeply.

Don’t fantasize about creating a wallet that can be used globally without integrating with the old systems. Deposits and withdrawals need to be as smooth as PayPal made online payments back in the day; otherwise, how can it become mainstream?

This is why the new version of the World App integrates with Stripe and Visa cards as soon as it launches. Trust, familiarity, and practicality are all in place in one day. It is also because it is willing to be “backward compatible” that traditional finance has the opportunity to observe and test the waters, rather than being directly eliminated.

This logic is quietly pushing encryption towards the background of cross-border payments. In the future, perhaps technology can step into the spotlight, but before that, it must first “borrow” on the old track, streamline the processes, and minimize friction.

Don’t forget, many encryption mechanisms (including economic models) only have magic when scaled. But to achieve scale, someone has to get on board. Without even a ramp to get on, no matter how perfect the model is, it will just be running in place.

Whether encryption can succeed ultimately depends on its practical application.

Like all new technologies, encryption is not destined to win. Don’t believe the myths propagated by those self-satisfied fans. To be more specific, “decentralization,” the soul pillar of this encryption, as well as its most critical contribution to disrupting the market, has never been a foregone conclusion.

Stablecoins are a good example.

In order to connect to traditional financial systems, the encryption world has produced such a tool, which is indeed useful. But with it comes the problem: the specter of centralized management and closed networks has returned.

I tend to believe that open architecture will ultimately prevail, but don’t forget that those “vested interests” have no reason to make it easy for you to pass.

Blania and his team made a big bet: they wagered that users care about the decentralized control of data, and they also bet that companies will build a better user experience on this system. Once decentralized identity disrupts the existing landscape, how difficult will it be to manage - centralized players already have a natural advantage in UX and functionality.

So if World wants to take a shortcut, the first step is to convince users to be willing to give up their biometric data. The U.S. market has already started, and soon we will see if they can find a balance between “privacy vs convenience.”

Of course, a gentler “boarding method” might be smarter: for example, first issuing a familiar “certification badge” that can unlock additional features in your commonly used apps. Don’t rush to have people immediately focus on the sphere to scan their irises. The problem is that this approach makes identity verification less reliable, making it easy to be exploited, circumvented, or misused.

Blania’s judgment may not be wrong. In this endless cat-and-mouse game with AI, only military-grade biometrics can serve as the truly “unbreakable” proof of a real person. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be a bit gentler; there’s no need to push users hard into the sphere on the first day.

Of course, those who are participating in the airdrop will queue up for the online launch, but this wave of sweet excitement will last at most a few days; once the subsidies stop, the enthusiasm will dissipate. Real sustainable growth exists only in the daily realization of value, and that is their true opportunity.

If the World App can break the circle with its payment experience, combined with seamless global deposit and withdrawal channels, it may truly create a breakout point.

Conclusion

Now it seems they have staked the whole rhythm. Next, there is only one thing we need to watch:

Can the crypto world really break into the mainstream market?

Regardless of whether the World experiment ultimately succeeds or fails, I hope to see more crypto projects willing to shift the spotlight away from “token economics” and “price fluctuations” to truly create products that are usable in everyday life.

Although this shift is neither sexy nor lively, it is the necessary step that the entire industry must take to enter the mainstream market.

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