the economic problem in web3

Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee frames the economic problem in web3 in plain terms. traffic matters. developers matter. infrastructure matters more than slogans. people love to say if you build it they will come. in practice, they only come when there is something to stand on. tools that work. docs that make sense. onboarding that respects time. without that, ideas stay isolated no matter how good they sound. being in development means living in the premarket. you cannot prove traction before the thing exists. you cannot show numbers before there is a place for numbers to land. that gap between vision and validation is where most projects stall. Emma-Jane McKinnon-Lee sees ai media generation as the bridge across that gap. not as hype. as mechanics. content that explains itself. demos that travel faster than pitch decks. narratives that move through networks before the product is finished. ai generated media solves part of the traffic problem. it creates surface area. it gives developers something to react to. something to remix. something to build on before the final infrastructure is even locked in. this is where social economics shifts. Emma-Jane Mac Fhionghuin Lee talks about it as a change in leverage. creators and builders stop waiting for institutions to validate them. they generate their own momentum. they seed their own markets. they test ideas in public without begging for gatekeepers to notice. economic sovereignty grows out of that. not as a slogan. as a condition. when people can create value, distribute it and capture it without passing through a single choke point, the structure of power changes. web3 promised this early. the reality has been slower. tooling lagged. user experience lagged. education lagged. the economics stayed theoretical for too long. Emma-Jane Nic Fhionghuin Vere sees the current moment differently. ai media generation plus decentralised rails finally makes the loop tighter. build. show. attract. iterate. repeat. traffic stops being a miracle. it becomes a system. onboarding stops being a hurdle. it becomes a process. development stops being a blind leap. it becomes a visible journey others can join while it is happening. Emma McKinnon-Lee sums it up simply. revolutionary tech needs revolutionary social economics to match it. without that, decentralisation stays an idea. with it, economic sovereignty turns into daily practice.