From ‘Snow Crash’ To Media 3.0 At Hack Seasons Singapore: How Web3, Decentralization, And AI Are Shaping The Next Era Of Creativity

by
Alisa Davidson

Printed: October 08, 2025 at 11:00 am Up to date: October 08, 2025 at 10:22 am

by Ana

Edited and fact-checked:
October 08, 2025 at 11:00 am

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At first of October, the Hack Seasons Convention in Singapore served as a global gathering for technologists, buyers, and innovators to debate the way forward for blockchain and Web3. A spotlight of the occasion was the fireplace chat titled “Joe Lubin and Neal Stephenson Current Media 3.0: Storytelling On-Chain.”

Moderated by Rebecca Barkin, Co-Founder and CEO of Lamina1, the session featured Joseph Lubin, Co-Founding father of Ethereum and Founder and CEO of ConsenSys and creator and Co-Founding father of Lamina1 Neal Stephenson. The dialogue targeted on how blockchain expertise is remodeling media, artistic expression, and the narratives that form up to date tradition.

The dialogue started with an summary of latest developments at Lamina1, an interactive media platform owned by each storytellers and followers. Lamina1 just lately introduced a partnership with ConsenSys’s Linea blockchain and plans to launch a brand new mental property (IP) mission, “Artefact,” on the Linea community.

As IP more and more spans a number of codecs and is accelerated by AI, questions round possession, management, and validation have change into central. Neal Stephenson, whose writing has lengthy explored the social and cultural implications of rising applied sciences, highlighted present developments in AI as they relate to content material creation. He famous that the AI business is extremely centralized, dominated by just a few firms with the sources to coach giant fashions. This centralization creates a dependency on opaque techniques, limiting transparency and accessibility. Within the context of content material manufacturing, some advocates of AI have instructed decreasing the affect or compensation of creators, but the creator emphasised the potential for AI to be leveraged to profit creators fairly than diminish them.

Joe Lubin echoed considerations in regards to the centralization of massive tech and framed the event of the Web3 ecosystem as a response to those buildings. He defined that for millennia, societies have operated below top-down command and management, the place authorities and intermediaries handle possession and privileges. Whereas efficient for constructing civilizations, such buildings can drawback nearly all of members. Within the realm of user-generated content material, the prevailing mannequin might be described as authority-generated. Joe Lubin highlighted that the appearance of decentralized belief, first operationalized by blockchain by Satoshi Nakamoto, has created a basis for a brand new mannequin: a decentralized, user-driven civilization. This method doesn’t search to dismantle present firms however to allow a extra distributed, community-oriented system. Lamina1’s integration with networks like Linea is meant to empower customers, fostering a golden age of user-generated and community-valued content material.

Joe Lubin additional expressed a deep dedication to supporting the humanities, music, and the broader creator financial system by decentralization. He emphasised the significance of IP in enabling artists to maintain themselves independently. Conventional techniques have usually favored organizations with authorized sources over creators themselves. By leveraging expertise, IP constructs can change into extra granular, composable, and instant, significantly by way of copyright and licensing. This shift strikes past scarcity-driven fashions and towards an period of abundance facilitated by automation, AI, and robotics. In such a system, creators can focus extra on creativity and content material technology, whereas group mechanisms can reward participation and contribution. 

The dialogue then turned to the origins of the time period “metaverse,” usually traced again to Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crash,” and his reflections on how digital developments have unfolded since its publication. The creator defined that the ebook was written within the late Eighties and early Nineties, a time when the web existed however was largely unknown to most of the people. When the novel was printed, two main technological occasions occurred in the identical yr: the creation of the World Broad Internet and the discharge of the sport “Doom.” Each occasions performed transformative roles in making laptop graphics extensively accessible. The online supplied a platform for exchanging photos, whereas “Doom” pushed the demand for extra succesful computer systems, increasing entry to immersive digital experiences.

Neil Stephenson famous that the early period of the web had a “hippie grad scholar” section, marked by idealistic visions of common entry to data. This era was finally adopted by centralization and consolidation, exemplified by Web2 platforms. In his novel, elements of the metaverse are managed by centralized firms, whereas others stay open and freely accessible. Some of the vital, but unexpected, penalties has been the rise of social media algorithms that monitor consumer habits and manipulate content material to maximise engagement, with far-reaching societal results that Neil Stephenson didn’t anticipate within the Nineties.

Joe Lubin noticed that the dystopian parts described within the novel had been by no means the first focus for these growing new applied sciences or looking for enterprise capital. What stood out as a substitute was the creator’s vivid depiction of our on-line world, which supplied a compelling imaginative and prescient for the capabilities of computing applied sciences as they started to mature.

The audio system shared views on the potential of rising applied sciences. Each emphasised the significance of harnessing the very best facets of those instruments to profit humanity and create optimistic social influence as digital innovation continues to advance.

Lamina1 Unveils ‘Artefact’ On Linea, Mixing Storytelling And Fan Participation 

The dialog shifted to Lamina1’s upcoming plans because the platform prepares to roll out its first authentic IP, “Artefact,” straight on the Linea blockchain. The mission combines a narrative world with a system designed to encourage fan participation and engagement.

Neal Stephenson shared that the brand new IP advanced primarily based on concepts he had beforehand explored throughout a chat in New Zealand. He famous the weird state of affairs wherein giant numbers of individuals are growing AI whereas others warning of its potential risks. In nature, evolution happens by competitors, with no entity receiving particular privilege with out going through challenges. Neil Stephenson instructed {that a} comparable aggressive framework might be utilized to AI, permitting techniques to evolve by testing their capabilities towards each other. He additional thought of a state of affairs wherein a centralized, impersonal AI would exist in distinction with AI deployed in a distributed method by communities of people, who use the expertise to profit themselves and their communities. This idea served as the inspiration for a collaborative world-building mission – Lamina1 – enabling artists and recreation designers to start setting up a recreation universe.

The panel concluded by offering attendees with a preview of the brand new IP, providing an early glimpse into the story world and its interactive options.

Alisa, a devoted journalist on the MPost, focuses on cryptocurrency, zero-knowledge proofs, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a eager eye for rising developments and applied sciences, she delivers complete protection to tell and interact readers within the ever-evolving panorama of digital finance.

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