WEB3 Deposit Phots As an investor in emerging technology and a nascent observer of Web3, I’ve spent some time researching this phenomena that has brought many skeptics to the fore, in the midst of whales, and dare I say, a handful Crypto and NFT Kool-Aid drinkers, who have amassed fortunes in the process.
I get that the current web needs some serious fixing. If anything, Web2 has continued to tighten and centralize more control in the hands of Big Tech, governments, and financial institutions. The publishing industry is dying as FB and Google have all but severed the revenue streams for the Guardian, now Buzzfeed and New York Times, relegating these once-giants to plead for monthly donations to stay afloat.
The mortgage crash of 2008 gave rise to Bitcoin, with the promise to separate the financial system from the powers of a sovereign nation, effectively democratizing wealth and financial control for each individual on the planet. And while the last decade has seen an explosive growth in Bitcoin valuation, the extreme volatility within its expensive financial system has kept the mainstream at bay.
Now, enter Cryptocurrency, the rise of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations and Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the surge of the Metaverse fervor. The FOMO created by these emanations continues to make the average Joe question the viability or even sustainability of the next iteration of the Internet: Is Web3 to be or not to be?
Will Web3 prevail despite its current environment? And for that to happen, what factors will need to be in place to create a sustainable alternative for mainstream audiences?
I’ve consumed the views of the critics: Stephen Diehl, Dan Olson, Jacob Silverman, Professor Galloway, and proponents of Cryptocurrency (especially Bitcoin) like Alex Gladstein. I’ve also decided to bring in some experts on both sides of the aisle: tokenomics practitioners and crypto investors as well as security and privacy experts with healthy doses of skepticism to debate whether we, as a society, are ready for and will accept what some say will be an inevitable evolution to decentralize the web and finally bring more monetary opportunities to individuals and create truly human-centered, and human-controlled environments. Definition: What is Web3?
According to Chris Dixon , Entrepreneur and Cofounder, AZ16, “ Web3 is the internet owned by the builders and users, orchestrated with tokens .”
The Elements of Web3 = Read + Write + Owned
Web 3 is a response to Web2 , the latter, in need of some serious fixing: Where advertising and platforms will cease to profit from personal information. Where equity, access and accountability occur within a shared governance and self-organizing ecosystem. Where creators can truly own what they produce and enable and control new value creation. And where a currency for the Web truly revolutionizes access for everyone. Web3’s Centralization of Wealth
The panacea for the next version of the web is certainly enticing: A Web designed to ” resist any attempts to centralize its architecture and services to ensure that no individual entity, be it government, corporation or individual controls it use. ” This includes Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, Apple (G-MAFIA) and Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent. Collectively, If they all succeed and every online user in the world adopts their technologies, societies will change forever.
The quest to decentralize power, beyond Big Tech, is also a vilification against current centralized financial structures. Alex Gladstein , Chief Strategy Officer of Human Rights Foundation and writer for Bitcoin Magazine dubbed Bitcoin, “ an alternative currency with its own network that rises above the entire political system ”, that will serve the aims of many people with disparate views and political affiliations. Its value as a technology aims to r esist financial control from current establishments with an objective to offer an improved alternative to existing ” inequitable, inaccessible and inflationary” financial systems that currently lock out 2 billion people worldwide “.
However alluring this promise of democratized participation is, what we’re really witnessing is a concentration of this wealth among the hands of a very few: like Peter Thiel, Chris Dixon, Andreeson Horowitz aka the “Whales” within the system. The influx of venture capital from VCs like AZ16 has created another alternative of investment that can pay huge windfalls through Initial Coin Offerings or Initial DEX (Decentralized Exchange) Offerings (ICO/IDO), veritably within months compared to traditional VC window of 5 years or more. This is what Jacob Silverman, Crypto Writer from The Republic declared : Web3 is the ” financialization of everything ”.
Stephen Diehl, highly skeptical of the chaotic nature of […]
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