Jon Gosier: The problem with "trickle-down techonomics"

Jon Gosier’s “Trickle-Down Techonomics” Review Guide: What It Means for Crypto, Who Should Watch, and FAQs

What if the shiny tech we build isn’t actually helping the people who need it most? And what if our “success” dashboards are blinding us to that truth?

I watched Jon Gosier’s TED talk and felt a familiar sting: too often, we celebrate press hits, fancy pilots, and funding rounds while real people see little change. This isn’t just a tech problem—it’s a crypto problem too. If you care about building things that actually improve lives, this is worth your time.

The pain: feel-good tech that doesn’t change real lives

Gosier puts words to a pattern I’ve seen over and over: “trickle-down” thinking in tech promises broad benefits but delivers optics more than outcomes. We ship, we trend, we clap—and nothing really moves for the folks at the edge.

Here’s what that looks like in the wild:

• Vanity metrics beat human outcomes. We celebrate “users onboarded,” “downloads,” “demos,” and “mentions,” but ignore if people’s income, safety, or freedom actually improved. If metrics don’t map to lived outcomes, they can mislead teams and investors.
• Top-down “solutions” fail local reality. A classic example: the One Laptop per Child program put hardware in classrooms, but a major evaluation found no gains in math or language scores—only basic computer familiarity improved. That’s not nothing, but it’s not the promise. Source: Inter-American Development Bank study by Cristia et al.
• “Feel-good” can mask extraction. Remember PlayPumps—merry-go-rounds that pumped water as kids played? It made headlines, then broke down, cost more than alternatives, and often didn’t work when communities needed water most. Great story, poor fit. Source: reporting in The Guardian.
• Context changes everything. When tech is built with local players and aligned with real incentives, outcomes compound. Kenya’s M-Pesa didn’t just “adopt”—it helped households weather shocks and, by one estimate, lifted about 194,000 households out of poverty. That’s shared value creation. Source: Science (Suri & Jack, 2016).

Gosier’s point hits home: if value creation is measured far from the community—by investors, PR, or a spreadsheet—then value often stays far from the community. In crypto, we’ve seen the same movie under new branding: big launches, big charts, small real-world change.

What I’ll solve for you in this guide

I respect your time. Here’s what you’ll get from this review, in plain English:

• A tight summary of Gosier’s core message so you can get the idea fast.
• Why it matters for crypto and Web3: the gap between “adoption” and actual benefit, and how to fix it.
• What to watch for in the talk: the moments that matter and why.
• How to apply it to products, grants, token launches, and community programs.
• Quick FAQs so you leave informed and ready to act.

If you’re a founder, investor, DAO contributor, protocol PM, or educator, I’m aiming to help you spot empty signals, build with communities (not for them), and measure what matters.

Quick links and why this review

• Watch the talk: Jon Gosier — The problem with “trickle-down techonomics” (official TED page with transcript)
• Why this now: I keep running into products that make noise but don’t move the needle for real users. This talk offers a useful lens to re-check our incentives and metrics before the next launch.
• What you’ll get from my crypto-aware lens:

  • Clear distinction between hype metrics and help metrics
  • Examples of inclusive vs. extractive models in tech rollouts
  • Practical prompts you can bring to the next product review or grant meeting

For reference and deeper reading:

• OLPC evaluation (IDB): Technology and Child Development
• PlayPumps critique: The Guardian — When PlayPumps went wrong
• M-Pesa impact (Science): The long-run poverty and gender impacts of mobile money

If you’ve ever wondered, “Are we actually helping people—or just helping our metrics?”, you’re in the right place.

Next up: want the core idea in one clean, shareable explanation—and the five big points to listen for? Ready when you are.

The talk at a glance: the idea in plain English

Here’s the core idea, stripped to the studs: “trickle-down” tech looks successful when you measure what investors and the press like—funding rounds, installs, pilot logos—but fails the people it promises to help. Jon Gosier argues that real impact requires building with local context, sharing value with the community, and creating accountability for outcomes, not optics.

