Web3

A short article on the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreesson Horowitz' Future blog looks forward to what's being called Web3, an internet owned by builders and users: Why Web3 Matters

Web2 is what we have now:

"…siloed, centralized services run by corporations. Most of the value accrued to a handful of companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook."

(7 Cups pays Amazon to operate its web servers, and relies on Google, Apple and Facebook in other ways.)

The problem with Web2 is that the relationship between the company and its users changes as the company matures:

"To continue growing requires extracting data from users and competing with (former) partners."

(The post you are reading now is part of the "data from users" 7 Cups needs to continue growing. Actually it appears to be shrinking at the moment, but that's another story.)

The claim is that Web3…

"…fixes the core problem of centralized networks, where the value is accumulated by one company, and the company ends up fighting its own users and partners."

(Trying to find a way to format quotes nicely in this forum definitely feels like fighting!)

Web3 does this by using tokens to represent value:

"Tokens align network participants to work together toward a common goal…"

For example, a future decentralized Web3 competitor to 7 Cups might have a fluid collection of independent support communities instead of our fixed set of centrally-managed subcommunities, another fluid collection of independent listener cooperatives offering different listening styles instead of our fixed and centrally-managed listener training and support, and so on.

More at: What is Web3? The Decentralized Internet of the Future Explained and: DAO Landscape ("Decentralized Autonomous Organizations")

Charlie