Demystifying Web3 — A Series of Conversations from the WAGMANs Community synthesized by Jennifer Sertl.
Introduction to Web3 with Val Bercovici, William Meed, Deborah Perry Piscione
Web3 is a very complex subject. It is very difficult to keep up with the pace. Little by little companies are starting to understand. They need to realize what their Web3 strategy is going to be. We built this community for all the people that are not currently in the Web3 world. We want to increase both understanding and participation so you can figure out where to best fit in. What started originally as a 2.5 day summit for about 700 people quickly grew into a global interest in building a community that wants equity, fairness, democratization. People want a departure from what web 2.0 became and an opportunity to broaden the aperture for who gets to play in this new world. In a commitment to this, we will be running an impactathon, which will set the principles for what the Web3 community will become.
We hope that you’ll get on the train and join us on this journey. We have a whole host of ways for you to get involved. This is the first of a weekly blog that synthesizes the key points from conversations leading up to the summit May 18–20th.
The first point we want to make is that Web3 is not just a technology trend. It is very multidisciplinary and there are dynamic aspects of the expertise needed. This space requires an understanding of economics, policy and governance, computer science and quantum mechanics. Also you need to understand finances, both from a personal level, as well as global finances. In addition to those core competencies — there is even more. Humans. Because humans are involved, you have to understand both individual human psychology, as well as group dynamics including game theory. As a community grows in both numbers and diverse viewpoints, politics become pretty dominant. To be effective in the community you have to build strong political skills and manage diverse points of view and requirements within your community. A small subset of blockchains are still energy intensive and this requires an understanding of energy usage and energy policy. And finally, of course, is the need to understand pop culture.
To be successful in Web3 you need all of these skills, but no individual can be an expert at all of them. Collective groups of people can create talent clusters to collaborate and combine this dynamic expertise. It is distributed and decentralized core competencies working together to create this new space. New technology with an old mindset = old technology. We have the opportunity through collaboration to take this new technology and truly create a new community experience.
As this is the first of the series leading up to the Web3 Summit in May, let’s begin with addressing three myths that may be in the way of your whole hearted participation.
Myth I: Blockchains Are Energy Intensive
A great place to track energy utilization in the United States is Lawrence Livermore National Library. From the most recent report, It turns out that about two thirds ( 66%) of all the energy we generate across various sources such as coal, petroleum, renewables, solar and nuclear end up being wasted and rejected. All the activity conducted by cryptocurrencies and generating the blockchain use only energy and the end of the energy supply chain. The energy has been generated already and if it wasn’t used in this fashion it would be just wasted. There is never any deprivation of energy usage in these new modalities. If you are concerned with not just the mining but also the trading, here is some perspective. Two thirds of crypto trading involves something called Proof of Stake, which has minimum energy requirements. People trading or investing in already existing chains working to authenticate and ensure their particular place in a particular blockchain node. So again ⅓ of crypto activity takes place on the last cycle of existing generated energy and ⅔ of transactions on the blockchain use minimal energy.
(with permission from Web_Summit, Wagmas )
Myth II:Web3 Is Just A Place for Fraud and Scams
There is no question that fraud and scams exist in Web3. You are going to have that in any part of society. If you will remember 1996 as commerce on the internet was beginning to rise there was a lot of scamming going on. It took some time but the marketplace got more sophisticated. As examples. Ebay and Amazon built some effective anti-fraud capabilities and ecommerce has become manageable and now is an everyday part of life.
One advantage of using blockchain as an underlying technology is the fact that a fully audited public ledger of all activity is. Crime in this space is relatively transparent. It can be traced; it can be analyzed. One credible company to follow is Chainalysis who just published the 2022 Crypto Crime Report. They reported that in 2021 there was 8 billion dollars worth of damage due to crypto crime and fraud. That is a big number but it has to be put into context. That is only .15% of all transactions in Web3.
Myth III: There Is No Utility in Web3
This space is only three years old and already there is so much traction with early adopters mostly being influencers, gamers, crypto miners and increasingly big brands.
True to pareto principle, roughly 80% of North Americans don’t have a crypto account yet and therefore haven’t purchased their first NFT. Given that at least three of the Super Bowl 8.6 million dollar ads were in the crypto space we could see a tipping point in participation soon. Which is why we are here and you are here —to help increase participation in this new medium in a way that can create new value streams and a new community experience. We are going to have amazing applications and use cases of Web3 that we haven’t even imagined yet.
We look forward to meeting you IRL May 18–20 at the Web3 Summit.
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