Blockchains and Web3’s foundation

The internet is changing. Major technological shifts are coalescing, upending what it means to be “online”. AI eases discovery and understanding. Virtual Reality fosters immersion and connection. Together, they’re morphing into a metaverse - an open, intelligent, always-on digital playground where people create, connect, and thrive. 

But there’s a critical piece underpinning this changing phenomenon: the blockchain. The blockchain is rearchitecting the internet in itself. It’s why we’re entering a more accessible, intelligent, and autonomous web era: web3. But to understand it, let’s first take a walk down memory lane.  

The Web’s Evolution over time

Web 1.0

Pioneered in the 1980s, Web 1.0 was all about information access. It revolved around consumption and readability. This was the world of static websites that Google made infinitely searchable - people could consume, but couldn’t yet create or interact. That gap spawned the next wave of the internet: Web 2.0. 

Web 2.0 

Our current era. It revolves around interactivity and dynamic content. Enabled by tools like JavaScript, Web 2.0 launched the age of Social Media, Blogging, and Podcasting. Through these platforms, Web 2.0 brought a paradigm shift to the internet: user-generated content. It unlocks creation and fosters connection (For example, Instagram or LinkedIn) -  I couldn’t be publishing here without it! 

Web 2.0 platforms created enormous value because they served as “middlemen” facilitating discovery and trust between strangers. How would uber drivers or airbnb hosts know they’d find decent customers and get paid otherwise? Web 2.0 platforms became the middlemen guaranteeing these connections because there was no alternative.

But Web 2.0 has a problem. Because individuals needed platforms, the power to distribute, ensure trust, and foster connection concentrated into only a few hands (Facebook for connection, Apple for apps, etc.) Platforms could change the rules, remove content, or extract more value whenever they wanted. Individual creators are effectively “renting” a platform’s space and are at their mercy at any time. 

Whether through Twitter’s sometimes arbitrary account cancellations or Apple’s ongoing cases over App store fees, it’s clear these platforms have become too powerful. Individuals increasingly need protection - a way to achieve true independence and ownership. That’s where web3 comes in, propelled by the blockchain. 

Web 3 

The blockchain is a distributed ledger of transactions managed by a network of global, unrelated individuals. Imagine a database owned by thousands of strangers, all of whom have to agree on the data’s accuracy after every transaction. Each individual is incentivized to maintain the blockchain’s integrity through a combination of code, economics, and game theory, ensuring no foul play. It’s this holistic approach that allows the blockchain to eliminate middlemen. 

In codifying trust, the blockchain not only ensures present day compliance, but also allows future agreements to be guaranteed and executed in code. Without a dependence on people or central authorities, two parties can know that a certain action will take place if pre-defined conditions are met. This could replace those Web 2.0 platforms - by maintaining transaction integrity and guaranteeing condition-based outcomes, blockchains re-architect coordination and eliminate the need for platforms. 

An early example is Mirror, a decentralized publishing application for writers. Articles are not controlled by a centralized authority and writer payments are coordinated by the underlying blockchain. This means writers are protected from arbitrary cancellations or rate hikes because any rule changes require network approval, not just one central authority’s blessing. Mirror brings ownership, control, and transparency back to writers through the blockchain.  

Blockchain’s transparency returns rules and control to individuals while retaining Web 2.0’s transaction guarantees. It gives people the best of both worlds, eliminating the need for Web 2.0’s platforms! But that’s not all it does. Web3 also transforms monetization.

While web 2.0 platforms typically charged creators a “tax” on transactions, it’s become an archaic model in web3’s decentralized world. Instead, by returning ownership to creators, web3 is spurring a wave of novel monetization models that allow both creators and consumers to benefit from the “upside”. For example, creators can issue “creator tokens” just like companies issue shares. Their audience can purchase these tokens to not only gain access to content (instead of subscriptions), but also financially benefit as the token’s value is tied to the creator’s success. An “Aqil coin” may be worth $0.0001 today, but if Aqil does well, the coin’s value could appreciate too, allowing early supporters to reap benefits. 

Creator tokens are just an early experiment, but web3’s expanding adoption is bound to yield many more. Many early experiments may not pan out, but returning individual ownership through blockchain will unlock a multitude of monetization pathways over time. Innovation begets innovation. 

While ownership is fundamental to web3, it’s not the entire picture. Web3’s overarching goal is to make the internet more intelligent, autonomous, and open. The founder of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, put it best: “Web 3.0 is the executable phase of the web, and here, computers can interpret information like humans, to then generate personalized content for users.” While blockchain underpins Web3 by returning ownership and transparency to individuals, technologies like AI, VR, and AR weave in to make Web3 more intelligent, autonomous, and accessible. Blockchain is the foundation but there’s so much to be built across the stack: we’re in a paradigm shift, the internet is evolving, and it’s a good time to evolve with it.