While many people still struggle to grasp what exactly Web3 stands for, Jack Dorsey decided to take it to the next level. The co-founder of Twitter, at the head of Block, a company specializing in financial services linked to the Blockchain, announced on June 10 his new project: Web5.
What are the goals of Web5?
Further decentralizing the Internet is Jack Dorsey’s ambition with Web5. The new web platform will be based on a single blockchain, that of Bitcoin. It will offer developers the ability to design decentralized applications in a way that puts users at the heart of it. It is the fusion between the social aspect of Web2 where the Internet user participates in the development of applications and the decentralization of Web3 using blockchain technology.
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Powered by TBD54566975, a subsidiary of Block that facilitates the introduction to Bitcoin and blockchain without intermediaries, the Web5 will not use “utility tokens”. These “utility tokens” promise access to future products or services, they act as keys allowing the buyer to access a company’s next products. Their absence from the platform is essential according to Mike Brock, head of TBD. It will ensure complete autonomy of the Internet and prevent venture capitalists from getting rich on future users.
In a presentation slideTBD presents Web5 as “ a decentralized web platform that allows developers to use decentralized credentials, verifiable credentials, and decentralized web nodes to write decentralized web applications. The goal is to give individuals back ownership and control of their identity and data “.
While it doesn’t really exist yet, Jack Dorsey wants to supplant Web3
Jack Dorsey has repeatedly criticized Web3. He accuses the new and young version of the web of allowing venture capital firms, like a16z, to exploit users using uncertain crypto projects in which they invest. Last December, he tweeted “ nobody owns the “Web3”. It is owned by venture capitalists and limited partnerships. [Le Web3] will never escape their incitements. It is ultimately a centralized entity with a different label. Find out what you are getting into “. For him, Web3 is already far too centralized.
You don’t own “web3.”
The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives. It’s ultimately a centralized entity with a different label.
Know what you’re getting into…
—jack (@jack) December 21, 2021
It is with a view to placing users as the main actors of a decentralized platform that the Web5 was designed. TBD explained to Coindesk that ” identity and personal data have become the property of third parties. Web5 brings decentralized storage of identity and data to user applications. It allows developers to focus on creating enjoyable experiences while giving people back ownership of their data and identity “.
Ultimately, for Mike Brock, it’s ” above all a discussion around the precise purpose for which the technologies are built “. According to him, the current use of blockchains and block space rental is not the right way to create decentralized applications. ” I think what we’re pushing with Web5 – and I admit it’s a big challenge that has a lot of assumptions about what it means to decentralize the Internet – is actually going back to basics. We already have technologies that effectively decentralize: bittorent and Tor already exist! “.
Jack Dorsey and his company’s subsidiary TBD want to create a truly decentralized Internet platform. This is under development and no one really knows what this new version of the Web will look like. No calendar is currently available.