Wen 丨 Chen Gen
At present, driven by the cryptocurrency circle and the metacosm out of the circle, the concept and theory of Web3 are rapidly gaining popularity. Web3, also known as Web3, is, in a nutshell, the next era of the Internet. Web3 is an internet that is open to all users, built on an open protocol and a transparent blockchain network. Web3 is based on open source protocols and uses commerce as an interface, claiming to redesign existing Internet services and products for the benefit of the public, providing them with convenient access and other features.
Web3 is gaining momentum and has had an impact on the centralized mechanism of Web2 social platforms. For Web2, Internet social platforms often make money by obtaining a large amount of personal data for precision marketing. However, the emerging Web3 social networking companies, on the contrary, hope to build a social platform that does not control user data and allows users to fully control the right to use their data, which undoubtedly has an irreconcilable conflict with the core business of social giants such as Meta.
Can Web3 deliver on the vision of a decentralized social platform? In the future, is it possible for Web3 social to replace Web2?
Web3 social companies are on the rise
It can be said that Web3 is an inevitable trend driven by technological development, just like from Web1 to Web2, and then with the further advancement and upgrading of technology, it will inevitably lead to Web3.
Web1 was the first stage of the Internet's development, which lasted from 1994 to 2004. In the Web1 stage, the user is a simple content consumer, the content is provided by the website, the typical example is the news portal, and there is little interaction between users. Of course, Web1 is not completely free of interaction or payment capabilities, but these features are greatly limited because the transfer infrastructure does not guarantee security.
Obviously, while Web1 is built on top of an open, decentralized, and community-managed protocol, Web1 is just a readable network where users can't interact with the content of a page in the Web1 era. And, as the number of users increases, web1 issues are increasing.
The birth of Web2 is mainly to overcome the limitations of Web1, compared with Web1, the main advantage of Web2 is that users can interact with the network. In fact, it is the user's demand for social attributes that has spawned many of today's Internet social platforms. People can share their daily routines on Twitter, Weibo, or they can rate or sell goods on apps. The Internet iterates from passively receiving information to actively creating information.
This new, more interactive Internet experience brings many new features to users and enhances the user experience. But then came the problem, and it has not been completely solved to this day: if users want to use these new features, they must authorize a centralized third-party platform to manage large amounts of data. As a result, these centralized entities have been given enormous power and influence in terms of data and content permissions, and a lot of communication and business practices have been concentrated on closed platforms owned by a few tech giants, such as Google, Meta, Amazon, etc., and this model has been running to this day.
In the core model of Web2, people's lives are almost manipulated by several major Internet social giants. This brings opportunities to the emergence of Web3. Web3 exists on a blockchain-based basis, promising privacy and digital identity to return to users, while enabling new levels of interaction thanks to non-homogeneous tokens (NFTs) and decentralized applications (dApps).
From this perspective, Web3 represents a vision of breaking this monopolistic control – Web3 platforms and applications built on blockchain technology will not be owned by giants, but by each user, who will take ownership by helping to develop and maintain these services. The vision of Web3 is to be based on open source protocols, with business as an interface, providing easy access and other features.
Based on the characteristics of Web3, Web3 has caused an impact on the centralized mechanism of Web2 social platforms. As the "antithesis" of Internet social giants such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tencent, Web3 social companies are on the rise. Since 2021 alone, more than a dozen Web3 social networking companies such as Debank and CyberConnect have announced their establishments or received further financing, and capital has bet on this track.
Web3 social networking companies invariably want their products to be more decentralized and free, so that users can fully or basically grasp the data they provide. Just as when people want to speak out on public issues, people first choose Twitter and Weibo; in terms of emotion or appearance, they prefer soul and detective. Web3 social companies want to build a product that socializes in the Web3 or crypto world. This product is characterized by decentralization, data that belongs only to itself, anonymity and security.
The social platform war is back
Around Web3, social platforms seem to have ushered in a new era. On the one hand, giants such as Meta, TWitter, and Google have all found this group of companies that want to replace themselves and actively embraced Web3. After all, the current Internet giants not only have a strong sense of crisis, but also have a strong sense of innovation, such as Google, Apple and other giants have invested huge sums of money in the future of technology research.
On January 20, Twitter announced the launch of a new feature that would display user avatars with NFTs as hexagons, which is also considered by the industry to be the first attempt by the internet giant to transform to Web3. At about the same time, Meta, Youtube, Reddit, and Google all announced that they were trying to launch NFT products and join the development of Web3 products. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google's parent company AlphabetInc., said directly that the company is monitoring the development of the blockchain industry and Web3. He said many tech companies are pouring into the space with hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, and Alphabet may soon follow suit.
