The appearance and will of the Web3 world

What is Web3? Having said that, it seems that the definition itself becomes a problem.

Fortunately, this is not a subjective philosophical torture, and we can clearly and unambiguously point out that the so-called Web3 world refers to the distributed network based on blockchain technology and the entire application ecology on top of it.

This definition even includes metaversities constructed on blockchain technology (which is another big topic), such as Decentraland. But conversely, the answer to whether all virtual interactive worlds that claim to be metaverses belong to Web3 is not necessarily. For example, the well-known Roblox, although Roblox is a veritable virtual world of user-created content (UGC), it is essentially a centralized product. "Centralized" means that Roblox's underlying foundation is still the traditional server-client architecture, not built on top of blockchain distributed technology.

There have been many articles on blockchain technology. Compared to the imaginative heights reached by blockchain technology, the underlying logic of implementing this architecture is quite concise. This is similar to the real world, and the mathematical and physical formulas that truly describe the important laws of the real world have a particularly concise beauty.

The average reader only needs to know one thing: the most important feature of a distributed network based on blockchain technology is the immutability of its data and code.

In a Web3 ecosystem, all data updates (or, more pedanticly, the "status updates" of this blockchain network) are driven by user activities, i.e. "transactions." Unlike the well-known Web2 Internet (let's call it the current mainstream Internet ecology), Web3 data updates consume significant computing resources, the so-called gas fee. The cost of this computing resource is paid by the user himself out of real money. That's why we say that web3's data ownership undoubtedly belongs to the producers— the users themselves.

At the same time, Web3 data is 100% visible to everyone (note that this refers to on-chain data, i.e. data on the blockchain. For efficiency and cost reasons, most Web3 applications still store large-scale data such as video images in a centralized way, and the realization of complete Web3 distributed storage is a hot topic at present. This data, which is all visible, has clear ownership, and can never be tampered with, constitutes the "appearance" of the Web3 world, or in other words, the objective existence of the Web3 world.

This model of data organization is fundamentally different from the current Internet world. At present, the user data of Internet applications is in the hands of large companies and is not open to the public, so there is a "user data moat". In such an Internet model, data is also the cornerstone, but it does not guarantee stability, and second, many invisible "user data islands" cannot continue to integrate into a "data continent", which is determined by the nature of the current Internet model's business model.

Another important point is that in addition to data, user accounts are also in the hands of large companies. Technically, the owner of an Internet product can delete or ban any account in its product at any time, than Trump's Twitter account is blocked. This kind of thing does not happen in the Web3 world, and the underlying blockchain technology that Web3 relies on determines that each user's account entrance in this Web3 world is unified, and only the user has control.

This is a wonderful design, a unified Web3 account means that there are no more fragmented data silos, all the historical data of a user in the Web3 ecosystem is publicly associated under the same account, yes, all the behavior of an account in Web3 is publicly visible. A new app on Web3 is no different from an app that has been running for years, and its user profile (based on historical data) is no different, and user data no longer has a so-called moat. This is unimaginable in the current Internet ecology, imagine that you can view all the activities of any Weibo account on the Internet? It's a bit incredible, but under the Web3 architecture, it's a perfectly normal thing.

The So-called "will" is not some kind of mysticism, nor is it some kind of artificial intelligence, but refers to the various rules that cannot be changed in this ecology, and the will is the rule.

The rules governing the operation of the Web3 world are defined by and only by the blockchain mechanism and the application code on top of it, the so-called "smart contracts.". Web3's "will"—code rules," and its "appearance"—ecological data— are written in a distributed network in an immutable way. The Web3 world uses immutable objective data and code to construct the appearance and will of the Web3 world. On this basic setting, which is irreducible from generation, all data and applications grow naturally.

The transparent nature of web3's will embodies a definite sense of security. There is no black box invisible code logic in the Web3 world, and capable users can directly read the smart contract code to understand the operation of the Web3 world.

The DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is an external embodiment of the will of Web3 code. When the governance logic of a virtual organization is written on the Web3 blockchain in the form of smart contract code, it represents a dominant DAO will. Participating users of the DAO influence the direction of smart contract governance through their voting weights, but the governance logic itself is no longer modified.

A concept like DAO seems a little far from the fireworks of ordinary people, but the Web3 world is not a castle in the air, and the values it embodies are directly related to the real world. The most obvious is the recent hot NFT concept. While anyone can generate NFTs and publish them to OpenSea auctions, NFTs actually published by celebrities or big names have a natural attention premium, which is migrated from intangible values in the real world. In addition, some NFTs do not seem to be directly related to the real world, but they also gain direct attention in the relevant communities and add value. The value of NFTs can be talked about in a separate whole article. It is clear that NFTs have gained wider recognition, especially among young people. This trend is almost irreversible. The most important role of the NFT is to define the virtual objects of the Web3 world, just as the metacosm defines the virtual space of the Web3 world. It's a big deal from scratch.

Web3 isn't necessarily for everyone, at least at this stage.

But the fascinating thing about the Web3 world is that it's built on a clean and solid foundation on which everything grows. And, unless reality civilization dies, there's reason to believe that there won't be much to make the global blockchain distributed network on which Web3 depends disappear.

Relatively speaking, the design of the virtual world operated by centralized servers is more delicate and the experience is perfect, as long as the central server is shut down and the data is deleted, all the beauty in the virtual world will disappear - this has happened again and again; before the advent of Web3, all the products that called themselves virtual worlds were built on a pedestal that could collapse; the more exquisite the superstructure, the more costly it would be when it collapsed.

On top of Web3's trustworthy infrastructure, all trust is replaced by truth, the truth of the data, the trust of the code. Everyone has fair access to Web3 through a standard account, there is no threshold, and all beings are equal. It is true that the big Vs can bring real-world tangible assets and intangible value realizations into the Web3 world, but this is what Makes Web3 attractive to everyone: the Web3 world and the real world have a real two-way value connection, which not only extends the value of the real world, but also creates new value to feed back to the real world.

Another fascinating thing about the Web3 world is "user building."

In modern games, "user building" is a very common concept, and UGC (User Generated Content) expresses the simple idea of building for the whole people in game design. In the Web3 world, all actions are constructed, all user transactions, all items (NFTs) flow, and all traces of activity are recorded as Web3 public data and become part of the history of the world. Every Web3 participant is also a Web3 builder.

Further, capable users can add will to the Web3 world – smart contracts. An important difference from the current mainstream Internet is that the account that publishes the smart contract does not need to bear the cost of the subsequent operation of the contract. If you remember, the resource cost of running smart contracts is borne by the user. What a wonderful design, which means that any individual is free to contribute to the Will of the Web3 world without having to worry about future operating costs.

Web3 is not an ideal country, even though it has the most beautiful infrastructure setup and scalability ever. At the end of the day, Web3 users are also real-world people. The goal of Web3 is not to build a code- and machine-dominated world like Matrix, but to open up new conceptual spaces for the real world, which remains a projection of our imperfect world. The flaws of human nature in the real world will also be mapped in the Web3 world. It cannot change human greed and short-sightedness, nor can it make human character better. But the advent and development of Web3 has given those who are looking forward to a new world of real hope, full of freedom and possibilities for all kinds of creation, and has a solid underlying foundation to ensure that value creation is not easily erased.

The last sentence of the Count of Monte Cristo says that before God reveals the ultimate meaning of mankind, all the wisdom of mankind is contained in these two words: "waiting" and "hope." While the full picture of its influence will require a little patience, Web3 may become synonymous with "hope" in this new era.