Introduction

As someone who has been contributing to the web3 space since 2021, the amount of enquiries I have received about web3 in the past 2 weeks has been very high. If you are already in the web3 space, you would have an idea why this is happening. The answer is simple, we are in bull season, which is a time when the price of cryptocurrencies is rising at a high rate. So as expected more people are interested in the web3 space, because as you know, money remains the greatest incentive for humans.

I thought why not write about what web3 is all about? I previously had one article I published in 2021 on it, but comparing what I knew in 2021 and what I know now in 2024, the gap is huge. There are a lot of things that you pick up along the way by working in space. Now thinking about it, I think I should have been writing about stuff I have done in the web3 space over the years, like sharing personal career experiences. Hopefully, I will start doing better now.

Anyway, this article will dwell on the most important part of web3, which is what it fundamentally is. I know 90% of the responses I get are people asking how they can make money from it. But I think we should start with the very first part, which is the fundamentals. This article will be split into two with the latter part answering the, “How can I make money from web3?” part of it.

How Web1 and Web2 Set the Stage for Web3

Before we got to web3, we should understand that there was once a web1 and even a web2 at some point. A nice saying I like to remember says something along the lines of, “We cannot look to the future without looking to the past.”

Web1 which was the first interaction of the web, was what was available when the Internet first launched in 1991. At that time, it was a web that was just made of static websites. A static website is a website that has fixed content on them and they are read-only. You could only see the content there, but you couldn’t modify it.

Then in 1999, Darcy DiNucci coined the term Web 2.0 which later became popularized in 2004. This was an age of new ways to build on the internet. Now websites allow users to not only read information/content but also edit it. This led to a rise in user-generated content especially on social media platforms.

This is most likely where you the reader are, you have been familiar with web2 based internet projects and that is what you grew up knowing. Also, these web apps were built with much better technologies and the data generated was stored in databases hosted on servers owned by these tech companies. Hold on to this, you will need it later on here.

However, change is constant and one thing humanity is sure of doing is making incremental progress in what we do. Just so you are aware, these changes from an older version to a newer version didn’t mean the older version stopped working. In fact the version changes are used to note when there is a rise in internet based projects that are fundamentally different from what is the norm. So currently all versions of such web apps exist on the internet.

What is Web3?

Web3 started in 2009 when the genesis block of Bitcoin started, after Satoshi Nakamoto, someone whose identity still eludes the public, published the famous whitepaper titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. We won’t bother going into the technicalities of the whitepaper, as this article is a beginner friendly one and I wouldn’t want you putting on your mathematical cap. However, the whitepaper is linked in the article, so you are free to nerd out on it later.

The term Web3 was coined in 2014 by Gavin Wood, who was a co-founder of Ethereum, which is another blockchain. Fundamentally the technology that powers web3 is the blockchain and it incorporates concepts like decentralization and token-based economics (a.k.a cryptocurrencies). At a simple level, this is what makes web2 different from web3, the blockchain infrastructure and ethos of decentralization that comes with it.

Why Does Web3 Matter?

You might wonder, why does this even matter? You are properly reading this after seeing it on web2 based platforms like WhatsApp, Twitter (not ever calling there X) or even on LinkedIn. This is what has worked for you all these while, so why bother? Well, I will help shed light on why it matters. The reality of the world as it is, is that Big Tech corporations are largely in control of what happens with our data which are stored on their platforms and also censorship of what happens on it.

On December 31st 2023, I woke up to find out that my first Twitter account was suspended because I violated the guidelines of the platform. I scratched my head thinking about what I could have done that was a violation. If you follow me already on my current Twitter account or even if you used to on the former, you would know I am as law-abiding as it comes online. After a while, I discovered there were a good number of mutuals who were also affected by that incident, so it was most likely a bug that made their suspension algorithm go crazy.

I have sent over 10+ appeals through their online appeal platforms and up to this day, that account is yet to be suspended. I have a good number of important random stuff there over the years and I have no access to them because customer support is non-existent. Now if it was a web3 based social media (yes they exist, check out Farcaster), no one could wake up and decide to shut down your account. The only way that could happen was if the person had 51% control of the blockchain it is hosted on, which is nigh-impossible considering what it costs to have such power.

Another pain point web3 solves for me is the introduction of cryptocurrency. I live in Nigeria and growing up I was locked out of the biggest payment technology, PayPal. The only way I could receive money from relatives abroad was by having them send it to a bank through Western Union and physically going to the bank to claim the money. Even now, we are still locked out from most financial rails, and people building traditional fintech products have to depend on third-party providers in Western countries.

It takes just one policy for them to stop offering such a service. However thanks to web3, you can receive and send money from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world, without worrying about government censorship and sometimes, high transaction fees of these traditional financial services.

Conclusion

I hope you have been able to get an overview of a beginner’s perspective on what web3 is about. This article is just the beginning of your journey into Web3. In Part 2, we’ll dive into practical ways to interact with Web3, explore exciting projects, and uncover earning opportunities. Subscribe now or bookmark this page to stay updated—don’t miss out on the Web3 revolution! Thanks for reading and see you next week.