What is Web3 and why you should care
Part 1: How to leverage Web3 to fuel your community and vision
If you’ve been following my journey, you may have noticed me dropping hints about Web3. I’ve written about it, shared my failures and even spoken about it on Lomads’ Friday Coffee Talk and That Remote Life podcast.
Web3 — which involves crypto, NFTs and all of these fancy buzzwords — may seem like it has come to an end since prices came tumbling down.
I believe we’re just getting started, however. I believe we’re right at the Trough of Disillusionment or The Chasm and that the Slope of Enlightenment is still ahead of us.
Web3 is about to have as much of an impact in our lives as the internet did back in the 1990s. The internet is now so ingrained into our lives that we can’t even live without it.
Whether we like it or not, Web3 is about to do the same.
Specifically, Web3 will play a massive role in Karisma’s future and that of most businesses around the world. Those who fail to adapt will be left behind.
Today and next week, I’ll be releasing a 2-part series sharing in the simplest way possible:
Part 1: What is Web3 and why it matters
Part 2: How Karisma plans to leverage Web3 to fuel our community and vision
I’m confident that by the end of this post (part 1), you’ll understand the value and importance of Web3 and (hopefully) get excited about the future. Buckle up!
The evolution of the internet
To understand Web3 — which is the third wave of the internet — it’s crucial to understand the current state of the internet (Web2), how we got here and the current flaws.
When the internet started (Web1), all one could do was search, consume and read a website without much interaction. That is when search engines like Yahoo! and Google were born to let users easily access vast information like never before.
The rise of platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Wordpress gave rise to Web2, in which users were able to not just read but also create, write and interact with the web. Writing can be anything from posting a story, creating your own website, writing a blog post, order an Uber…
This is where we are right now.
What’s wrong with Web2
While these now massive companies have created the infrastructure of the internet and modern communication, they have accomplished it at the expense of all our data. These companies have become so powerful, in fact, that a select group of people, mainly within Google, Meta or Amazon, now controls the fate of the entire internet.
The 2 main flaws of Web2 are:
Lack of ownership
Centralization
We’ve all heard these buzzwords but let me show you via a simple example why they are problematic.
Lack of ownership
Let’s say you’re a YouTuber. You’ve been building your following for years and eventually you go viral. Who would you attribute all of the success to? Yourself for all the hard work? Sure. YouTube for providing the platform? That’s fair. What about your audience, though?
Firstly, without the users, YouTube would be worthless. It is the users that ultimately determine the success of one platform over another. Secondly, without users you have no audience and your audience is the one that helps you go viral by sharing and liking your content.
Centralization
Next, who decides over the fate of YouTube? Well, YouTube does. Duuuh. YouTube, just like any other platform, can decide to censor you, make the platform more and more addictive or change the algorithm from one day to the next (cough cough Instagram).
Most often these decisions are not in our best interest. The worst part is that, no matter if they delete the account you’ve managed to grow, sell our data or get us more hooked, they own not just all of our data but you. If you move to a new platform — from YouTube to Vimeo or Instagram to TikTok — you can’t take with you your audience or content you’ve created over time.
That’s how powerful these companies have become. A small group of select individuals in each of these organizations controls the masses and there’s nothing we can do about it.
If we the users are so relevant and keep the platforms alive, shouldn’t we have a minimal say over the platform that we use?
Via this example you can see how users and creators don’t have any ownership over their data and the platform they use and how all of these Web2 platforms have complete centralized power.
Web3 to the rescue
The good news is that Web3 solves these problems by giving the power back to the users. In Web3, users become owners not just of the platforms they use and the communities they belong to but also of their own identity and data.
Web3 gives users property rights. In other words, users will now have the ability to own a piece of the internet that they contribute to. Web3 proposes to change the imbalance created in Web2 by creating a decentralized internet with no company overlords.
This can be done through tokens and NFTs but we’ll save that for Part 2.
Hope all of this theory wasn’t too much to handle. I really tried to simplify it as much as I could and thought dividing it into 2 parts would make it easier to swallow.
Next week, we’ll get a little bit more hands-on. I’ll be showing you real life examples of
how Web3 will be implemented within Karisma and,
how you can supercharge your community.
Before you go…
Thank you for answering these quick polls ❤️
If you have any questions about Web3 or anything else, feel free to contact me at marc@karismaliving.com.