“If your success slide looks great but the people you claimed to help feel nothing, that isn’t impact—it’s PR.”

Think of those projects that launch beautifully, trend on social, get a glossy case study… then vanish because nobody nearby had a reason, a role, or a revenue share. That gap between headlines and lived outcomes is the problem on trial.

One-line takeaway

If value doesn’t reach the last mile, it’s not impact—build with people, measure outcomes, and share the upside.

Five key ideas you’ll hear

• Top-down solutions miss the mark without local context.
  Shipping tech to a community isn’t the same as building with it. The famous One Laptop Per Child rollout in Peru increased computer familiarity but didn’t boost math or language scores—because classrooms, training, and curricula didn’t change alongside the hardware.
  Study: IDB evaluation of OLPC (Cristia et al.)
• Vanity metrics can be worse than useless.
  Installs, pilots, and press hits make us feel progress is happening, but they often hide shallow usage. In social impact tech, randomized trials on “improved” tools show that without adoption support, training, or incentives, outcomes don’t budge—even when distribution numbers look heroic.
  Example: Better cookstoves had little long-term health impact when behavior and maintenance weren’t addressed.
  Study: J-PAL summary (Hanna, Duflo, Greenstone)
• Local infrastructure and incentives make or break “adoption.”
  M-Pesa is the gold standard not just because the tech was good, but because agent networks, cash-in/cash-out points, and community trust were baked into the rollout. That’s why households actually used it—and saw real income and resilience gains.
  Study: Science (Suri & Jack): Mobile money lifting households and GSMA: State of Mobile Money
• Share value, don’t extract it.
  When communities get a cut—jobs, revenue share, or ownership—usage sticks. Pay-as-you-go solar in East Africa worked because it created local agent livelihoods and aligned repayment with benefits (light, phone charging, safety), not just because panels were “innovative.”
  Evidence: CGAP research on pay-as-you-go models
• Accountability is a design choice.
  Projects like Ushahidi let communities surface what’s happening on the ground and feed it back to decision-makers—closing the loop. Transparent reporting, open data, and community governance move us from “feel-good” to “works-in-reality.”
  See: Ushahidi and the Principles for Digital Development

Who should watch and why

• Crypto founders and product leads: pressure-test whether your “adoption” is real or just airdrop-driven; learn how local partners and incentives change retention.
• DAO stewards and governance facilitators: pick up practical cues on how to give communities voice, veto, and value—not just a forum link.
• Protocol PMs and growth teams: rethink the dashboard—swap vanity KPIs for metrics tied to user outcomes, not just activity spikes.
• Impact investors and grant makers: design milestone-based funding tied to verified, community-level results instead of PR-ready pilots.
• Public sector innovators: align tech rollouts with existing services, local champions, and maintenance budgets so tools don’t gather dust.
• Educators and accelerators: teach “build with, not for” as muscle memory—user research, co-creation, and feedback loops as core curriculum.

I keep coming back to a simple gut check: if the people you’re building for can’t explain how their life gets better—and get a stake in the upside—what are we really measuring?

Here’s the question I can’t stop asking (and answering next): in crypto, which numbers are telling the truth—and which are just optics dressed as impact?

Why this matters for crypto and Web3

When Jon Gosier warns that tech built far from the problem often just “trickles past” the people it claims to help, I feel the sting. We’ve all seen it in crypto: airdrops that trend on X, TVL that moons for a month, and “adoption” that turns out to be bots, mercenary liquidity, or wallets that never come back. If value doesn’t land in real lives, we’re spinning vanity into virtue.

“Impact isn’t a chart going up; it’s a person whose life is better this month.”

So here’s the tough-love lens I use when I look at tokens, protocols, and “global adoption” claims—and the specific changes that make the difference between extraction and inclusion.

Airdrops, TVL, hype: when numbers lie

Crypto is brilliant at producing big numbers. It’s less brilliant at making sure those numbers reflect durable, useful behavior.

