Take aways：

• Characteristics categorized as 2
  • Smart contract
    • Unstoppable, Immutable
    • Permissionless, Frictionless
    • Credibly neutral
  • Value
    • Not short term money, but broader ecosystem value, fair sharing
    • Free to use, only gas fee
    • Value flows to who created it
    • Positive sum
• How to build Hyperstructure?
  • Network/moat：Be the best, no need to rebuild it
    • Liquidity like UNI
    • Data like ENS
    • Ownership where possible, governance where only necessary, but not too much of them
    • Long build cycle

By jacob ❍

Published January 16, 2022

After spending 2 years working on Zora, I’ve come to realize how distinct our approach is. This difference comes from a fundamentally new mental model of what’s possible (and already happening) with crypto protocols.

The nature of crypto protocols opens up radically expansive new models to create invaluable public infrastructure. This view is so distinct that I think it warrants new language.

In this essay I outline the concept of Hyperstructures: what they are, how they work and why they will be the basis of the internet for the next decades to come.

Paolo Soleri's "hyperstructure" in ground-level view. The figure to the right is the Empire State Building at the same scale.

Definition

Hyperstructure

Crypto protocols that can run for free and forever, without maintenance, interruption or intermediaries.

Blockchains have led to the emergence of a new type of infrastructure called “Hyperstructures”.

Hyperstructures take the form of protocols that run on blockchains. Something can be considered a hyperstructure if it is:

• Unstoppable: the protocol cannot be stopped by anyone. It runs for as long as the underlying blockchain exists.
• Free: there is a 0% protocol wide fee and runs exactly at gas cost.
• Valuable: accrues value which is accessible and exitable by the owners.