Just like people, the Internet can be divided into generations. Web2.0 (or Web2) is the Internet that most people are familiar with, and it is often referred to as a “social network”.
Web2.0 is a network environment that emphasizes user-generated content, rather than publishing content by others. According to the definition of an expert, like Facebook and Twitter, Web2.0 is dominated by companies that provide services in exchange for your personal data. .
In the special US presidency and the turbulent times affected by the epidemic, the lack of detailed moderation on robots, social media, and the anonymity on social media platforms have allowed the world to witness how easy Web2 technology is to be manipulated.
Extremists and separatists use web2 applications, that is, using social media and messaging applications to spread misinformation and spread rumors, resulting in unprecedented political polarization.
Now there is Web3.0 (Web3), the next generation Internet dominated by applications running on the blockchain. Web3 aims to remove large technology companies from the communication system, most of which are free, open source, and provide unique and true transaction information.
Web3.0 brings the fanatical appeal of NFT.
Some people are optimistic that Web3 has the ability to make the Internet and society better. For example, musicians can get paid every time they play a song, reducing piracy and other issues.
However, some opponents believe that this is all part of the latest scam in the online world.
How Web3 and NFTs are intertwined
Christian Catalini, the founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Laboratory and a research scientist at MIT Sloan School, said that currently one of the main components of Web3 is cryptocurrency.
Another technology under the Web3 umbrella is NFT, which is now mainly used for digital art and other digital content.The difference between any old JPG image and a JPG that is also an NFT is that there is a digital ownership sign behind the JPG NFT. The JPG NFT you have is different from any regular JPG you download.
NFT JPG was created on the blockchain, a public digital database that records unique and irrevocable cryptocurrency transactions and runs on many computers without any person or entity owning the ownership.
Catalini said: “Web3 is actually a set of technologies that use these tokens to create a new type of digital platform and a new type of digital ecosystem.”
The enthusiasm for Web3 may be most evident on Twitter. You can see those users who have added “eth” to the end of their Twitter profile name-this means they are active on the Ethereum blockchain. This is a specific type of blockchain that uses a different security mechanism from other blockchains. It is currently the main platform for buying, selling or creating NFTs.
Many of these accounts use the unique and often weird NFT artwork they buy as their account avatars. From the human-shaped pizza, to the weird cartoon ape, to the soft and cute noodle characters, these images have everything.
Fity.eth is an nft enthusiast. For privacy reasons, he asked not to reveal his real name. He is the founder of Apocalyptic Apes, a digital artwork and virtual space collage composed of mutated cartoon apes and storylines with environmental information.
He said that he collaborated with a digital artist to draw the ape character living in his apocalyptic online world, “where food is hard to find, the air is thin, and the signs of life are scarce.”
Fity.eth’s website recently released a series of new digital art apes NFT characters. They are sold on the OpenSea NFT exchange, which is one of the largest NFT markets. The asking price at the time of publication is a fraction of the value of 1 Ethereum digital coin (the value is slightly higher than $4,000 at the time of publication), which is approximately $271.
According to the website, Ape NFT sold out within a few days.
Why would anyone spend so much money on an image of a cartoon ape?
“I think this is a problem in the whole world,” Fity.eth said. He knew an artist and made a living from his artwork. “Think about what I have to go through to sell an artwork,” Fity.eth recalled the artist’s words. “I have to paint it, I have to put it on my wall, I have to show it, I have to go to the showroom… People accept this price. He said that for this artist, open one Virtual NFT galleries are more economically beneficial.
But it’s much more than that, Fity.eth said.
“It’s about friendship and relationships,” he said that the owners of these ape NFTs are now bound in a unique online community.
Part of the appeal of NFT is to establish an exclusive online community for these digital art holders and provide benefits such as real-life events and parties or corporate special offers. Moreover, through promotion, word-of-mouth, and influence, NFTs can add value (just like any artwork), and some people are willing to pay thousands of dollars (sometimes millions of dollars) for the most popular NFT at the moment (if there is demand, you can Sell your NFT to another buyer at a higher price than you paid).
“We are building a way of life, we are launching a campaign,” Fity.eth added. One of the motivations for launching Apocalyptic Apes is to help raise people’s awareness of reducing air pollution and plastic in the ocean. He said he is working with another company that uses marijuana to replace plastic in bottles, straws and other items.
Several Web3 and NFT advocates interviewed by ABC News mentioned connecting their personal careers with emerging technologies.
