Explaining Web3.0 to Beginners: A New "Avengers"
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Explaining Web3.0 to Beginners: A New "Avengers"
Web3 brings together the most influential technologies of the 21st century, offering humanity a fairer and more human-centric future.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Mike Troiano
Translated by MIM
Five percent — the 5% who dominate Twitter and other social media — are obsessed with “Web3.” Another 5% hate it. About 90% have no idea what these nerds are talking about.
If you’re in that 90%, and want to understand what’s going on, keep reading.
First, a bit of background — I’ll make it short.
Machines sparked the Industrial Revolution, doing work people had done for centuries… better, faster, and cheaper than humans ever could. Yet the wealth created by these machines concentrated in the hands of a tiny few. Even after they were pressured and shamed into reinvesting much of that wealth back into society, we still called them robber barons.
When machines absorbed most physical labor, people realized information about work might be more valuable than the work itself. So a new class of computers was created to manage this information. These massive machines filled entire rooms and, once again, were controlled by a tiny elite. Over time, computers shrank in size, personal computers emerged, and the power to manage information became distributed.
The network was invented to help people share information, and eventually networks combined to form the internet. Power became even more decentralized. As the 20th century closed, the utopian promise of equality and harmony seemed within reach.
Then came the World Wide Web, the dot-com bubble, the shift to cloud architecture, and the rise of social media (aka “Web2.0”) — an incredible, society-altering technological leap that lit up within a single human lifetime. Of course, it connected us, helped lift billions out of extreme poverty, and created massive wealth. But now, wealth is once again concentrated in the hands of a tiny few.
A series of unintended consequences has cast shadows over progress. We’ve changed the planet in ways we can’t agree on, partly because we’ve drawn deep social, cultural, and economic fault lines between rich and poor in the new economy. The erosion of objective truth — undermined by raw emotion and tribal loyalty — makes compromise impossible. Democracy is under threat at home; dictators are rising around the world. Anyone angered and anxious about what comes next is entirely justified.
Enter Web3.
Wikipedia defines Web3 as “an idea for a new iteration of the web based on public blockchains.” Other equally unhelpful definitions include:
“A third generation of internet services for websites and applications that focus on using a machine-based understanding of data to provide a data-driven Semantic Web.” (TechTarget)
“A composable, human-centric, privacy-preserving computing fabric for the next wave of the web.” (Fabric Ventures — this one’s for advanced readers.)
Got it? I didn’t think so.
Let me explain with an analogy:
If the internet is Iron Man, blockchain is Captain America, NFTs are Thor, and decentralized applications are the Hulk, then Web3 is the Avengers — bringing together all these heroes from different stories to create something different, new, and better.
Without describing each individual team member, it’s hard to grasp the Avengers I’m about to describe. But if the Avengers are “Earth’s mightiest heroes, united to defeat unprecedented threats to humanity,”
Web3 brings together the most impactful technologies of the 21st century to deliver a fairer, more human-centered future.
Let’s take a closer look at these technologies and how they combine to create something new and exciting.
Global Network: The Modern Internet
Web3 is built on a global network of people and machines. Today, most people connect to or depend on the internet — a recent invention so essential to modern life that most of us take it for granted. Billions use it daily to connect, communicate, learn, and transact. It has transformed the flow of goods, services, capital, and life itself in developed nations — except in one area: money.
Digital Cash: Cryptocurrencies on Blockchain
You can move information about money across the internet, but until Bitcoin was invented, you couldn’t move money itself.
Bitcoin is digital cash. It cannot be copied, forged, or exceed the numerical cap set by its creator. It can be bought, earned, and exchanged — though its value may fluctuate dramatically and unexpectedly, at least in the short term.
Over the long run, its value has risen. At the end of 2015 — six years after the release of its anonymous white paper — one Bitcoin was worth about $435. Today, it’s worth over $60,000. This return has not only created a legion of believers but also inspired thousands of similarly designed “cryptocurrencies.” All are built on similar systems centered around a distributed ledger, allowing value to flow publicly and immutably between accounts via a system called blockchain.
Like the internet, blockchain is built on shared standards. Its integrity is maintained by continuously recording every transaction, magically including a compressed or “hashed” copy of each prior transaction. No nation, individual, or institution owns the blockchain (just like the internet), and the burden of operating it falls on independent parties, compensated through small taxes levied on all transactions.
