Defining Web3 (Without Self Mutilation)
When I wrote in my last note that Web3 is blockchain + metaverse + AI, the two most common feedback threads were: (1) what are the real use cases for Web3 - specifically, blockchain (e.g., “This is a solution looking for a problem…”); and (2) what is the definition of Web3 - specifically, should it really include AI and metaverse? I had promised to answer the first question and I will - I promise; just want to get some definitions down first. The answer to the second question - specifically around Web3 being inclusive of AI and metaverse (as well as blockchain) is, frankly: I can call it whatever the hell I want. Just ask Dr. W. C. Minor. He was one of the most prolific contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary, whilst committed to a British psychiatric hospital after killing an innocent man in a paranoid rage and before he cut off his own penis. (You can read about his autopenectomy in this book, if you dare.)
A little (more) history.
Most definitions of Web2 refer to social media; specifically going from read (only) Web(1) to read / write Web(2). But I submit that it’s myopic to discuss the move to Web2 / social media without the context of moves from desktop to mobile and local to cloud computing. (I did that here a dozen years ago, kind of by accident.) Wikipedia defined Web2 here and even noted that: “Some scholars argue that cloud computing is an example of Web 2.0 because it is simply an implication of computing on the Internet.” Point is, social media (and the more standard definition of Web2) may not *require* cloud or mobile computing, but none of the big moves were really possible without those catalysts. Sure, Facebook built and managed its own data centers, but the mushroom cloud (see what I did there?) of new companies that came after wouldn’t have been possible without the adoption of cloud computing that lowered the cost of starting a business by (let’s call it) 95%. And the move from desktop to mobile that many concluded an existential threat to Facebook (see here), instead turned out to be the dopamine that lubricated our location- and friend-tagged Instagram (and later Tik Tok etc.) compulsions. Also, everything comes in threes. (It’s the magic number… yes it is.)
So how does that apply to Web3? Well, Wikipedia defines it this way; tldr: decentralization, blockchain, and tokenomics. Do you see AI / metaverse in there? Me neither. Forbes took it a step further here, not only excluding AI but specifically noting that Web3 “…is not synonymous with the [m]etaverse, which is an equally open-source environment for virtual reality.” So am I wrong? Nah. Just ask Dr. Minor (again). But then how does one or more of my three Web3 components facilitate the adoption of the others? For the answer to that I did three(!) things: (1) I asked myself that question, (2) I asked my developer friends that question, and (3) I asked ChatGPT that question (uh huh).
Self: “This means something….”
Everything always starts in gaming and my crush on (what I’m calling) Web3 is no different. I was watching my (then) eight year old son play Roblox and beneath each game tile were numbers like: 455k, 108k, 429, 1.1k, 9.9k, 400, 56…. “What are those?” He told me they were player counts. “Ah total users signed up…” “No, dad, that’s how many are playing right now.” “Holy shit.” “What?” “Nothing. Shh.” Thousands of concurrent users playing games created by a fragmented collection of independent amateur game designers. Felt like a YouTube MCN-like opportunity (and probably still is - see Infinite Canvas et al). But I also marveled at how the platform managed thousands of concurrent users in (relatively) graphics intensive environments, which must have required massive amounts of compute. At the same time (concurrently, if you will), developer friends tinkering with blockchain projects mused about the massive compute required to power the embedded cryptography. And it was no secret that AI / ML required massive compute, especially to someone employed by the world’s largest cloud computing company for the majority of the last decade.
Three seemingly unrelated trends with one common thread: massive compute requirements. I concluded (with zero hard data to support my hypothesis) that we’d hit a tipping point in cost / performance for compute that enabled these three things to happen at the same time (dare I say… concurrently). That was also the day I bought NVDA. (Disclosure: I’m long NVDA; RBLX too.) My first stab at weaving them together: games (and metaverse(s)) would require blockchain to make their assets and characters (and avatars and identities) interoperable, portable, and valuable. And, well, some form of AI has been integrated into gaming for as long there were single player games. This means something….
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Nerds: Rabbits and Sheep. (But good sheep.)
Next I went to my propellerheads. “I like the re-rendering of Web3 as broader to include AI…” said the first. Ok - confirmation bias. (To be fair: I was selective in my question targets.) But one of my most cynical and favorite tin hat wearing engineering crazies, who hates every new technology I’ve ever shown him (ironic though I suppose healthy for an engineer focused on startups), shared that “…Web3 [i.e., blockchain] is amazingly lacking in AI. That’s the next gen. Right now it’s pure plumbing….” [Eyebrow rises - especially because that lovable kook runs solutions architecture at a very large crypto company - also, he’s smart AF.]
And one of my newest friendly rabbits furthest down the hole suggested that generative AI (check) could radically decrease the cost of decentralized compute (check) and vice versa (bingo). This was getting interesting. Finally, one of the people running Techstar’s Crypto program up here in Beantown (I get to call it that) wrote this re generative AI *needing* blockchain; tldr: “…as the generative AI industry grows, there are critical questions that need to be addressed, such as how data for these models is acquired and tracked, and how value flows down to the original IP owners…. [He] proposes that a blockchain-based system could underpin the AI ecosystem and allow every participant to benefit from the upside….” Note: ChatGPT summarized his post for me - automagically. Neat.
ChatGPT: Our forthcoming digital overlords agree with me.
Given I used generative AI to summarize that Techstars post, it was only natural that I asked ChatGPT directly: “How are blockchain, metaverse, and (generative) AI related?” Lightly edited answers below. TLDR: of course they’re related. (Note: ChatGPT is very agreeable.)
“[B]lockchain, metaverse, and generative AI… can intersect and complement one another, driving innovation and enabling new possibilities across various industries. [E.g….]
So there you have it. Web3 expanded and defined, without the antiquarian books and leaving all of your body parts attached to where they started.
[Note: I originally published this a few weeks ago here - publishing again here and with a huge thanks to a bunch of folks for feedback; e.g., Nick Ducoff, Sim Blaustein, Joshua Reader, Kerty Levy, Andrew Christian Davis, Krist Sokoli, David Berkowitz, Erik Pavelka, Panteha Healey, Micah Baldwin, Alexander Greinacher, Justin Fiddes, Jeff Novich, David Birnbaum, Craig Wilson, Jonathan D. Drillings, Chase Barker, Tim Boeckmann, Daniel Kobran, Naila Jahan, Brian Schneider, John Mancuso, Ryan Nitz, Kevin Marshall, Jon Hoffman, Michael Wolf, David Schnurman, Andrew Unger, Rohit Gupta, Matt Sandler, Kevin King, Brendan Barbato, Mike Berson, Adam Lee, Jason Hunt, michael neiberg, Andrea Dotter Slattery, CFA, Ben Luban, David Adler, Tommy Johnson, Ryan Merket, Hannah Anderson, Scott Werner, Craig Sanders, CFA, Jason Ostheimer, Amira Valliani, Brendan Quinn, Betsy Guadagno, 🧬 Neil Zhang, Danielle Dolinsky Gorman, Jake Lynch, Marc Manara, Mark Webster, Stephen Blalock, KJ Singh, Brittany Salas, Ben Murray, et al....]