Entry 3. Web3

Essentially web3 refers to any application that interacts with a blockchain. Most people would see the term and think, wait, I must have skipped web2 then.

Web2 was essentially how the entire world got on-boarded into using devices and services that run on online infrastructure.

The origins of the world-wide-web were rather humble and anachronistic.

What you could do with a url or web address was similar to the capabilities of a Word document. It displays text , images and hyperlinks that can take you to other such pages.

As you may recall there was a huge initial speculative asset boom around this phenomenon. Companies and startups added a web page to their brand with some slogan that sounded like the future had arrived in hopes of attracting new investors. This crashed spectacularly but the remaining entities hoovered up capital and talent and set out to build the next iteration of the web. Web2 was where social media and e-commerce was added to this initial, simplistic but powerful concept.

What many might also remember is the Peer to Peer nature of the early implementations of the Internet protocol. Essentially, any two capable devices can communicate directly with one another, albeit through the intermediary of the Internet Service Provider. As long as there is an active internet connection, those devices can create open channels and safely and freely share data using encryption.

Bitcoin operates using this principle of decentralization where many nodes collaborate to send and secure transfers, boasting perhaps of the longest "uptime" of any current network.

Web2 was also the story of centralization and the "Economies of Scale". The internet birthed giant corporations the likes of which had only been conceived of in science fiction. The "Network Effect", is where users find greater value (connecting with the most people), thus building their own network, but also creating silo's.

It wasn't immediately predictable that personal data would become the most valuable commodity in the world.

The P2P model conflicted with traditional standards for intellectual property and copyright, but it also enabled international cooperation and a proliferation of knowledge.

A degree of centralisation and moderation is in fact needed to implement privacy and fraud protection laws. Sadly, the efficiency of capitalism to concentrate power trumps the ability of stakeholders to organise themselves and achieve the fair, open-source environment which is the inherent potential of the Internet.

The advent of web3 comes with the introduction of blockchain technology and digital assets, but is equally a galvanisation of forces that existed from day 1 of the online paradigm shift.

At first we perceived social media as a net positive (pun intended), enabling personal and business relationships to flourish without the need for a shared physical space in time.

Today however, we have become aware that a processing plant has been built around us using tools that extract value from every second we spend using them, funneling it into pockets that have outgrown almost all legal entities (such as states), and who operate on a global scale.

In this reality we the users are at best a statistic.

The only way to migrate from and blunt the power of monopolies is to have a better value proposition for users, driving network migration. For true adoption, security and ease of use must be improved by orders of magnitude over what they are today in web2 and web3.

Let's describe digital ownership in web3.

To be sure, there has been a monetary detractor from web3 on-boarding, but as services grow and the ecosystem evolves, there is at the very least the opportunity for those who are willing to invest their time to create value for themselves beyond the cost of entry.

Logging on to a web2 platform requires only a username and password. This creates an account on a database which becomes a container for the users interactions, clicks, uploads, downloads etc. As this system branches out, the user creates a powerful pool of resources that can be mined out for various purposes, most of which are quite lucrative, especially at scale.

In web3 you have a passport, which is your public address, that is readable through a blockchain browser revealing which other addresses it interacts with. This address can be given ownership of any asset that exists on the blockchain. Therefor it is your unique identifier as well as your certificate of ownership. Mostly it is referred to as your wallet, since it holds all your certificates.

Every interaction you make via your own wallet is essentially, for better or for worse, yours. You can use it and leverage it in many ways already, but at the precipice of an avatar based Metaverse, there is great promise in taking ownership of your web footprint.

And that's it! For now. Later on we will discuss more specific applications and types of assets that exist in web3.

@0xBOAS