Exploring the Great Migration of the Internet from Web2 to Web3
Key takeaways from the webinar with Cardstack’s Founding Director Chris Tse
We recently started the Web3 Watch series — a series of Cardstack events, including webinars and fireside chats. In the first webinar, Cardstack’s Founding Director Chris Tse discussed the great migration of the Internet from Web2 to Web3, detailing what’s to come for blockchain tech, open-source software, and decentralization at large in the next few years.
Below, we have compiled the key takeaways from Chris Tse’s talk.
Web3 users belong to three camps.
“Web3” means something different to different people, but most users define “Web3” in one of three ways:
- Crypto market: Web3 means speculating and trading cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
- dApp infrastructure: Web3 means building protocols and decentralized applications on Ethereum.
- Use cases & applications: Web3 means practical use cases like accounting, payments, governance, and community.
Combined, these three components form Web3 — the place to which people are now beginning to migrate. We are already seeing users leave big tech platforms from the Web2 space to join Web3, and there are millions more to come. The technology is still maturing, but there is no question about the massive potential of Web3.
Web3 has four layers.
- Protocols like Ethereum and Bitcoin
- Infrastructure for different types of things you can do, e.g. transactions
- Use cases around financial services like trading, as well as content and gaming
- Access that allows users to get to the information they need
These four layers interact in ways much like the three main camps above. They draw in new users by offering a variety of unique and worthwhile services, experiences, and more. As these four layers grow, the Web3 user base will become more diverse. The goal of Web3 is not that everybody becomes a crypto trader or flips NFTs — it’s that the Web2 versions of use cases need to be redesigned, rebuilt, and replaced with Web3 versions of the same use cases.
Web3 is about two qualities.
Fundamentally, Web3 is about ownability & composability.
In Web3, you own…
- … your money: You’re the only person who holds the keys to your money, so you don’t have to go through a bank or financial intermediary to move your own funds.
- … your data: If you own something — like data, artwork, or your profile — you have access to it permanently; it is not hosted on someone else’s server and thus locked into a platform where you can’t ever get it out.
- … your software: Open-source software is ownable. Once you run it on your own computer, no one can take it away from you — as opposed to rentable software, which you have to pay monthly to use in the world of Web2 SaaS.
- .. your relationships: You don’t own your followers or subscribers on Web2 social media platforms. But in crypto, where people have an onchain record, creators do own the relationships that they have worked so hard to build.
Plus, you can compose Web3 software like Lego blocks to get exactly what you need! In Web2, nothing is truly composable, especially not across platforms or services.
That is why this migration from Web2 to Web3 is long overdue — so that you can compose your own user experience and have true ownership of your money, data, software, and relationships.
Web3 needs the Cardstack Framework.
Web3 is currently very hard to use. That is why, at Cardstack, we’re composing the dApp infrastructure into a uniform, cohesive user experience.
The entire UX is built up from cards like Lego blocks, with the Cardstack Framework bringing it all together. Use cases and applications will no longer be 100 different apps that require a hundred different logins via WalletConnect; it’s one application that you log into that contains the parts and modules of different applications, all of which you can compose to create your own experience that is exactly what you need.
The great migration of the Internet from Web2 to Web3 has already begun. Hear more about this movement in the webinar with Cardstack’s Founding Director Chris Tse.
Video
Podcast
Want to learn more about Web3 & Cardstack?
Check out the resources below:
Curious About the Future of Web3? Here Are Our Predictions for 2022
Read the article
Combining Web2 & Web3: The tools we need to make Web3 take off
Read the article
Making Web3 Usable
Read Part 1 | Read Part 2
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