Exploring the Significance of Web3’s Public Goods and Ownership for the Future of the Internet

Exploring Web3's Public Goods and Ownership for the Future of the Internet

Translation: Bebe

Proofreading: Ray

Introduction

Are you tired of frequent pop-up ads? Are you numb to your privacy and data being leaked? Web2 giants are exploiting and profiting from your value. Read this article to redefine the concept of public goods and experience the new order brought by blockchain.

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Main Content

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Perhaps Chris Dixon’s explanation is the best: Web1 is “read”, Web2 is “read and write”, and Web3 is “read, write, and own”. By understanding Web3, let’s try to understand why it is important to build this new internet and why it is necessary to step back and understand public goods.

Whether it’s because everyone around you is buying Dogecoin, hoping it will rise to $1 soon, or you’ve heard that artist Beeple sold a JPEG for $70 million, Web3 has been impossible to ignore in the past two years. But should we care? Will this groundbreaking and revolutionary technology dominate the world tomorrow, or is it just another useless thing to ignore in the news, perhaps just a flash in the pan?

The reality may lie somewhere in between. While this technology may change the world, it won’t happen overnight. However, why is it enough to care about the next generation iteration of the internet and make you want to build Web3? Public goods and new ownership models play a crucial role.

The Importance of Public Goods

First, let’s step back and build an understanding of public goods. Traditional examples of public goods include clean air, libraries, and even the power grid. These goods or services are not exclusive to anyone, and anyone accessing them does not negatively impact others. In today’s knowledge industry era, a more relevant example is open-source software, which is non-proprietary software that anyone can modify, optimize, or simply view its source code. Popular open-source software includes Mozilla Firefox, Linux, and JQuery, among others. Open-source software enables developers to work and collaborate on projects developed by different individuals, teams, companies, and organizations.

These public goods are like roads and bridges on the internet. However, this time, we don’t need to spend years fighting for permits or negotiating land sales – we can start building in Web3 immediately.

The dominant internet platforms today are built on the basis of privatizing what we consider public goods in Web3. Think about Google, Facebook, and TikTok. They aggregate users and their data, profit from these users (you and me), develop their platforms using network effects, give us no profit, and continue this cycle to make billions of dollars. These forms of exploitation were initially accepted due to their application examples, and this is also one of the key reasons why Web3 is exciting, because Web3 is built on the idea that companies have another way to make money without exploiting users for data and profit. Instead, the world we can now envision is an open platform that shares profits and value with users, allowing us to create more value for each participant. Doesn’t that sound amazing?

In Web3, builders are striving to create chat applications, financial products, social media platforms, and search engines that belong to the public goods. We easily accept that these goods and services belong to private companies, which allow us to profit from using their products, while bombarding us with mind-numbing advertisements every minute. The ads we encounter seem to become increasingly invasive every day. Regardless of how much profit they make, companies like Facebook will find ways to extract more money from us and in the process, make us dissatisfied with their platforms in some way. Think about how terrible your experience has been on Instagram in the past few years.

User Ownership and Control of Data

The world being created by Web3 builders will not be a world where platforms have complete control over data; users will own any content they create and retain actual ownership of the digital assets they purchase. Currently, when you purchase items in video games or things like concert tickets, the private server operated by the company that sells the item checks the box indicating that the item is yours. In reality, it doesn’t actually belong to you, but rather to the company running the server. In Web3, these digital assets exist on public blockchains, they are portable, and most importantly, they are actually owned by users.

Users can transfer data and assets from one platform to another, which will create a competitive pressure that today’s companies do not exist. They think you have nowhere else to go. When they know that if they don’t create enough value for users, users may simply leave for another company that can create value and take their personal data with them, these companies will eventually have to update their business models from extracting value to delivering value.

As our world becomes more online, digital property rights become increasingly important, which is impossible for today’s Web2 models and platforms. We will soon live in a world where most of the paperwork we use now will exist on the blockchain, such as art and music. This idea is not far-fetched. To achieve this, we need to truly own our digital assets in a way that is only possible through a guaranteed settlement layer through the blockchain.

At this point, it may sound cliché, but just as people are well aware of how the Internet has changed the world in ways we know and later ways we don’t know, Web3 will do the same.

The job opportunities in Web3 are endless, and some of the smartest people in the world today are leaving great jobs to help create this future. The additional benefit is that this work is often fully remote, meaning we can easily recruit talent globally.

Web3 Creating Value

Web3 brings the potential to unlock more value for everyone on the Internet. Users own any content they create and any digital objects they purchase, instead of having data controlled by platforms, and these assets are often portable.

In order to achieve the next development of the Internet, we need more people to understand why it is worth the effort. Now is the time for us to stop being exploited by these billion-dollar and trillion-dollar companies and participate in creating value as part of the network! There are many amazing projects being delivered that far exceed the embarrassing headlines you are browsing, just like when Matt Damon became the spokesperson for Crypto.com.

The innovation of blockchain will radically change the world, just like the Internet did, and it will also enable more people to participate. It creates a design space for meaningful innovation and progress, eliminating intermediaries, providing complete transparency, and putting more money directly into people’s hands, fundamentally changing the power dynamics in our world.

If, after reading this article, you are convinced that it is time to start delving into Web3, then you are lucky. Because this field is just getting started, most of the information is free. And spending time learning is the most important thing you need to do right now.

Most people ask me what they should buy for their investment portfolio, but my answer is usually to tell them where they should spend time learning. By understanding Web3, they will begin to understand how to invest in places they consider valuable. For example, I would start with the Bitcoin and Ethereum whitepapers. Neither of them is very technical, and they help explain the core arguments of each network in a simple and understandable way. They are good starting points for any beginners, and they are still documents that experts in the field review time and time again. If you haven’t read them yet, now is a good time to start.

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