On the other hand, Web3 social networking represents a new trend that is impacting and changing the current era. People seem to need a product that socializes in the web3 or crypto world and brings together the consensus of users around the world. Take LensProtocol, for example, which has familiar social media features such as profiles, comments, retweeted posts, and more. But unlike social media in the past, LensProtocol is NFT-powered, so users own and control all of the content.
According to LensProtocol on Twitter, these NFTs can be used to manage fans and even trade in the market. NFTs are non-homogeneous tokens, and unlike homogeneous tokens such as Bitcoin, each NFT is unique and inseparable, which is also the most important value of NFTs. Because of the support of blockchain technology, even others can download and intercept NFT works, but the holders of NFT works can prove the original uniqueness of the NFTs in their hands through digital certificate tracking and other methods.
Therefore, NFTs can be a paragraph, a picture, or an article in the Web3 social platform. Each original article NFT or image NFT published on the Web3 social platform has only one copy, and only the first user to upload can have the right to use each original article NFT or picture NFT, and can set its scope of use and how to use it.
Whether it's pictures, music, videos, or other works of art, the content that people create in Web3, Web3 social platforms can motivate users through NFTs to make them more sustainable.
From a capital point of view, there are countless technology companies and investment institutions with hundreds of millions of dollars in the Web3 field, and those with more than 1 billion US dollars and are known to the public are: a16z, Sequoia Capital, Paradigm and so on. Among them, a16z has invested in Internet giants such as Facebook and TWitter, and now it has turned its attention to Web3 again. a16z completed a $2.2 billion cryptocurrency fund fund roundup last June and continues to bet heavily on Web3 today.
Obviously, no matter what era, as long as there are new changes in technology, it is possible to give birth to new giants. For example, in the era from Web1 to Web2, under the monopoly of Google, social giants such as Facebook and Twitter were born. The same is true in China, where despite the monopoly of Alibaba and Tencent, subversives such as ByteDance can still be born. Because the large enterprises formed in each era, because their enterprises themselves are too large, it is difficult to make a complete transformation and trade-off in strategy, and they will inevitably not have the advantage of the new type of challengers.
Will Web2 social be replaced by Web3 social?
The Web3 social platform is an imaginative architecture that directly answers the most vexing questions of Web2. Clearly, in many ways, the solution proposed by Web3 is the opposite of the solution offered by social networks, which is more beneficial for users, creators and developers, and values the input side of teams and individuals more than giving the network owner or operator more control. This begs another question: If this would be more beneficial for more people, would Web3 replace Web2? And why not?
In fact, although Web3 claims to be able to achieve decentralization, in the final analysis, from the objective facts, decentralization is only an ideal - decentralization can only be driven by technology, in a more open and equal direction, because the final central power is still in the hands of the designer of the platform.
In Tesla CEO Musk's view, Web3 is currently more of a "marketing buzzword" than a reality. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey believes that Web3 will eventually be controlled by venture capitalists, from one monopoly of power to another. Jack Dorsey said: Users do not actually own The Web3 product, the actual owner of Web3 is the venture capital agency VCs behind the project and its limited partner LP, and Web3 can never be separated from the incentive mechanism they set. Ultimately, Web3 will be a centralized entity with different tags.
This is not difficult to understand - although because blockchain-based technology transactions are more free and open, it is not really possible to achieve absolute security, but it is not yet known. Since there is no absolute security, then, and there is no absolute decentralization, night means that there is obviously a limit to so-called anonymity.
For example, what happened to Bitcoin some time ago, before the FBI investigated and dealt with Bitcoin, all virtual currencies and experts in the field of blockchain agreed that Bitcoin is the safest currency and there is no way to investigate. But the FBI has investigated and punished Bitcoin, which has been touted as a secure blockchain technology, and the crimes that have occurred based on Bitcoin.
It can only be said that in the face of public information, Web3 technology can increase information confidentiality and security, but it is still impossible to form absolute confidentiality at the level of national governance or hacking.
Therefore, in terms of the substitution of Web3 to Web2, web3 is best understood as an "economic" extension of Web2, especially social media, which will grow as Web2 evolves. To some extent, an important part of Web2 will be better executed by the Web3 system, and the two powerful systems will coexist and run in parallel.
From the underlying technical point of view, Because Web3 is based on decentralized technology, it has more advantages in user information security and data security, which will inevitably promote the current Internet application products based on Web2 technology as the architecture to upgrade in the direction of Web3.
Just as WeChat has replaced most of the communication methods after the emergence of weChat, as well as the previous QQ-based social methods, mobile phone calls, text messages and the ancient QQ still exist.
Overall, it's safe to assume that while the blueprint for Web3 is beautiful, business developers aren't going to do it based solely on the vague ideal of decentralization. If Web3 can truly bring more benefits to social life and business markets, then people will naturally push traditional network systems to a new stage.