Ownable Creativity: Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
The original Bitcoin white paper also defined how digital assets beyond cash could be included and protected on the blockchain. These include art, books, articles, music, videos, and even virtual experiences. The idea took time to catch on. But when memes were added to the blockchain in 2016, trading exploded — quietly cementing another pillar of Web3.
NFTs (“non-fungible tokens” — encrypted pieces on the blockchain that cannot be copied or faked) matter because they are key to protecting creativity itself. This is especially important for the emerging creator economy — built by over 50 million independent content creators, curators, and community builders (including social media influencers, bloggers, and videographers), plus software and financial tools designed to help them grow and profit.
The creator economy isn’t just something we hope for — it’s something we need. Remember those machines from the Industrial Revolution that replaced manual laborers? They’ve grown, gotten smarter. Now their robotic descendants are replacing humans in technical and professional jobs. Anyone who’s ordered food at a McDonald’s kiosk, built a website on SquareSpace, or made a will on LegalZoom can testify to that.
This brings us to the fourth and final leg of the Web3 stool.
Ownerless Applications: Decentralized Apps (dApps)
Facebook recently made headlines by renaming its parent company Meta. Google did the same thing earlier, renaming itself Alphabet. Both wanted to separate the apps they develop (Facebook, Google) from the companies profiting massively from them (Meta, Alphabet).
Take that idea one step further: imagine a world-changing app with no company profiting from it. Open-source software takes a step in this direction, delegating software development to a volunteer community. Contributors aren’t paid directly, but benefit by using the software they helped build or by selling complementary services.
dApps (“decentralized applications” — software running on blockchain) go further, creating systems of simple rules and instructions that function like software without requiring any individual or business to operate them. Unlike open-source projects, the work required to build and maintain dApps is paid for automatically by generating and increasing the value of unique cryptocurrencies (sometimes called utility tokens) tied to the application.
The technical details of how this happens aren’t important. What matters is how this subtle shift in business models could change everything for users.
For example, in a dApp version of Facebook, there is no Meta. No centralized entity profits from the app — all profits are redistributed back to the platform’s users. Think about it: Facebook without users is worthless. If users can’t retain the full value they create, why shouldn’t they keep as much as possible? On the upcoming “dApp Facebook,” they will.
An Opportunity to Fix Everything
Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and even Medium — the platform I’m using to write this article — are all driven by content shared, searched, created, posted, filmed, curated, or written by their users. In a Web3 world, those users would receive a fair share of the value they generate on these platforms, instead of 99% going to hoodie-wearing billionaire elites in Silicon Valley.
It’s not just social media. Banks have no money without our deposits, so they’d face similar disruption. Insurers can’t manage risk without people taking risks and paying premiums — add them to the list. Many wealth-generating businesses could become decentralized — truly democratized — not to mention lawyers, accountants, and other service providers, many of whom will soon lose business to smart contracts on the blockchain.
The resulting redistribution of wealth could genuinely change everything — not through politics, which can be swayed by special interests, but through powerful technological progress that’s harder to resist.
Fewer billionaires flying on private rockets. Higher real wages at the bottom. The creator economy becomes economically viable, especially as robots accelerate the pace of replacing human workers. Financial insecurity and anger among the masses ease. Political influence of entrenched elites weakens.
All of this becomes possible through the combination of global networks, digital money, ownable creativity, and ownerless applications — collectively known as Web3.
It All Depends on What We Do Now
Only a mad optimist would claim Web3 could erase the sins accumulated in the 21st century and finally steer humanity toward a fairer, cleaner, more stable society. It’s hard to imagine a world where profits from machine labor eliminate poverty, disease, and despair; where artists and explorers are highly valued and protected; where lives are measured not by accumulated wealth but by good deeds.
Yet even the most hardened cynic must admit the outcome isn’t certain — at least for now, the choice remains ours.
We’ve seen how fast things can change. Such a society becomes possible when those among us with the most power choose, at pivotal moments, to set aside self-interest and act for the benefit of all humanity.
Original link: https://medium.com/g20-ventures/what-the-hell-is-web3-heres-an-explanation-in-plain-english-b223108b5ffb
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