• Airdrops can inflate activity without building a base. Incentivized campaigns often attract sybils and short-term farmers. Optimism’s first airdrop publicly documented filtering tens of thousands of likely sybil addresses; Nansen’s analysis of Arbitrum showed similar patterns alongside rapid post-claim selling. The signal isn’t the claim count—it’s how many claimants are still using the network 30/60/90 days later without new incentives.
• TVL can be double-counted or mercenary. DeFi TVL is notorious for leverage loops and restaked assets that inflate totals. Even DeFiLlama now separates “adjusted TVL” to reduce double counting. Incentive-driven spikes often fade when emissions stop; Gauntlet and others have shown that liquidity mining attracts short-term capital unless paired with real utility. Terra’s Anchor offered 20% APY, juicing TVL before the collapse wiped out users and partners (Chainalysis).
• Volume can be gamed. During NFT incentive races, wash trading dominated share on some days—Hildobby’s Dune dashboard tracked periods where a majority of volume was inorganic. Counting every trade equally rewards noise.

What to track instead:

• Retention: D30 and D90 active rates for first-time users who weren’t paid to try.
• Meaningful actions: % of activity that’s not incentive-tagged (no farming, no rebates).
• Local partner pull: Signed integrations with on/off-ramp partners in target regions; successful cash-out rates.
• User income created: Net earnings or cost savings per active user (e.g., lower remittance fees, faster settlement). Mercy Corps Ventures’ pilots showed stablecoin rails can reduce fees and delays for MSMEs and gig workers (report).
• Support and safety: Fraud rate trends, dispute resolution times, and education completion rates.

Inclusion vs. extraction: a reality check

Tokenomics is a values system in code. It either shares upside with the people doing the real work—or it extracts value from them while rewarding whoever controls emissions.

• Extraction in practice: Helium’s early market cap soared while real network revenue stayed tiny. A 2022 Forbes investigation found that hotspot operators collectively earned little from actual customers compared to token rewards and insider allocations. Play-to-earn saw a similar arc: early windfalls, then crashing in-game income as emissions outpaced demand (see Naavik’s Axie Infinity teardown). CityCoins raised millions for cities, but local holders often ate 90%+ drawdowns (CoinDesk).
• Inclusion in practice: The bar isn’t perfection; it’s whether value actually lands with users. UNHCR used Stellar Aid Assist to deliver USDC to refugees, redeemable in cash via MoneyGram—reducing payout times from weeks to minutes and giving people choice. Gitcoin’s quadratic funding grants match small-dollar local support with larger pools, shifting power toward communities. Optimism’s RetroPGF shares sequencer revenue with builders of public goods—a concrete rev-share model with on-chain accountability.
• Design choices that matter:

  • Community allocations that vest with contribution milestones, not just time.
  • Fee splits that pay local validators, community orgs, or liquidity providers in proportion to real usage.
  • Real governance with quorum and participation thresholds that require diverse delegates, not whale snapshots.
  • Off-ramps to local cash or mobile money so benefits aren’t trapped on-chain.

If your token flows look great on a dashboard but your users can’t cash out, can’t govern, and aren’t earning—your model is extraction with extra steps.

A practical checklist for builders and investors

Before I call a project “adoption,” I run it through this fast filter.

• Local validation

  • Has the team done 15–30 user interviews in the target region? Names (or anonymized IDs) and notes documented?
  • At least two signed local partners (on/off-ramps, cooperatives, NGOs, MSME networks)?

• Problem–solution fit

  • Clear “job to be done” in one sentence (e.g., “cut remittance fees from 7% to 2%”)?
  • Baseline and target metrics for the next 90 days (retention, cost/time saved, fraud rate)?

• Value sharing

  • Who gets paid when the protocol grows? Show fee splits, rev-share terms, and vesting tied to contribution.
  • Community allocation ≥25% with milestone-based unlocks? Treasury transparency via monthly reports?

