What if the World Has Changed.. Again?

Do you remember?

Do you remember a legendary internet story called 1milliondollarhomepage? Alex Tew, a student from England, decided to earn money for his University education and created a 1000x1000 grid. One million pixels for sale: $1 per each pixel. He raised $999k and the last 1000 pixels were sold on eBay for $38'100, as the hype goes on, so did the price. F*cking genius.. But it was 2005, probably you don’t remember.

In 2017 on April Fool’s Day Reddit launched a social experiment called “Place”. It featured a collaborative pixel art canvas, where a registered user could place a colored pixel every five minutes. It was an epic battle that unfolded across a 1000x1000 grid with 1 million pixels.

Over 1 million users edited the canvas, placing a total of approximately 16 million tiles, and, at the time the experiment was ended, over 90,000 users were actively viewing or editing. The experiment was commended for its representation of the culture of Reddit’s online communities, and of Internet culture as a whole.

Unfair or Outdated?

These legendary internet history experiments happened a long time ago — B.C. — Before Crypto. Sure there was crypto in 2017 during Reddit’s “Place”, but they didn’t use it. Let’s look at these experiments more thoroughly.

• 2005 (1milliondollarhomepage) — a website that was down for at least a week due to DDoS attacks was just a big advertising block in 99% of cases. The pixels were sold just once, so the only person who earned with 1milliondollarhomepage was the creator of 1milliondollarhomepage. Just raising money… Boring!
• 2017 (Reddit’s “Place”) — No money at all, just fun, social experiments.. and new users for Reddit! “Just fun” isn’t a long-term strategy, which is why it was finished in 72 hours. People need better motivation to continue the game.

In 2005 the creators got all the money and gave us old-fashioned banner ads. In 2017 the creators got hype and new users, but users in both cases got far less. Looks like an unfair deal in both cases, right? But we’re looking at these failed experiments from our vantage point in 2021. We live in the world of DeFi and DEXes, IDO sales and 100x profits, maybe the deals seem outdated and just need to be upgraded?

What if the World has Changed?

What if there was blockchain and smart contracts under the hood and a website immune to DDoS attacks. What if we can add the power of NFTs and re-invent the Internet.. again?

What if you can become owners of the internet instead of just its users?

Have a good time thinking about this and keep in touch! And I’m gonna create Twitter, Telegram channel and Community chat.

P.S.: oh, I’ve already created them.