What do we expect the new world of "Web3" to look like?

From 1989, Bernas put forward the concept of the World Wide Web to now, has experienced Web1.0, Web2.0, Web3.0, now the concept of Web3.0 is becoming the eyes of investors. In this article, the author combined with practical experience on Web3 launched a series of narration, interested partners come to have a look

We have massive and low-cost access to advanced technology through centralized networks, but the downside of this approach is that it stifles innovation.

The enterprise that owns the network has unilateral power, such as who can get the right to use the network, which functions are supported, how to distribute the economy, etc.

That will make it harder for other groups like startups and creators to grow their businesses because they have to worry and focus on central platforms changing the rules and taking away their users or profits.

Delegating power to communities rather than individual businesses is what Web3 hopes to address.

1. What is Web3

I prefer to think of the term "Web3" as an evolution of what we used to call the "crypto world" with a more decentralized meaning.

Interestingly, people are more receptive to the term because it sounds less rebellious and more technologically revolutionary.

So what is Web3?

In the 1980s, when the Internet was in its earliest days, the way people interacted with the Internet belonged to Web1: Internet websites published information and consultation, and ordinary users could only browse as passive receivers of information.

The leading news portals at that time were Sina and Yahoo, also known as the PGC era (website professionals produce content).

This model is like presenting newspapers/articles/books electronically and delivering them to all Internet users beyond the time and space constraints.

What has changed is only the way information is transmitted, but it is enough to make people sigh with technological progress.

Hiring special writers is easy to control the content quality of the website, but it also results in low production efficiency, less than a few articles a day. Coupled with the limitations of each person, the content of the Internet is small and narrow.

In Web2.0, people can not only passively receive information, but also actively create content, giving people the right to express, also known as UGC.

The current public account authors, toutiao Zhihu bloggers, douyin BIG V is due to the development of web2 era.

Once you start creating for all, information finally explodes. Two obvious problems with the explosion of information are the ease with which content can be copied and transferred (web1.0 also exists, but conflicts arise when there are enough information and editors), and identity and privacy leakage.

Both can be blamed on one problem: ownership.

Web3.0 addresses this problem through a series of blockchain technologies. By returning ownership to each creator, we own the content of the Internet and give users the rights they have.

Web3 makes users the owners of the Internet, rather than a monopoly.

To sum up, the accurate Web3 concept explanation I have seen so far is as follows:

The opportunity to upgrade the network to an economy centered around crypto assets, and to build systems where the incentives for network owners, network participants, and third-party developers are exactly aligned.

The biggest attraction of Web3 compared to Web2 is the new way of ownership redistribution and value capture. In this world of decentralized, the user is no longer to be selling goods (that is, the "flow"), but one can directly join the network and capture value of participants, each participant was actually owns all the property of the network (ownership), to participate in the formulation and vote of all the major decisions, can also how much contribution by capture much value.

In Web3 project, the essence of value formation is the flow of ownership, that is, the mutual flow of asset ownership, governance rights and privacy rights among individuals.

Value itself is "demand" and "supply", while demand and supply are all kinds of ownership of different individuals. Only when demand and supply flow with each other can "value" be formed.

The value of Web3 projects is not the ownership of users (such as their identity, assets, privacy, etc., which are only owned by individuals), but the flow of individual ownership, including asset mobility, governance participation, etc.

The current phase is similar to the Web2 Internet circa 1995.

As the Web3 infrastructure stack matures over the 2020-2025 period, we expect to see the first wave of viable Web3 applications around 2023, and expect Web3 applications to be as good as or better than Web2 by 2025.

Over the past year or so, the financial sector in the Web3 world has seen significant development: multiple DeFi protocols and their stacks, multi-chain cross-chain DeFi, and so on. After the financial sector, I personally expect to focus on the development of the following sectors:

Culture and entertainment: NFT, GameFi, Creator Economy, etc.

Underlying infrastructure services: native Web3 infrastructure/tools;

Governance: Community management tools/services;

2. The Web3 world

The most amazing thing about Web3 stacks is that they don't need any centralized coordination to be put together; they are an interoperable set of networks.

In this wonderful new world, there is a series of puzzle pieces that are increasingly complete.

First, the multiple public chains are the tracks that drive it all. Addresses and domain names are our passport to identity.

Cryptocurrencies (FT) and NFTs are the digital goods of this new world economy.

Currently, cryptocurrencies (FT) are highly interoperable, such as the DeFi protocol, where users can use a cryptocurrency to communicate with each other across protocols. That means there is tremendous convenience in the digital world.

NFT is our digital identity and proof of ownership in this new world, but NFTs is a central tool for the economy of creators, enabling them to connect directly with their fans and monetize their knowledge without an intermediary.

