https://medium.com/bloated-mvp/a16z-is-gaslighting-us-ea4161de2969 Get unlimited access Open in app Home Notifications Lists Stories --------------------------------------------------------------------- Write Bloated MVP Published in Bloated MVP Liron Shapira Liron Shapira Follow May 17 * 4 min read a16z Is Gaslighting Us Today a16z published their 2022 State of Crypto Report. For such an intelligent and successful firm, they really seem to be struggling with the basic task of presenting logically-coherent evidence to support their claims. In this post I'll just focus on a couple slides, 39 and 40, because I think that's enough to raise major questions about what a16z thinks they're doing. [1] Slide 39 [1] Slide 40 Here's a16z's accompanying text: The take-rates of web2 giants are extortionate; web3 platforms offer fairer economic terms. (See slide 39 in the deck.) Compare Meta's nearly 100% take-rates across Facebook and Instagram to NFT marketplace OpenSea's 2.5%. As U.S. Congressman Ritchie Torres noted in a recent op-ed, "You know something is profoundly wrong with our economy when Big Tech has a higher take rate than the mafia." ...In 2021, primary sales of Ethereum-based NFTs (ERC-721 and ERC-1155), plus the royalties paid to creators from secondary sales on OpenSea, yielded a total of $3.9 billion. That's quadruple the $1 billion -- less than 1% of revenues -- that Meta has earmarked for creators through 2022. I find it stunning to read this so-called "analysis" coming from one of the top VC firms in the world. The fact that Meta's free ad-supported social network doesn't pay content producers to use it means that Meta is "extortionate" and "100% commission", and directly comparable to the 2.5% commission that OpenSea charges on NFT sales? What are they expecting readers to conclude here? "Case closed, Web3 commissions are 40x lower than Web2 commissions. 2.5% vs 100%. There's no hope for any social product that doesn't use blockchain technology to close this 97.5% gap!" It's nonsensical. Have they tried thinking for five seconds about why the "take rates" are what they are? YouTube gets to charge 45% because they've built a platform that directs billions of users to watch videos they're likely to be interested in. If you don't need your video-hosting platform to help you acquire viewer traffic, then you don't need to share as much of your revenue. E.g. Vimeo provides tools for monetizing hosted videos and their take rate is only 10% plus transaction fees. And of course, just making your own website with an HTML