• Security and safety

  • Independent audits published and remediated? Bug bounty live?
  • Simple, local-language education and warnings at risky steps; verified support channels; average ticket resolution time under 48 hours?

• Beyond launch week

  • 90-day incentive taper paired with non-incentivized utility (merchant acceptance, payroll, savings)?
  • Cohort funnel tracking: % of users who complete three meaningful actions without rewards?
  • Exit ramps: cash-out success rate and median payout time in each target market?

One last gut check I use: could I look one of your users in the eye and explain exactly how they earn or save money—and show them how to cash out by Friday?

Curious where Gosier’s talk hits these nerves hardest—and which quotes I flagged for product teams and token committees? I’ve got the timestamps and highlights next. Which minute will change how you measure “adoption” this quarter?

Timestamps and highlights so you can watch smart

If you’re short on time or want to watch with intention, here’s the flow of Jon Gosier’s talk and exactly what to listen for. I’ve added quick notes on why specific moments matter for crypto builders, investors, and community leads.

Minute-by-minute guide

• 0:00–0:45 — The setup: why “trickle-down tech” hurts
  What you’ll hear: A crisp definition of “trickle-down techonomics” — shiny solutions built far away from the people they’re supposed to serve, with success measured by applause, not outcomes.
  Why it matters for crypto: If your dashboard screams growth but your users don’t stick (or can’t cash out), you’re probably chasing optics. Consider how many airdrop wallets go silent after rewards end; multiple on-chain analytics firms have reported this pattern across launches.
• 0:45–2:00 — The feel-good trap
  What you’ll hear: Feel-good stories, hackathons, and press-friendly pilots that rarely survive contact with real-world constraints like connectivity, trust, or regulation.
  Why it matters for crypto: Testnet heroes don’t always become mainnet users. If your “Africa go-to-market” plan is a Telegram group and a faucet, you’re recreating the trap.
• 2:00–3:30 — Metrics that flatter, not matter
  What you’ll hear: Downloads, signups, and headlines masquerading as impact — the wrong scoreboard.
  Why it matters for crypto: TVL and one-time mints can hide extractive flows. Better signals: 30/60/90-day retention, share of rewards reaching local users, on-ramp/off-ramp access, and verified earnings by real people. The GSMA’s mobile money research consistently shows that durable adoption follows strong local agent networks and education, not giveaways alone.
• 3:30–4:45 — Power and context
  What you’ll hear: When solutions are built “for” people, not “with” them, they miss the lived reality (language, fees, identity docs, devices, cash flow cycles).
  Why it matters for crypto: Think wallets with high fees or seed-phrase UX in places where phones and SIMs are shared. If local partners weren’t in the room, that shows up as churn, scams, and abandoned balances.
• 4:45–6:00 — Who captures the upside?
  What you’ll hear: Capital and credit concentrating far from the communities that create the “impact story.”
  Why it matters for crypto: Token distributions that skew to insiders, NFT treasuries controlled by a few multisig signers, “governance” where locals have no say. If your tokenomics send value out faster than it flows in, you’re extracting.
• 6:00–7:15 — Building with, not for
  What you’ll hear: The antidote: co-design, shared value, and accountability loops with the people affected.
  Why it matters for crypto: Community allocations with vesting, revenue shares to local validators/agents, profit splits tied to usage, and governance seats that can actually veto. In plain terms: give people skin in the game they can feel.
• 7:15–End — The ask
  What you’ll hear: Stop measuring intent; measure outcomes. Change incentives so success means real benefits on the ground.
  Why it matters for crypto: Move from launch-week hype to year-one livelihoods: how many users earned, saved, or secured rights because your protocol exists? If you can’t answer, you’re not done.

Memorable quotes worth saving

I flagged lines you can use in pitch decks, governance threads, and internal docs. They’re paraphrased from the talk so you can screenshot with context at the noted moments.

