the biggest mistake i see crypto app builders make is thinking they need to scale like web2 apps. every successful crypto app disproves this. pump, hype, polymarket, aave, uni, ethena, etc. every one. there’s a very simple reason. crypto apps can do something web2 apps can’t: price discriminate. a web2 app depends on recurring subscription services from millions of users whose data can be bulked and sold to advertisers. they *need* millions of users because they charge every user the same fee. if everyone pays $20/month, you need millions of them for a big business. crypto is the opposite. here you charge on transaction volume, so one or two whales can drive the bulk of revenue. you just need a few, very rich users, and you can scale on volume rather than user base. there’s a tradeoff, however. the benefit of subscription services is that they’re *recurring*: web2 apps can safely lock in users for years and project their income quarterly. crypto apps don’t have that luxury. transaction fees are one-time, and nobody is locked in. this is why we see crypto apps rise and fall so quickly, so often. they have to reactivate and reencage their audience every day to spend more and more money, without any hope of passive income. and this leads to a kind of paradox for crypto apps. on the one hand, they want whales, who drive volume. on the other hand, they want addictive engagement—which whales often undermine by extracting from community. the only answer is apps where whales help subsidize the minnows at lower risk and lower return to create an ecosystem people want to come back to everyday. i don’t think we’re quite there yet as a space, but i think we’re close. stay tuned.