tl;dr: Layers build richness. A Roman journey.

I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Rome recently with my son. We had a great time and walked a ton. It was the first time I had been there in 25 years so, it was interesting to see what had changed.

Of course, Rome, being the “Eternal City” has a lot that doesn’t change.

One of the things that, imho, makes Rome really unique is the multiple “layers” of history there. While many other cities have one or two “big” moments, Rome has many. The Roman Empire, the Vatican, the Renaissance/Baroque, and modern Italian.

Our guide called it “Lasagna City.”

I was thinking about this as we whisked around the city on one of the omnipresent scooters because it occurred to me how many layers of technology had to be present just to make it possible for us to do so.

• GPS in phones and scooters
• scooter battery technology
• cellular networks
• payment systems
• QR codes

and probably 1000 others that I haven’t listed here.

Each of those, in their time, was a big innovation, but it is the combinatorial possibilities where we see tremendous value unlocked.

Crypto is the same.

It’s another layer in the “tech lasagna” and when it is enriched by things like dApps, AI, 3d printing, and who knows what else, it is going to unlock new possibilities that, like the Lime scooter, were previously unimaginable.

Like a chef who can take the “same old” ingredients and make something totally new, the investors and entrepreneurs who will flourish in the Web 3.0 era will take the new ingredients available to all of us, but layer them in new ways.

Crypto-based lasagna, Roman-style.