You have probably, unless you’ve been unusually fortunate, been schooled in the wonders of Web3. For the remaining lucky few, allow me to explain. Web3 is the inexorable destiny of the internet — the magical fabric from which blockchain-based decentralised dreams are made and dystopian big-tech nightmares destroyed. The future is bright; the future is “append-only” databases.
The central thesis of Web3 is that because the internet has become so centralised — with power concentrated in the hands of a few, and users powerless over their own data — we need a more distributed, egalitarian, open system. So far, so reasonable.
But the minute you look beneath the surface, gaping holes appear in the Web3 vision. Its techno-utopian advocates say they want to harness the alleged power of blockchains — the immutable databases that underpin bitcoin and other tokens — to create a democratised internet where you control your own data and are no longer reliant on the big tech giants. Web3, the argument goes, will allow you to “own a piece of the internet”. Naturally, the “decentralised” apps and organisations that operate in this brave new world are powered by crypto tokens: all you need to do is buy them.