UN Webinar Recap “Web 3.0 — Evolving into a New World?”
See what the panelists, including Numbers’ founder Tammy Yang, have to say about the future challenges of Web3.0.
The webinar “Welcome to the Web 3.0 — Evolving into a New World” was held on March 23, 2022 by the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics of United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute. Joining our co-founder Tammy Yang, were two other respected figures in the Web3.0 space: Phil Chen from Race Capital and HQ Han from Protocol Labs. For those of you who missed out, this article recaps the Web3.0 discussions from this webinar.
Click to see full recording of the webinar.
Criticisms and Debates about Web2.0
Despite all the recent popularity around the buzzword “Web3.0”, webinar host Irakli Beridze aptly pointed out that for all the good things that are associated with “Web3.0”, it is double-edged by nature. Without proper usage and regulation in place, the whole phenomenon may fail and hurt human society before truly living up to its original promises of bringing a more open, transparent and decentralized Internet.
In response to Beridze’s comment, Numbers’ Tammy Yang commented on the topic of “centralization vs. decentralization”, a concept that highlights how divided we are in our understanding of ownership, accessibility and provenance of the data. Web2.0 seems to have solved the problem of data communication, but at the same time, it has allowed a handful of tech giants to monopolize our data and monetize it for their own gains. Race Capital’s Phil Chen pointed out that in the fierce race between the most advanced AI and Machine Learning companies and researchers, what decides the winner is “who owns the data set” instead of “who owns the best algorithms”. When it comes to our data, Web3.0 could be a solution for this as it could redefine the control and redistribute the power by adding blockchain features to AI technology and make it more ethical, so the data providers, i.e., us, could have a say in how our data is used.
Also, we seem to be used to the fact that Web2.0 is full of fake contents, which significantly minimizes its trustworthiness and efficiency, but the real disappointment comes when you realize that even in a thriving Web3.0 world, “fakeness” looks quite similar to Web2.0 Internet. Protocol Labs’ HQ Han then added the “content-identifier (or CID)” methodology of the IPFS system can bring back the old idea of “The Semantic Web”, giving back ownership of contents to the original creators with the help of computers that could “reason” than “be manipulated”.
A Picture of What the Near Future Looks Like
We are still living in a world where inequalities in digital proficiency and net-neutrality are still creating huge gaps between people. Only a little more than half of the countries worldwide have structured digital policies and frameworks. The question then brought by Beridze for the panelists was how the Web3.0 trend will affect on this matter? Will the new features make the Internet a more accessible resource, or will it make it more polarized and unfair?
HQ Han hinted that with Covid-19, the “Play-to-Earn” phenomenon lowers the barriers for common people to earn a living and create values. Phil Chen also gave an insightful comment on the true essence of Metaverse by putting: “Metaverse is not a virtual reality world. It is actually a point in time when people value digital assets more than physical assets.” Also, he also reminded us the importance of separating signals from noises. We have to identify true public blockchains and sustainable projects to invest and focus on, rather than being distracted and swayed by numerous “centralized scams” appearing in the form of big NFT projects or crypto ICOs.
There are more and more applications and projects trying to revive the old concept of hoping the Internet to be a fair and democratic land for all the peers and nodes, instead of just a massive collection of Intra-nets where groups of people connect with each other trustlessly in the fear of digital oligarchy and loss of assets.
Joined also by hundreds of Web3.0 enthusiasts, tech lovers and people who simply care about a better world, the webinar explored the unknown possibilities of the trend, which have been taking up a bigger and bigger proportion of our attention, energy and even financial investment. We hope this gathering would be the first of many more discussions and contributions to come with Numbers to build a more solid and trustworthy Web3.0.
Stay tuned!
About Numbers Protocol
Numbers is building a decentralized photo network for creating community, value, and trust in digital media. Its Numbers Protocol redefines digital visual media as assets and is the backbone of a suite of tools for registering and retrieving images and videos in the Numbers network.
These include:
- Capture App: The first blockchain camera in the world that users can easily register photos and use Web3.0 applications.
- Seal API: Developers and enterprises can implement Numbers API to register photos and access their Web3.0 addresses and certificates.
- Certificates: content authenticity certificates with on-chain provenance
- CaptureClub marketplace: Native NFT marketplace which allows photo generators to sell and stake their creations.
- NFT Search Engine: The first Web3.0 NFT search engine that helps users verify the history of NFTs and prevent potential NFT fraud.
Numbers champion the purity of digital media and enable people to think more critically about the interactions between our images and the world around us. The goal of Numbers is to tokenize authentic photos (including images and videos) to create a decentralized photo network in Web3.0.
