Protocols are mainly schelling points.
Protocols are mainly schelling points. They tend to start off extremely simply, merely a convention everyone can agree is reasonable. The simpler they are, the more likely they are to em...
Topic: schelling point
72 chunks · 52 episodes
Topic summary
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A short read on the topic's time range, peak episode, and strongest associations. Use it as the quick orientation before drilling into examples.
- schelling point appears in 72 chunks across 52 episodes, from 2023-10-02 to 2026-04-06.
- Its densest episode is Bits and Bobs 4/1/24 (2024-04-01), with 3 observations on this topic.
- Semantically it travels with compounding value, network effect, and coordination cost, while by chunk count it sits between mental model and network effect; its yearly rank moved from #48 in 2023 to #22 in 2026.
Over time
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Raw mentions over time. Use this to see absolute attention, not relative rank among all topics.
Observations
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The primary evidence view for this topic. Sort it chronologically when you want concrete examples behind the larger pattern.
Model Context Protocol (MCP) seems to be an effective protocol.
...ing a registry akin to npm. This totally makes sense for them to do! Being that schelling point in the ecosystem of maintaining the most common registry is a way of establishing strategic power. The namespace everyone knows everyone else uses is...
Mass protests erupt when there's a general anger simmering and then an inciting incident causes a cascade.
...g and then an inciting incident causes a cascade. The inciting incident forms a schelling point that has to stand out as obviously beyond the pale to get to the critical mass where the compounding anger can accumulate on its own. But a flood the...
Whether your thing is post-coherence or pre-coherence is whether you have a thing that is self-evidently viable.
...not yet self-evidently viable, there's a swirl of coordination around different schelling points.
Regulations cap downside.
...ide and inspire competition by making it measurable. Benchmarks are an emergent schelling point. Someone sets rules and a way to measure quality. No one has to use their rules if they don't find them valuable, but if people do, then other people...
Schelling points are lighting rods for luck.
Schelling points are lighting rods for luck. The thing that is most prominent, most distinctive, wins by default in the chaos. I was talking to a person at CES who h...
The job of an operator is to create clarity and momentum towards something that the team believes could be great.
...um solves all known problems.[aor] If it's not converging, you need to create a schelling point that everyone can agree is reasonable to converge on.
A natural schelling point: a thing everyone can agree is reasonable and that they can live with.
A natural schelling point: a thing everyone can agree is reasonable and that they can live with. Seems like a low bar but is actually a very high one. It's also magnetic; an i...
In a chaotic environment, it can be hard to find a toehold everyone can agree to coordinate around.
...self up into ever larger and more established things. Without that toehold as a schelling point, nothing coheres. A tactic I've found robustly successful to establish that toehold is what I call a 70/20/10 doc. …I need a much better name for thi...
Command and control techniques are logarithmic.
...e to converge on one coherent outcome, this technique won't work; discovering a schelling point via bottom-up processes has exponential costs. But if the swarm doesn't need to converge on one approach, the emergent approach can steadily accumula...
The Aggregator playbook requires two things to work:
...far and away the best in a category. Nobody else even comes close. They are the schelling point, the most prominent example of the category that attracts usage by default. 2) That the would-be aggregator has some kind of compounding advantage. T...
The power to create an aggregator is not an absolute thing.
... You have to stand out prominently from all the other options to be the obvious schelling point. If you can then kick off a private network effect that only benefits you and not the other alternatives, you can extend that lead into an everlastin...
There are a class of tinkerer-style ideas for e.g.
...gorithms without that steep, scary gradient. The open platform would become the schelling point for little things like this, which would make it more attractive to other participants: a self-accelerating loop, a gravity well.
A concrete artifact, even one that is wrong, is at least a schelling point for discussion.
A concrete artifact, even one that is wrong, is at least a schelling point for discussion. It grounds the discussion in a specific thing. As opposed to an amorphous conceptual blob that looks different to everyone discussing...
Typically open systems take a long time to catch up with a proprietary option in a new market.
... on price and reliability The option that everyone else will use too, a natural schelling point. You want to use the option everyone else will use because it's the one most likely to get investment to improve.
For aggregation to occur, you need an option that stands significantly out from the crowd for an extended period of time.
...emental users into it instead of other options. By being prominent it becomes a schelling point. If there is a network effect to the option, then its edge can increase as more people join in, becoming a runaway gravity well effect. In a truly op...
When everyone else around you sucks, the bar to clear to be obviously better than everyone is very low.
... be obviously better than everyone is very low. Someone who is better will be a schelling point that many agree is obviously better. That doesn't have to be that much better in the grand scheme of things if everyone else is obviously worse. The ...
In an ecosystem, which sub-component will be the one where the network effect coheres and start running away?
...g away? If there's a good enough, sufficiently open system, that's the emergent schelling point. The point that every participant would be OK with. Even if it's not a strong pull for any individual, it's a consistent one. Consistency of pull is ...
Language in general is a folksonomy.
...hat use, and the harder it gets to change. Random variations, based on emergent schelling points, that then get accentuated and strengthened and turn into something durable and real. An emergent evolutionary process, swarms of people attempting ...
There's a huge advantage in sensible defaults as schelling points.
There's a huge advantage in sensible defaults as schelling points. Especially in a system where things one person wrote need to interact with another person's thing in some way. Instead of two users needing to coor...