“When success is the press release, the people you meant to help become props.” (Opening)

“Impact isn’t downloads; it’s whether a person’s life is better because your tool exists.” (≈2:30)

“We don’t need more solutions for communities. We need solutions with communities.” (≈3:45)

“If the value of the fix flows up the chain while the costs stay local, that’s not innovation — that’s extraction.” (≈4:50)

“Change the incentives, change the outcomes: share the risk, share the reward, share the power.” (≈6:10)

“Stop measuring intent. Start measuring results that someone can eat, spend, or trust.” (Closing)

One line I keep on my wall:

“Build in a way that leaves people stronger without you.”

Who is Jon Gosier and why he’s credible

Gosier isn’t taking shots from the cheap seats — he’s worked inside the exact systems he critiques.

• Founder of Appfrica, an innovation firm that supported entrepreneurs and research across African tech ecosystems starting in the late 2000s.
• Early work with crisis-tech and civic-tech communities, where the gap between “cool tech” and “real outcomes” is painfully obvious.
• Launched initiatives focused on practical access (like projects turning SIM cards into offline data carriers when the internet is cut), showing a bias for context-aware problem solving.
• Active investor and operator, which means he’s seen how capital, headlines, and metrics get prioritized — and how that distorts incentives.
• His TED stage isn’t the point; his time in emerging markets is. The critique comes from trying, failing, learning, and still building.

If you want a shortcut: he’s credible because he’s shipped in places where shipping is hard. That lived context makes the warning about “trickle-down techonomics” land differently — it’s not theory, it’s pattern recognition.

Question for you: if a project shows jaw-dropping numbers but can’t point to even one local partner earning real income from it, is that success — or just noise? In the next section, I’m going to pressure-test where this talk is spot on for crypto… and where it misses. Want examples where top-down tech actually worked — and why?

What the talk gets right—and where I disagree

“Trickle-down techonomics” hits a nerve because it calls out something most of us have felt: the glossy dashboards, the press hits, the “partnerships” that never quite make it to the street. I’m with the talk on its core message—impact should be felt by people, not just measured by investors. But I also see places where the story can be sharper, and a few realities from crypto that complicate the picture in useful ways.

“The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.” — William Gibson

Strengths you can use right away

• Impact over optics, with receipts. We’ve all seen “adoption” that’s really just speculation or short-term farming. The talk’s insistence on real outcomes echoes what we’ve learned after the 2022–2023 cycle: impressive top-line numbers can hide shaky foundations. A well-known example outside crypto is Helium—huge install base, tiny real-world usage revenue for long stretches, as multiple reporters uncovered in 2022. That’s the difference between eyeballs and earnings. Report
• Context isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the product. Local knowledge can make or break a rollout. Think about how M‑Pesa succeeded by fitting existing cash and social practices in East Africa, while many copycats stumbled when they ignored agent networks and trust dynamics. Crypto has the same trap: shipping a wallet with English-only UX, no local cash on/off-ramps, and calling it “global.”
• Better metrics change behavior. When teams swap vanity metrics for retention, income uplift, and security outcomes, roadmaps change. In Web3, public-goods programs like Gitcoin Grants and Optimism’s RetroPGF make funding contingent on demonstrated community value—retroactive, transparent, and legible on-chain. That’s the kind of accountability the talk calls for, in action.
• Follow the value, not the press release. The talk’s warning about capital concentrating far away from beneficiaries is real. You see the flip side in the rise of stablecoin usage in high-inflation markets: people choose tools that protect their purchasing power, not tools that land headlines. Chainalysis’ 2023 report shows stablecoins dominating in places like Turkey and Nigeria, a bottom-up signal that utility wins. Data

