During a crypto bear market, and particularly when a macro-financial storm is blowing across the globe, it is easy to lose sight of why crypto pulled attention in the first place. Sentiment is negative and doom-laden, which is exactly the time to return to first principles and get a handle on what is being built and advanced towards, and for what purpose.
Over the last year or so, a lot of hype has been built up around NFTs and the metaverse, with both of those sectors falling within a wider category that is being referred to as web3. As a result, that web3 label is now used loosely, and sometimes even simply as a synonym for crypto, particularly crypto that is related to smart contract blockchains, such as Ethereum and Solana.
As a result, when people begin to doubt crypto, then they might also start to feel a similar way towards the concept of web3 as a whole. That is, bearish on crypto and bearish on web3.
This, however, is like doubting that technological advances will continue simply because tech stocks are down. Or, more concretely, like giving up on the internet after the dot com bubble burst. At such a time, It is worth considering in context exactly what web3 is supposed to mean, where it might be leading, and the likelihood that it will be a key part of the narrative when, as they eventually must, sentiment and structural set-ups reverse back into the beginnings of a bullish phase.
A Tech-Cultural Shift
One explanation you might come across is that while web1 was read-only, and web2 was read and write, web3 is read, write and own. That means that on the early web, you simply consumed static pages, and then later, with web2, you could create your own content, for example through social media and blog writing.
What you still don’t really have, though, is independent ownership of your content, since you’re publishing on centralized platforms, such as Twitter and YouTube. Users are renting space on virtual manors, and are reliant on the structures their digital landlords maintain.
With web3, though, that dynamic shifts. The hope is that decentralized networks will become the new standard, and that digital content and property can be owned and traded without reliance on a closed-off upper layer. And, as it happens, we have examples of that occurring right…