For example, another NFT operator also requested that his real name be hidden. His screen name is Snax.eth. He established the Pizza DAO organization and organized a global pizza party through the sale of NFT. He claimed that this event was for Let people realize the negative impact of the epidemic on the catering industry.
He said that the biggest potential of Web3 is to connect people and do good things around the world. “Pizza is like the Internet and blockchain. It is a global phenomenon that unites us. Most of the problems on our planet are distribution problems, and NFT and Web3 are distribution technologies. We can use digital scarcity to End the scarcity of the real world,” Snax.eth said.
Celebrities and brands invested in the early days
Some well-known brands and celebrities are also launching the NFT-Web3 project, linking real-world services and products with digital tokens.
Companies including Nike, Taco Bell and Coca-Cola have launched NFTs (mainly related to fundraising activities for social undertakings) or are investing in blockchain technology.
However, how can NFT provide more for brands than the existing social media channels and tools? Why on earth would anyone want to have a digital image of Taco Bell tacos?
These are questions that scholars like Scott Duke Kominers have studied in depth around NFTs and Web3. Kominers is a 1960-level MBA associate professor in the Entrepreneurship Management Department of Harvard Business School and a faculty member in the Economics Department of Harvard University.
“In the short term, NFTs are changing our ownership of digital goods and commodities, thereby changing their market capabilities…This will begin to permeate physical goods and commodities,” Kominers told ABC News. Kominers participated in several NFT projects and provided advice to them, and wrote a paper on how NFTs create value for Harvard Business Review.
NFTs are not only attractive to artists who have potential new online market spaces to display and sell their artworks, but also to musicians. The hip-hop community has a particularly high acceptance of NFTs.
The legendary hip-hop producer Timbaland is offering his second online NFT auction. Although a representative of Timbaland did not respond to a request for comment, the music producer is full of enthusiasm for NFT and Metaverse.According to Decrypt, his latest NFT auction revolves around the tracks in his upcoming EP “Opera Noir”.
Snoop Dogg recently announced his upcoming NFT project on Twitter, and changed his official avatar to NFT cartoon ape to keep up with the trend.
According to reports, Russell Simmons, the founder of Def Jam Records, is also working on an NFT project.
According to some experts, it is possible to make money for not-so-famous musicians, other creators, and ordinary people who buy NFTs. Kominers said that the nature of blockchain can provide creators with new economic opportunities. “After every transaction, some share of the transaction will return to the original artist or creator. He said: “We have seen this in music.
He said: “Many NFTs are set up so that some share of each transaction is given to the original author (or more strictly speaking, the original author’s cryptocurrency wallet). For popular collectibles, this can be quite profitable. , The works of some creators have tens of thousands of ETH or more in the secondary transaction, and the 2.5% royalties for the secondary transaction of 10,000 ETH will be 250 ETH, or about 1 million U.S. dollars,” he said.
Fity.eth also predicted the benefits of buying music NFTs.
“On this road, you will be able to buy the ownership of a song. You will be able to get a profit share from every play of this song.” He said.
NFTS: A new way to fund startups?
However, it is not only the top industries and big brands that enter the NFT, but also small companies.
The brothers Dan and Nick Hunnewell are the owners of Coffee Bros., a coffee roaster based in Queens, New York City. In addition to roasting and selling their coffee online, they also created an NFT project called Crypto Baristas. Dan said the funds obtained through their NFT role will be used to open their first cafe in New York City in 2022.
“It’s a bit like an event on Kickstarter,” Dan told ABC News. “By providing NFT, we are raising funds from a community that is reaching out.”
“We are working with an artist, Tony Bui, who has his own style and existing fans. He came up with some orange colors, and then we create a story for everyone,” Dan said.
NFT also allowed them to quickly build a community of 11,000 fans and investors. He and Nick use Discord, a messaging and communication application hosting many blockchain and NFT communities, to communicate with their customers who hold NFTs.
“Our group on Discord is amazing,” he said. Through Discord, Crypto Baristas can provide “caffeine benefits” to fans who purchase NFTs, such as 15% off products for life, and have a say in how the funds generated are used for cafes and future projects.
The transformative potential of Web3 and NFT
Some experts and enthusiasts think that Web 3 and the technology that comes with it is like NFTs can do much more than just provide us with ways to collect cool things and join online clubs.