Blind spots and counterpoints

• Sometimes impact really does trickle up. The narrative can underplay “from-the-margins-to-the-center” wins. Ushahidi—born in Kenya—became a global crisis-mapping tool. Open-source projects like Linux and PostgreSQL started as community labor and now underpin Fortune 500 infrastructure. In crypto, grassroots stablecoin usage in inflationary economies is pushing major exchanges, wallets, and even fintechs to prioritize local cash-in/cash-out and better FX rails.
• Open networks can hard-code fairness. The talk is tough on “top-down” tech (fair), but open-source and permissionless systems let anyone fork, audit, and build businesses without asking for access. That architecture is a real check on power. Public grant ledgers, on-chain MKR/OP/GTC votes, and open dashboards turn backroom decisions into receipts.
• Transparency is improving—imperfectly, but fast. After the FTX collapse, exchanges started publishing proof‑of‑reserves. It’s not a silver bullet (liabilities matter too), yet it’s a step toward verifiable solvency. Grants programs like Gitcoin run matching rounds with public data and audits. Optimism’s RetroPGF 3 distributed 30M OP tokens to 195 projects with transparent criteria—anyone can analyze outcomes and argue for improvements.
• “Local first” doesn’t mean “local only.” Some infrastructure must be coordinated at scale—security, interoperability, fraud defense. The trick is to combine global rails with local governance and service partners. Nigeria’s eNaira shows what happens when top-down ignores user incentives—IMF analysis described adoption as very low a year in—while community-owned stablecoin flows in the same region keep growing because they solve real problems. 
• Harm is real—and pushback matters. The talk hints at this, but the crypto record is mixed. Worldcoin’s biometric signups promised inclusion; Kenya paused operations over safety and consent concerns. That’s a reminder: “access” without trust is extraction in disguise. 

What I wish he covered

• Community ownership that isn’t cosplay. Beyond airdrops, we need mechanisms that tie upside to contribution and locality:

  • Reserved community allocations with multi‑year vesting and delegated voting to verified local groups.
  • Revenue shares for validators, agents, and merchants who do real distribution work—paid in stablecoins, not just governance tokens.
  • Quadratic funding and retroactive rewards (Gitcoin, Optimism) earmarked for city/region‑specific public goods.

• Proof‑of‑impact you can’t fake. Vanity metrics are easy; outcomes are hard. We can still measure them:

  • Income and volatility: median weekly income change for users; variance reduction for small merchants after integrating stablecoin settlement.
  • Retention and repeat usage: 4‑, 8‑, 12‑week cohorts for on‑chain actions tied to real services (payments, remittances, savings), not just token swaps.
  • Third‑party attestations: on‑chain claims via Hypercerts or verifiable credentials signed by local NGOs, schools, or co‑ops.

• Co‑governance with locals, in writing. Don’t “consult,” share power:

  • Constitutional seats for local orgs on protocol councils and treasury multisigs, with quorum requirements that prevent bypassing them.
  • Regional vetoes on tokenomics that change fees, emissions, or agent economics in their market.
  • Quadratic voting with proof of locality (privacy‑preserving) so nearby users have more say on deployments that affect them.

• Field ops as a feature. Budget for training, fraud mitigation, and cash rails like you budget for audits. If there’s no line item for local partners and education, it’s not “inclusive tech,” it’s a press release waiting to age badly.

I’m all in on the talk’s push to measure what matters and build with people, not just for them. Want a simple way to capture any talk’s core idea, key takeaways, and the action you’ll take next week—so your team actually uses it? Keep going; I’ve got a fast template and quick answers coming up next.

FAQs, definitions, and quick answers

If you only have a few minutes and want the signal without the fluff, this section is your cheat code. I answer the most common questions I get about TED talks, give you a simple template to summarize any talk fast, and share the resources you’ll need to go deeper.

What is the summary of a TED talk?

A TED talk is a short, focused presentation built around one powerful idea. The format is intentionally tight (often 12–18 minutes) because attention drops fast and crisp ideas travel further. A strong summary mirrors that clarity. It should answer “what’s the problem,” “what’s the idea,” and “what changes now,” in language anyone can repeat.

