INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A handful of venture capital firms own most of the web3 marketFor Andreessen Horowitz's Chris Dixon, there are billions of dollars at
stake in the blockchain-based future of the internet known as web3
But even as the venture capitalist charms his investors with dreams of what this next stage could bring, his vision relies on an untested
Will they, though?If the first version of the internet was read-only, and the second allowed us to upload our everyday lives to MySpace and
Facebook, web3 is where we get to own those outcomes and take them with us
Instead of the tech giants making money from your data, proponents like Dixon believe in decentralizing their power via blockchain networks:
Everyone gets a share of the prize, everyone gets a say in how it's run, and it's all written down publicly so nobody can quibble.It
sounds like progress, and yet even in infancy, this digital utopian plan has faced criticism for not achieving its goal
Major crypto and blockchain-based companies like Coinbase Global Inc
and OpenSea already claim massive market share, poised to become the next Meta Platforms Inc
Meanwhile, as Twitter Inc
co-founder and Bitcoin advocate Jack Dorsey has pointed out, a handful of venture capital firms own most of the web3 market
Web3 isn't actually trying to decentralize everything, he said
diligently using a product over time, like building your friends list on Facebook or your painstakingly curated music library on Spotify
In web3, that data becomes portable, reducing the stickiness these big firms have mastered.Network effects are the main source of user and
If I try to leave Twitter, I lose the followers I built up over the years
That's because in web2 the network effects accrued to private companies like Twitter
These are proprietary models that go right to the core of modern business economics: Why would they give up the thing that's keeping their
a web3 company, and you want to put your follower list on a blockchain network
You do this because you want to move to a new social media platform, but don't want to lose the audience you worked so hard to build
This is a key conundrum of many online creators these days, who want to get big on the hottest new app but have no control over their
This is also possible because in web3, users can connect their digital identities to their Twitter accounts through a product like MetaMask
Now, your Twitter followers are signed up to follow you on NewApp, you haven't lost your audience, web3 is every creator's dream, etc
You could also transplant this scenario to be about moving a company's client list from one software to another, or retaining customers
and Europe, for example, companies can be fined up to 4% of global annual turnover if they try to onboard new customers without
smart contracts would that take to engineer, not to mention my own time, when I follow thousands of accounts? And who takes responsibility
for this interoperability? Will all platforms contribute to the costs? These are a lot of unanswered questions and here's one more: Who
decides which blockchains are worth incorporating without a large degree of centralization? Companies like Meta make it hard for you to
issue of all with decentralized-but-not web3 is one that every company has struggled with over the last decade
To illustrate: So you take all your users to NewApp by blockchain, as easy as pie (relatively)
the new platform given time
But what if NewApp doesn't have the benefit of being so in demand that everyone's already thinking of making the shift? Web3 theories like
Though it remained there for three years before being released more widely, even the star power of one of the world's best-selling
recording artists couldn't elevate Tidal to the same rank as Spotify or Apple Music, despite the former offering just as many millions of
tracks.Beyonce's star power wasn't sufficient to give Jay-Z's Tidal the boost it needed to take on rivals
would they have done it? I guess we'll never know
But influencing people to join a new network is difficult because of human nature, not technological failings
barely look at my Facebook account, but I keep it to remind me of people's birthdays
