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I believe there will be a creation of a new wave of software that can leverage the cheaper trust that is achieved through the web3 stack targeting new business opportunities. These opportunities will be identified as those that are not limited by technology, but limited by trust. Early signs of that trust deficit in your customer base will be revealed as: golden handcuffs, fear of being early, cost-sensitivity to TCO.

The decentralized tech-stack will offer customers the same expected features of traditional SaaS without the cons they fear. The market unlocked for this will be beyond the existing buyers of technology today. Just like boxed software to SaaS greatly expanded the market size of software, SaaS to “Software-as-a-Token” will greatly expand the market size for software adoption globally. Price sensitive ascending markets may be the early adopters of this philosophy. SMB players who straddle enterprise requirements due to their industry (ex. small hospitals have to still comply with complex regulations) will be early adopters of this philosophy. Customers who value their soverignty and care about their TCO will be early adopters.

Companies who play this SaaT game will focus on the quality of offering and work on productization of their solution rather than the unending game to introduce new features unnecessarily. Data lock-in will not be the primary moat of long term revenue. SaaT will be similar to providing the benefits of a private cloud, but instead deploy via a decentralized cloud secured by cryptography.

The tokenization of SaaT will provide simple methodology of paying for the service as a customer uses it. But it also offers early adopters of a true product they believe in, a method of long-term assurance with their purchase. Unlike in a standard company, pre-buying doesn’t ensure the company will be around. Today, Enterprises hedge this with complex legal agreements. For ascending markets where trust is already hard to come by, a set of customers helping refine a product can literally make a unicorn.

The decentralized tech-stack will continue to evolve to eventually develop the MERN or LAMP equivalent of decentralized application development. I continue to be excited to see the innovations that happen in decentralized storage, compute, node endpoints, indexing & events, sign on, and licensing. Most importantly, I am excited, as discussed by Balaji, to see the first company provide the decentralized payment rails for client-blockchain-client applications to have a single payment protocol for all the decentralized services consumed. This would continue the acceleration of Forever Software.

Balaji’s Wise Words

The days are early for web3 and decentralized applications, but I am bullish after seeing how much progress has been made in just the last few years. As a product leader, I continue to explore the end value proposition to the customer, setting aside technical jargon. This is just the beginning for Forever Data, and Forever Software.

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