Here’s the structure I use when I want a summary people remember and act on:

• Problem in one line: What’s broken or being missed?
• Core idea in one line: What’s the simple, memorable solution or insight?
• 3–5 takeaways: Practical points or examples that prove the idea. (Working memory research suggests humans comfortably hold about 3–4 items, so keep it tight—see Cowan, 2001.)
• So what: What should change in your product, funding, or behavior this quarter?
• Quote worth saving: One line you’d put on a slide or governance post.

Why this works: TED’s own guidance emphasizes one idea worth spreading, not a tour of everything you know. Boil it down so a teammate can retell it in 30 seconds during standup or a DAO call and get it right.

What is the summary of the Julian Treasure TED Talk?

Julian Treasure has multiple hits. The two most shared are:

• “How to speak so that people want to listen” — He warns against the “seven sins of speaking” (gossip, judging, negativity, complaining, excuses, exaggeration/lying, dogmatism) and offers the HAIL framework: Honesty (be clear and straight), Authenticity (be yourself), Integrity (be your word), Love (wish others well). He also shares voice tools—register, timbre, prosody, pace, pitch, and volume—to make messages land. Quick win for crypto teams: use HAIL and prosody to avoid monotone governance updates and make complex token changes understandable.
• “5 ways to listen better” — He shows how modern noise makes us worse listeners and gives five habits: silence (3 minutes a day), the “mixer” (separate sound sources), savoring ordinary sounds, listening positions (active vs. critical), and RASA (Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, Ask). For Web3 communities, RASA can reduce misreads on calls, Twitter Spaces, or Discord—especially when topics are spicy like treasury allocations.

One memorable line:“The human voice: the instrument we all play.” Simple, sticky, and it changes how you prep for your next AMA.

How to summarize any TED talk in 5 steps

Steal this template and timebox yourself to 5 minutes. It keeps you honest and ensures your team actually uses what you learned.

1) Problem (one line): [What’s the real issue the speaker says we’re missing?]
2) Core idea (one line): [What’s the single idea worth spreading?]
3) 3–5 takeaways:

• [Takeaway #1]
• [Takeaway #2]
• [Takeaway #3]
• [Optional #4–5 if truly essential]

4) Standout quote: “[Copy it word-for-word]”
5) Action next week: [What will you change in your build, comms, or funding process?]

Pro tip: if you lead a product or DAO call, paste this template into your agenda and have one person fill it in live. It’s the Feynman technique in practice—if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it yet.

Want a fast, field-tested way to turn these insights into product changes, community wins, and funding milestones? In the next section I share a 30-day plan—what if one experiment this month could 2x retention and prove real impact where it matters most?

Turn the talk into action: next steps for crypto teams

This is the part where we stop nodding and start changing how we build, ship, and fund. Here’s a concrete, 30-day plan you can copy-paste into your sprint docs, plus an investor/DAO checklist to align money with meaningful outcomes—not vanity screenshots.

For builders: a 30-day plan

Week 1: Center real users, not dashboards

• Pick one community you want to help (not “emerging markets” as a whole—get specific: neighborhood, city, trade). Lock scope for 30 days.
• Run 10–15 user interviews with compensated participants. Ask: What problem hurts weekly? What do you pay today to solve it (time/money)? What would “better” look like? Use Nielsen Norman’s research as your nudge—simple usability work has outsized ROI.
• Check constraints: devices, bandwidth, local ID norms, language, data costs. Don’t ship a wallet that assumes iPhone 14 on 5G.
• Define three outcomes to measure in this pilot: income increased, cost reduced, or time saved. Keep it boring and real.
• Recruit a local micro-advisory group (3–5 people) to review flows weekly. Pay them in stablecoins; be transparent about rates and risks.

Why this matters: The World Bank’s Global Findex shows rapid growth in digital accounts, yet usage frictions remain local. If your UX ignores context, adoption looks good for a week and dies by week four.

