NFTs, Peer-to-Peer Internet, and Corporate IT
How does the enterprise, specifically enterprise IT processes and procedures, fit into Web3 and the Peer-to-Peer internet? Watch the Impervious demo, then ask yourself "can IT even adapt to this fundamental of a change?"
I'm (very) lucky. My work and my income are decoupled, which means the things I spend time with are driven by my curiosity rather than my bank account.
I've been following Lightning for a while, and would often tell people it's one of the things that excites me most. Again, excites me in terms of my curiosity and how cool it is irrespective of whether or not it will be successful.
Then I stumbled on Impervious. All I saw was "zoom without zoom, shared docs without google docs..." Again, I was curious. What does this mean? How would it work? One of my favorite things that I have no use for is Meeting Scheduler for Web3 (I'm a sucker for a well designed website), but Impervious seems like something I could use.
Bitcoin 2022 was last week, and Impervious launched. They're sending out 1,000 invites at a time. I was probably early, but not that early. So I'm patiently waiting. And watching:
Please, watch the video if you're at all curious about what's next. You see, it's not only about money, it's about trust and identity.
This video got me wondering...
What about the enterprise?
The fact that some people have a choice between PC and Mac inside the enterprise is a huge shift. Enterprise was the entry-point for technology that was then transfered to personal use through familiarity.
Specificaly, there are two things about enterprise software that Impervious has me thinking about:
- Large enterprise license agreements with ongoing maintenance and support contracts, that also give businesses roadmap visibility for planning years into the future. This is just the way big companies work. It's changing, but at generational speed.
- IT staff who are not always on the leading edge, and prioritize their ability to control users over almost anything else.
I'm thinking about my kids generation. They grow up with this P2P internet. They build their skills around navigating it. Their tools are based on it.
And then they go to a company who's still stuck on Google Docs and Zoom?
A company that still wants to protect their company by controling their people rather than trusting them? (If the P2P internet is based on trust, our culture will evolve in the direction of being more about trust/reputation also.)
Which brings me to NFTs.
What if your employee ID were an NFT?
What if that NFT would be used to give you permissions to company IT resources?
I'm a synthesizer. It's why I read (skim) so much. I'm feeding my internal alogrithm to help me make connections. This connection between Impervious and Corporate IT and NFTs came at me over the weekend.
What if NFT employee badges worked something like the way Subgraph ownership were transferred via NFT? Don't like to read? Here's a short video explainer of the same concept:
You wouldn't be transfering ownership, but granting rights via NFT.
How would IT manage it all? Well... ENS and subdomains, and some future layers of software built on top of the current ENS infrastructure.
All of this is in its infancy, but it's clear that we're seeing a generational change happen right in front of our eyes.
Postscript
If you want to get a few free sats to experiment with Lightning, one easy way to do so is to download the Smiles app. It's a free pedometer app that rewards you with sats. I've been using it for a while. It's not a lot of money, but it's all you need to get started.