The NFT tracking advantage of blockchain technology itself could also help creators generate more revenue from subsequent transactions.

A basket of digital infrastructure is the guarantee.

Cross-computing, indexing, data management, hosting, storage and other critical services are essential software infrastructure, as are decentralized hardware infrastructure such as video, sensors, and so on.

In addition, privacy cannot be ignored. It not only protects users' personal data, but also fundamentally expands the application design space.

Given the backdrop of massive data leaks in the Web 2.0 era, data protection may become the core of Web3 technology innovation.

DeFi is a decentralized financial system.

DeFi refers to the decentralized application of the financial sector (savings, loans and exchange).

Cryptocurrencies themselves enable low-cost, real-time, borderless, point-to-point value transfer with very low barriers to entry.

At the same time, compare any DeFi savings rate with Wall Street's and you can see the difference, and it's on a decentralized basis.

Stablecoins and central bank digital currencies.

Staboins offer the advantages of cryptocurrencies with little volatility, helping to enable the real landing of on-chain transactions and payments, including digital currency global cross-border payment systems and other broader financial services.

The central bank digital currency is a necessary means for the digital economy of all countries and the most direct way for them to join Web3.

Daos are the way to manage new domains.

The DAO is a community shared by network participants, managed by consensus rather than centralized leadership. It is a new model of network governance for people in a decentralized world. Participants make decisions and vote on proposals, and the statistics of votes and whether to implement them follow the logic of smart contracts, removing elements of human intervention and realizing true autonomy.

Gamefi and Metaverse are entertainment.

Games like Axie are examples of how decentralized technology can create new ways for creators to monetize.

In-game items such as tools and skins are NFT owned by the player and can be sold for real world money, traded on the secondary market, and passed between games. Players can also earn coins or NFT through quests and participation.

In Web3.0, production relationships, organizational governance, business competition, and value capture logic will all be restructured.

Like a world where all we have to do is keep an identity system and we can go anywhere.

This set of identities will hold all of a user's transaction data and asset data, and any application can access this information with one click if we agree.

With this identity, we can log in to any app with a click of a signature. The holding of NFT assets also allows all applications to identify user access (or other event) permissions.

In fact, this is already happening.

For example, the production of a product or content in Web2 is promoted from top to bottom, led by the team and making decisions, which naturally has certain authority.

In Web3, we encourage bottom-up innovation and community autonomy for all participants. Xiaomi "Sense of participation" period quite has this taste.

For example, the way projects compete has changed. Anything a user does on the chain is recorded and can be viewed by anyone.

It's like aggregating and publicizing all of web2's tightly guarded user data.

As a result, all project partners can target and incentivize seed users through open on-chain data analysis.

For example, Looksrare recently launched on the eve of its launch with an airdrop of users trading more than 1E on Opensea, perfectly tapping the core target users to achieve a cold launch.

This approach gives many start-up teams a fair chance to compete and acquire target users at low cost.

In addition, the migration cost of blockchain products is very low (as mentioned above, it is a set of identity system), so in the Web3 world, the products that remain will be useful and valuable to users.

In addition, on-chain achievements and data analytics will be important components of Web3, as it can map out an address's identity, user profile, and behavior patterns.

3. Trend of imagination

 The incremental market of Web2 enterprises has gradually peaked in recent years, and their growth businesses are all carried out around the stock market. Faced with this new industry, they will also be afraid of missing out. So, in 2022, there will be a lot of Web2 companies thinking about how to enter this new world and quickly build their new business models. Similar to the "Internet +" when the Internet was popular at that time, helping these Web2 enterprises to carry out "Web3 +" may be an entrepreneurial opportunity.

 The trend of good developers joining Web3 from Web2 is accelerating, and the use of development tools and blockchain infrastructure/middleware is increasing.

 The P2E model in Gamefi has creatively attracted many non-cryptocurrency users to the Web3 world (other products should also consider growth in this regard), and I think Gamefi has the best chance to be the first to break out in the Web3 world.

 Middleware/tools for software services will emerge. With the explosion of Web3 and decentralized organizations, there will be more emphasis on middleware. For example, provide first-class DAO management tools, covering software for token-holder relationships, governance, money management, and stakeholder management.

 User profile + decentralized identity. The abundance of on-chain and off-chain data can facilitate better data analysis, make user profiles self-aligned, and build a foundation for differentiated services.

It may take another 3-5 years for Web3 to reach mass adoption.

Before that, there will be an intermediate state of Web2.5, where decentralization and centralization coexist for a long time.

2/15/2022 06:18:00 AM Tags : economy , life , technology

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