Week 2: Replace vanity metrics with proof users feel

• Instrument the right events: activation (the first action that yields value), 7/30-day retention by cohort, success rate on key task, failed attempts, and top drop-off step. Use PostHog or Plausible to stay privacy-first.
• Anti-sybil without making life hell: add Gitcoin Passport or lightweight proofs for incentives; keep core usage accessible.
• Stand up an impact dashboard on Dune, Flipside, or Footprint. Track those three outcomes, not just TVL and airdrop claims.
• Run one usability test per flow (5 users, 30 minutes each). Fix the top two blockers. Repeat.

Week 3: Share the upside in production, not in a deck

• Launch a revenue-share pilot for the same community:

  • Route a % of protocol fees to a community multisig using Safe.
  • Stream those funds in real time via Sablier or Superfluid.
  • Elect 3–5 local signers; publish simple rules on distribution and transparency.

• Offer a no-farm incentive: small, recurring cashback in stablecoin for users who complete the core job weekly for 4 weeks (not one-shot airdrops).
• Local rails: if relevant, test cash-in/out partners people already use (for example, USSD bridges like Kotani Pay in parts of Africa). The goal is fewer hops between “on-chain” and “on my table.”

Why this matters: Randomized evaluations of direct cash by GiveDirectly show measurable gains in welfare. Your incentives should rhyme with that—money that reaches people and sticks to real activity, not wallets that exit to exchanges on day one.

Week 4: Make your intent public—and enforce it

• Publish a 1-page impact checklist in a Notion or GitHub repo:

  • Who benefits in plain language
  • Local partner(s) and their role
  • Three outcomes you measure quarterly
  • How revenue is shared (contract links)
  • Data you collect and how you protect it
  • Kill-switch criteria if harm > help

• Open your dashboards and invite the community to monthly review calls.
• Commit to retroactive rewards only for users with 30/60-day retention or verified outcomes. Take notes from Optimism’s RetroPGF: pay for impact, not intention.
• Close the loop: survey the same 10–15 users again with a simple form (SMS tools like KoboToolbox work well). Did we save you time or money? If yes, how much?

A mini-pilot you can run this month: “Remittance-to-rent” flow for 40 families in one corridor. Track: fees saved vs. Western Union, transfer speed, disputes resolved, and landlord satisfaction. Share results publicly, good and bad.

For investors, DAOs, and advisors

Rewire diligence for community fit and real outcomes

• Require local partner proof (MOUs, letters, or community org references), not just a CRM screenshot.
• Budget checks: at least 10–20% of initial funding earmarked for local contributors, translation, education, and support—tracked via streamed payments through Superfluid or LlamaPay.
• Outcome milestones tied to unlocks:

  • 60-day retention > X% in target cohort
  • Median cost or time reduction for users > Y%
  • Community fee-share live with public dashboard

• Governance with teeth: reserve seats (or veto) for community multisig signers inside the protocol’s Safe; publish a simple escalation path for harms.
• Fund via impact-aware mechanisms: quadratic matching on Gitcoin and retroactive awards like RetroPGF to reward provable benefit, not promises.
• Data room up front: a living link to Dune/Flipside dashboards, weekly activation/retention, and anonymized user feedback transcripts.

Red flags to pass on

• Airdrop-first go-to-market with no activation/retention plan
• No translation or off-grid path (SMS/USSD) for target users
• “We’ll figure out compliance later” in remittance or savings products
• Security brushed aside—no audit plan with a reputable firm like Trail of Bits or OpenZeppelin
• Impact claims with zero local references or independent verification

What good looks like: a small, laser-focused pilot; shared upside wired on-chain; an open dashboard; and users who show up next month because the thing actually helps them earn, save, or secure something they care about.

Final take

If our products make headlines but not households better off, we’re part of the problem.

Let’s hold ourselves to a higher bar: build with people, measure what helps them, and share the upside transparently. If you’re running a pilot and want a second set of eyes on your impact checklist or dashboards, send it my way—I’m happy to look and feature the best examples on the blog.