Web3 or WW3?

Bitcoin's "Magic Internet Money" meme belied a more subversive threat to global central banking and Web3 JPEGs may be the Trojan Horse that comes to protect democratic values online

Sep 08, 2022

Web3 has a branding problem. Too many people think of overpriced JPEGs or yet another overhyped buzzword for VC dollars to FOMO into.

And fair enough. The industry definitely got a little carried away with clip art rocks and cartoon monkeys last year... I GET IT

But just like Bitcoin's early "Magic Internet Money" cartoon belied a more subversive threat to global central banking, Web3 JPEGs may be the Trojan Horse that comes to protect democratic values online.

Let Him Finish!

The internet has not delivered on some of its most important promises. Instead of giving us a generation of Sovereign Individuals who would "distribute democracy by cellphone", it helped give rise to an autocratic awakening that empowered "Individual Sovereigns" like Putin, Xi, Un, Khamenei, & MBS with tools for social control at a scale Mussolini could only have dreamed of...

"The people of Xinjiang have been forced to install smartphone apps that allow the government to remotely access their phones and networks, searching for so-called ideological viruses, whether it's a snippet of Arabic in a text message or a donation to a local mosque.

Uyghur alarms automatically notify authorities when its cameras detect Uyghur faces. Social media behavior is tracked; so is staying off social media.

Companies like ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, have helped Chinese authorities track down Uyghur women of childbearing age and forcibly sterilize them."

- Jacob Helberg, The Wires of War

So, the internet is increasingly splintering in two:

Web2: Architected on centralized, censorship-prone, intermediated, closed source infrastructure. Allows China to surveil & censor your speech online in real-time, helps Russia choke access to the free & open global internet for millions, and presents North Korea with centralized, sitting duck targets to hack.

Web3: Architected on decentralized, censorship-resistant, P2P, open source infrastructure. You don't need to trust these products won't be misused, you can prove that they can't be.

Just two small letters capture the critical difference between Silicon Valley and Web3, the centralized vs. decentralized internets:

Give Me Liberty…

The survival of individual freedom (both online and increasingly offline too) hinges increasingly on global technologies favorable to classically Liberal principles like free speech, privacy, & individual sovereignty.

Only decentralized internet infrastructure (Web3), not centralized internet infrastructure (Web2), can defend these principles because only the former is hardcoded to be provably neutral, free, & open at its base layer.

(See our previous newsletter on why decentralized systems like Bitcoin map so well to America's founding principles: America, the OG Bitcoin)

Web3 is a decentralized, blockchain-based, user-owned internet that defends against techno-authoritarianism.

From the West Coast to the Far East.

WW3

The third world war is already here. It's invisible front lines are the websites, apps, and platforms over which your life's financial, medical, and social data is sent every day.

But as hard as authoritarian nation states are working to weaponize these centralized internet tools, Web3 devs are working twice as hard building decentralized ones to help users route around.

Like "nailing jello to the wall", to recycle President Clinton's Web1 quip.

"The skirmishes of the coming years will be fought to defend network security, protect IP, gain influence over information, and control critical infrastructure. The spoils of this war are power over every meaningful aspect of our society: our economy, our infrastructure, our ability to compete and innovate, our personal privacy, our culture, and subtle daily decisions we make based on information we interact with online." (The Wires of War)

Batten Down the Hashes

Fortunately, Web3 technology is no longer vaporware. Core pieces of the internet's infrastructure necessary to combat techno-authoritarianism have already been decentralized: domain name services, video transcoding, file storage, search, compute, VPNs, wireless networking.

This is real, working tech solving real problems and showing signs of real demand and growing adoption. Not only is the investment upside *enormous*, but the Free World is counting on this tech.

Becoming Invincible

Earlier this year, Russia cut off Ukraine's internet access, leaving tens of millions of Ukrainians with no way to contact loved ones or access life-saving news & information:

Sentinel (DVPN): A decentralized VPN that allows anyone in the world to circumvent authoritarian restrictions on internet access came to the rescue

When hundreds met on Zoom for the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, their video & audio suddenly cut out because Zoom routes traffic through Chinese servers which use voice recognition to censor certain topics the CCP doesn't like:

Huddle01 (HUDL): A decentralized Zoom built on a fully decentralized tech stack, securing privacy and free speech online for everyone

In August, open-source code library GitHub deleted the accounts of certain devs it didn't like, without notice:

Radicle (RAD): A decentralized open-source code library that allows devs to build without fear of having their work deleted or accounts canceled

Recently, Cloudflare shut down and restricted access to certain websites it didn't like, without due process.

Ethereum Name Service (ENS): A decentralized domain name registry that allows users to host websites that can't be taken down by others

Conclusion

Web3 uses cryptography, open-source protocols, and blockchain technology to build an internet where would-be authoritarians like the CCP have no control over user interactions or value transfers, and where classical Liberal values like free speech, privacy, & individual sovereignty are encoded into the default settings.

As our online lives become increasingly surveilled and restricted by both foreign and domestic actors from China to Silicon Valley, users stand at a crossroads.

Which way, Western man: W3 or WW3?