Why won't you be copied?
Learn the difference between moats you can start earning on day one and moats that only exist at scale — so you don't mistake a temporary lead for a durable defense.
Network Effects
A product with network effects gets more valuable to each user as more users join — a marketplace with more buyers attracts more sellers, and vice versa — making it one of the strongest moats because a competitor can copy your product but not your user base overnight. The catch is the brutal chicken-and-egg problem before critical mass, which is where most network-effect startups actually die, and it usually needs upfront subsidy or a clever single-player wedge to solve. It's only genuinely earnable early within a narrow initial network; the real defensibility shows up at scale.