web3 is the child of web2 and bitcoin. It’s a fork of Nakamoto’s blockchain that combines the speed and progress of our technology stack but the values and principles of web1.
In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee created the Internet as we know it, with the vision that it should be an open digital network available to all people. This vision allowed the creation of the first open protocols such as HTTP (web pages), SMTP (email), RSS (news), TCP/IP, etc. They were the pillars to build all the digital services and products that we know of.
But these protocols were limited in functionality and user experience, which led to the emergence of closed platforms that leveraged this open systems to create private networks. By offering better software experiences for free and with venture capital tactics they managed to grow very fast and attract millions of people to its platforms. This evolved and eventually they had so much information about its users that powerful players emerged and with them, an evil business model of personal information exploitation.
Eventually, the strategies of these products and services created networks that do not equitably distribute the generated value. They just extract and exploit information that they subsequently monetize.
Web3 and crypto is a movement that wants to better redistribute the value of our information through a new system based on open source and decentralization. What allows this movement is a new paradigm that proposes a new type of computer. It is a virtual computer that always works and can make commitments about performing actions (smart contracts). It’s maintained by all of us and no one can turn it off or manipulate it.
The main values proposed by the web3 computational paradigm are the following:
Privacy: Although everything in the blockchain is public, privacy refers to not giving our personal data necessarily whenever we use a service, since these data, apart from being private, also has economic value that corporations exploit with our consent or participation.
Portability: Through tokens or nft we can now own digital assets. This implies that they are not on a 3rd party private server. This reduces the switching costs that are so high in web2 monopolies, for example, in theory you would be able to move your digital audience to another network. Greater portability means more services that compete among for better quality options and lower commissions.
Composability: web3 is primarily about open-source code. These dapps will run forever and cannot be modified. The fact that they are really open invites other entrepreneurs and programmers to build upon them with the confidence that they will not will change because they don’t align anymore with the commercial strategy of a founder. The number of projects that never existed due to the limitations of these closed platforms is incalculable. With web3, hundreds of creative innovations will emerge. For example, there are already defi lending protocols that are open source and are on the blockchain, operating as protocols. In this way, any application will be able to make use of them and create better experiences for the user.
Identity: The concept of identity in web3 is that it is ours and we have full control over it. We don’t have to delegate it to centralized entities so that they can exploit it. The idea is that your audience, your content and your data are yours and you can move, hide and modify it. Identity in web3 is now a cryptographic wallet that holds your assets, certificates, social graph and much more.
Ownership: Thanks to NFTs and Tokens we now have real digital property. By being the owner, we are also part owner of the networks in which we participate and we have rights over that property. Rights to use it, sell it, rent it, and also gives us the right to vote and governance.
Conclusion
Web3 is about finance, it’s about open economies, about owning the data, about owning digital things for the first time in our lives. The digital world is as real and tangible as the physical world, yet until now we didn’t have infrastructure, property or rights. A handful of monopolies owned everything. This is the digital Renaissance.
To learn more about web3 technology, refer to my other posts. For more information, feel free to reach out on Twitter.
