What is Web 3?
Bitcoin kicked off a decade long experiment in creating a global, permission less digital economy, native to the internet, that is now eating the world. Ethereum and the many projects that built upon their success was a step change that allowed for greater levels of complexity in this emergent digital capital market; a decentralized web of organizations and series of economic games which maximise competition, innovation and seeks yield and efficiency.
It has reframed the term ‘Web 3’, and positioned the world of blockchain as an antidote to what The Web has become – a series of data silos controlled by a few organizations who prize shareholders over users. As a complex tangle of competing self-governing states pushing between the tight grasp of governments and corporations, Web 3 promises to restore and enhance the authority and centricity of the individual, and their data, to The Web. At its core, Web 3 is about trust.
The cost of trust on the Web and in the world at large is a restriction on the flow of commerce and a reliance on platforms to mediate as trust brokers for our relationships and economic activity a form of extractive digital tax. Web 3 removes these points of friction through open-source code, algorithms and a democratisation of the data economy and its main benefactor, AI.
It promises to unleash unprecedented economic growth and expansion – something that has never been more important in the current economic environment. Web 3 can also be thought of as an unparalleled brain trust of computer scientists, economists and entrepreneurs, each contributing to a shared and open multi-billion dollar stack of critical internet infrastructure.
Each part reinforcing the other, compounding into something unstoppable. With advances in AI, and as we move to a more automated world, the ability for users (be that consumers or businesses) to trust the web and its technologies – becomes ever more important. Web 3 is an important mission for us all as citizens and users and a hedge against the abuse of power of monopolists or oppressive governments.
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