Why Web3 marketplaces will eat the web (eventually)

TL;DR. In the long run, you can’t compete with the combined network effect value of all business running on the same permissionless and open shared database.

The 2-sided marketplace business model is central to commerce on the current version of the internet. Unicorn scale companies that connect buyers with sellers exist in nearly every vertical. The only common thread uniting them is they all use the same playbook:

1. Keep users locked into your walled garden at all costs

2. Find new users using increasingly cheap equity and debt capital to reinforce said garden

3. Squeeze more out of users once monopoly is established. Bonus points for buying out competitors, and creating new regulations to make operating costs too high for new entrants.