“The people from NFT and I are sitting on a board of directors, and they are talking about our passports, driver’s licenses on the blockchain,” Fity.eth said. “Imagine that your passport is lost. You just need to turn on the computer to create it yourself, and you have all the documents, and you can get the passport. Because it is unique on the blockchain, you can verify it.”
Web3 and NFT provide opportunities for “other forms of digital interaction to create ownership,” Kominers said.
He said these technologies will “change our interface with digital content.” For example, digital wallets used to store NFTs and encrypted currencies can be programmed to plug into other platforms, such as online shopping sites.
At present, NFT provides a new generation of collectibles, new marketing opportunities for brands, and new ways to make money for creators. So what are the disadvantages?
If you ask Geoffrey Huntley, a software engineer, you can get a lot of negative opinions. Huntley spent a lot of time on the Internet expressing doubts about NFTs and Web3.0.
He said: “At present, most blockchains, especially those used in the NFT field, are permissionless.”
This means that the same digital wallet that someone uses to store their NFT can be sent by anyone, Huntley explained, including content such as violent pornography or other digital forms of harassment.
Digital wallet holders cannot delete any unwanted items sent to their wallets. He said that this inability to delete data may also make blockchain technology conflict with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation policy.
“The blockchain is immutable. When something is on it, it will always be on it,” Huntley said. “There is nothing to stop someone from sending abusive content, such as spam, to your wallet. You can’t do anything to delete it.”
Kominers said that to a large extent, this does exist.
He said: “The address on the public blockchain is a bit like an email address. Anyone who knows your address can send you something. Even if you “delete” something from your wallet, there is still a traceable History, that is, these contents exist at some point.”
Kominers said that currently, cryptocurrency enthusiasts mitigate this risk by “owning multiple wallets, some of which are more public than others (like people may have both personal and professional email addresses).” And the blockchain front-end platform has a certain degree of spam filtering. For example, OpenSea has a system to hide spam NFTs. But in the near future, we definitely need better wallet privacy features and content filtering technology.”
Although far from perfect, Facebook, Twitter, and other Web2 applications do have privacy controls, which have been lacking on blockchain platforms so far.
Huntley also mentioned a concern raised by green energy activists. Creating NFTs and cryptocurrencies is very resource intensive.
The World Economic Forum said that Bitcoin alone: ”It is reported that in 2020, the Bitcoin network consumed 131.80 terawatt-hours of electricity to execute the algorithms that power its “mining” operations, which is equivalent to the amount of electricity consumed in Argentina. “
Kominers said: “I suspect that we will soon see a combination of government leadership, regulation and consumer sentiment to promote more sustainable blockchain technology and make it cheaper to run.”
Even Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk have recently criticized Web3 and blockchain. In a tweet on December 20, Dorsey was vaguely mocking the involvement of venture capital.
“You don’t own web 3, venture capitalists and their limited partners do. This will never escape their motives.” Dorsey predicted. Venture capitalists made large-scale investments in cryptocurrencies in 2021. According to some reports, such as this report by Forbes, the investment amounted to billions of dollars.
In a tweet on December 19, SpaceX founder Musk stated that “Metacosm (another basic component of Web3 involving virtual and augmented reality) now has more marketing than reality.”
Wild West Web3
The new Internet is a new wild west in a way. Now, there are very few consumer protection measures around blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFT.
According to Kominers, this “creates a situation where people can be exploited or deceived in many ways.”
“At present, one of the biggest obstacles to the wider spread of cryptocurrency and participation in markets such as the NFT market is that most of the ways to enter these cryptocurrency markets do not have any protection similar to what we use in other types of financial services or product markets. measure.”
But he said that there will be a regulatory framework for Web3, and maybe even soon.
Catalini said that blockchain and Web3 have not yet reached the level of mainstream adoption. We are still in an embryonic stage, but he said that Web3 and its technology will always exist.
“Because for creators, musicians, bloggers, or anyone who creates any other type of digital content, they really represent a new way of fundamentally designing all kinds of interactions, so I think for all these technologies, in the long run It seems that there is a lot of potential. He added: “There are many things that need to be resolved in the near future. “
Fity.eth said: “The position we are in today is the position of the Internet and AOL dial-up. This is so new and so early.”
Posted by:CoinYuppie，Reprinted with attribution to:https://coinyuppie.com/whether-you-admit-it-or-not-the-web3-era-has-indeed-arrived/
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