What is Web3, and does it matter?
Flashback to 2021. We’re deep in the pandemic, and people are NFT-ing the shit out of everything.
Crappy clip art of glib monkeys, Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, an entire house, and other oddities were selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Rug-pulls, blockchain, Bitcoin — it was a strange time.
These new digital thingies were hailed as the infrastructure of a new frontier called Web3 — a place where the digital world is owned by everyone, not just a few tech conglomerates. Web3 believers abstractly went on and on, while skeptics countered with, “But what is it, man?”
As many, many people lost their shirts from cryptocurrency and NFT investments, the hype rollercoaster didn’t so much come to a stop as crash into a smoldering heap.
But now, folks are picking through those ashes and identifying which pieces could be useful — especially with the newly mainstreamed power of AI.
I, for one, am excited about it. Here’s my vision for it (no NFTs involved).
Owning your own data universe
Today, you have a million accounts spread across the internet, and almost every one of them collects data on you.
Spotify tracks what you listen to. Netflix tracks what you watch. Amazon tracks what you shop for. Your grocery store tracks what you eat. Ostensibly, they do this so they can make relevant suggestions on what to consume next.
But companies are notoriously opaque about the data they collect and what they do with it. They may be collecting data that would make you uncomfortable. Or they may be doing something weird with it. Because they collect it, they own your data.
This is undeniably icky. That’s why we’re so put off when we get targeted ads about something we were talking about with a friend over coffee. Some stranger, somewhere, is listening.
Web3 could give you your own data universe.
Ownership is the big paradigm shift between today's web (Web2) and Web3. In a Web3 world, all the data associated with your accounts across the internet would exist in a container you own that is only accessible through your unique cryptographic key.
You would have full visibility into the data associated with each account, and you could delete whatever data you want — because you own it.
Solve the dilemma between privacy and relevance.
While we hate feeling creeped on, we do like receiving ads relevant to our tastes and interests. I do, anyway. I love finding new products, podcasts, and brands that make my life better.
Even if you don’t, we’ve all had the experience of an ad absolutely nailing us. Netflix has recommended an obscure show you’ve never heard of, but it rocked your world. You saw an Instagram ad for the perfect pair of running shoes that you ordered on the spot.
Privacy is important, but it’s also important for people to be connected to the things that interest them. Companies doing cool things are more likely to succeed because the right people know about them.
With Web3, you could still receive customized ads, but you are the only one who has visibility into the data informing those ads.
Staying safer in a riskier world
Remember all those accounts you have? Each one of them represents a threat of being compromised. Even the ones you’ve only used once. Even the ones you haven't used in forever. What’s protecting you? A measly password that you probably use across all your accounts, and have done since like the eighth grade.
Let’s finally go passwordless.
Passwords are broken, but that’s for another blog. The privacy mechanism for Web3 will resemble today’s single sign-on experience (like your Apple ID), but instead of a password, you’ll use your uncrackable cryptographic key to log in.
Your dad will finally be able to throw away his notebook full of passwords!
We can guard against identity theft.
This is super important because, with AI, it’s becoming easier and easier to impersonate someone else. That threat is only going to grow more significant. In the years to come, it will be more critical to be able to prove that you were behind the actions of your online identity.
That’s where the blockchain comes in. The blockchain is a digital record of actions, transactions, and assets that isn’t owned by a centralized entity. This decentralized model makes it almost impossible to hijack. By this virtue, it is un-revisable and highly trustable.
With the blockchain and Web3, you’ll be able to prove what you did or didn’t do simply by pointing to the highly trustable blockchain.
Twitter/X shows how good it will be for users to own their online identity. Originally, Twitter verified high-profile people by vetting them and giving them that famous blue check. But then Twitter just decided to let anyone who wanted to buy a blue check, thus enabling previously blue-checked accounts to be impersonated. This is only hilarious because it isn’t happening to us, who never had a blue check in the first place.
Web3 would free us from such big-tech whims.
Navigating the web with your own AI
Ok, so to recap. You’ll have your own data universe, kept safe by your own cryptographic key. AI has the potential to sit on top of this data universe and serve as your own personal assistant and gateway to the web.
While the companies you hold accounts with know some things about you, they don’t know everything. Netflix probably doesn’t know what artists you listen to. Spotify doesn’t know what you shop for. Amazon doesn’t know what you buy at the supermarket.
Your personal AI assistant knows all of your information (that you allow it to), so it can guide you to even more relevant, cool, exciting things out there on the web.
Imagine you’re taking your lunch break, and you tell your AI assistant, “Find me a new podcast to listen to.” Your AI assistant might say, “A lot of people in your LinkedIn network are consuming this podcast, and it’s getting good reviews from others who have listened to the same podcasts you’ve previously enjoyed.”
As with your data, you own and control your AI assistant and what it can know about you — even whether to bring it into existence at all.
When will Web3 get here?
Web3 is more or less an engineering challenge at this point, but a few significant obstacles still stand in the way.
Web3 is a decentralized internet. Sites and apps are stored on many servers across several countries. Therefore, the regulations they will need to follow are unclear.
Blockchain is expensive and takes a ton of energy to run. Without enough energy, Web3 will be mega slow (and environmentally not great).
Everyone — designers, developers, analysts — will have to learn how this new internet works and how to build things for it. That will take some time.
AI has changed everything. It’s exciting to think about what other technologies may go mainstream as we wait for Web3, technologies that can give us more power in the current web and hasten the release of the next one.
