A day late, but jumping into L1 vs L2 convo.
Crypto used to operate as though the blockchain itself created network effects. IMO, the “network effect” was just technical friction.
Moving assets, liquidity, and identity across chains was hard, so users and developers stayed put. What looked like ecosystem value was mostly people being stuck.
Because that friction existed, value clustered. If you were on Ethereum and held ETH, you used Ethereum apps by default and apps made money.
For ETH-apps, the friction was the distribution engine. Distribution didn't come from the apps reinforcing each other.
That moat is gone. Moving across chains is now cheap and easy. So users decisions have shifted from "which app do I use on X chain", to "which application do I actually want to use" regardless of chain.
As a result, breakout applications like Polymarket can win without value accruing to the chain or to neighboring apps.
For ApeChain, that means focusing on applications that create value for each other. Broadly speaking, the mandate is not to fund everything, or only fund Otherside. It is to back apps whose success derives from Otherside or whose success drives value to Otherside.
Whether chain-level effects re-emerge in the future is an open question, but apps are businesses and chains are platforms, and both have to win in the market that exists today.
