Web3 is hailed as a technology paradigm that is fueled by the creator economy and is in the future, or rather, the next evolution of the internet. As
Web3 is hailed as a technology paradigm that is fueled by the creator economy and is in the future, or rather, the next evolution of the internet. As we draw evolutionary comparisons of the technology that underpinned everything from information consumption to content creation, Web2 contributed an unparalleled economic growth and represented a significant era in human evolution with new ways to work, consumer information and progress in human civilization. So with this enormous success of Web2, why is there a need for Web3?
As we rethink the internet, which relies primarily on a few centralized entities that have devices, channels of information that feeds the social media, mobile apps and provides connectivity points between service providers and seekers of these services, the control over these channels provides the custodian of this infrastructure not only monopolistic control but also a “too big to fail” economic choke point. So rethinking the internet, which was designed primarily to move information and morphed into moving value and truth, is a fundamental shift in empowering creators and participants and not just the custodians on the infrastructure.
The drivers that fueled this disruptive thinking were excessive valuation and control of Web2 companies, censorship enforcement by the existing control of information channels and the rapid dissemination of information, which was a force for good as in knowledge transfer but is now weaponized with the velocity and veracity of information and the dissemination of bias, mistrust and misinformation — making it difficult to discern between signal and noise. These drivers indicate not only the dawn of a new era but also the creative nature of the human species to rethink, redesign and renew, shaping the next era of our evolution.
Related: What the hell is Web3 anyway?
Web3 imperatives
So how do we envision this new paradigm taking shape? As Web3 aims at theorizing that the internet takes another step to be self-sufficient — leading to a whole new set of technology and protocol development, which will then be a foundation of a creators-controlled economy that embarks on information and value movement, and has discernable channels with built-in trust enabled by protocol. Blockchain and decentralization are often touted to be the enabling foundational concepts that are deemed essential to the development of such a platform. But before we drink the decentralization Kool-Aid, I think we ought to take a step back and reevaluate the success (and failures) of Web2 and more importantly, a transition to this new paradigm, as I suspect the challenges are not just technology-driven.
Related: Web3 might be crypto’s key to the mainstream market
To enable a Web3-led creators’ economy that empowers creators and participants, we need to first understand the imperatives of participatory economics, where the focus is largely driven by self-governance, efficiency, sustainability and the creation of a decentralized economic system devised with strong incentives and protected by protocols that entail social ownership, self-managed works and accountability for outcomes.
Participatory economics originates from previous centuries of thought and experimentation around the idea that people should be able to manage their own lives with others (on the same network plane) cooperatively and fairly with rules embedded in the incentive economy that rewards participation and penalizes wrongdoing and activities that the network views as unfair. In other words, for Web3 to work and deliver on its promise, we need participation.
At a very basic level, participation, much like in the real world, can come via commitment of resources — such as systems, protocols, skills, intellectual capital and expertise etc., and value created should have an equitable distribution among the various participants based on the fundamental tenets of demand and supply to address the fairness element. The economic value created would then need to be realized, accounted for, disseminated and exchanged with other fungible and nonfungible assets to maintain a balance in any economic network — all of this without any central accounting system or authority — to address the self-governance and protocol induced equitable structure.
Web3, in its current context, begins to look like a stateful system of tokenized networks. Where these tokenized networks are not only attracting capital, talent and technology giving them a nation–state (with their economic structure and in-network currencies) status but also are market places and laboratories of co-creation between various projects. We have begun to see these manifest in various decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) projects, and in a true sense, they are creating metaversical synergies between various tokenized networks.
Related: How NFTs, DeFi and Web3 are intertwined
To provide a true peer-to-peer, multi-token network (in a true sense, it’s…
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