2023: a year of building towards Web 3.0?

Before considering the implications for various business sectors, I suggest starting off by trying to better understand just what Web 3.0 is. A straightforward way to define it would be to say that it replaces the current Internet with a decentralized and open system. Each element that makes up the Internet—file storage, databases, servers, processing power, browsers, streaming infrastructure, applications, domain names, data indexing—can be replaced by a decentralized, public version, shared and owned by all stakeholders, from users to content creators.

If Web 1.0 simply provided access to data online, and Web 2.0 made it possible to manipulate and interact with it, Web 3.0 will give us the ability to control and derive value from data that we own. Returning to the origins of what the Internet was supposed to be in the minds of its creators, Web 3.0 looks like a free and unrestricted, democratic, and uncensored Internet, directly owned by its users, a far cry from what ultimately arose in the hands of the Web 2.0 behemoths (GAMAM, Airbnb, Uber, Netflix, Spotify, etc.). This new Internet, which promises to be a technological, economic, ideological, and societal revolution, could well become an essential part of our daily lives and transform many sectors, from tech to finance, from luxury goods to gaming.

Before we get there, we will first have to overcome a host of technological, ideological, financial, and organizational challenges. In 2023, there will be real advances in several areas that will make up the Internet of tomorrow.

Web 3.0 is the embodiment of the Internet of value, where everyone can own and exchange digital goods, and where everyone can own a part of the system. All this is made possible by the advent of building blocks that include technologies for storing and transmitting information without governance by any central authority (blockchains), cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, decentralized applications (DApps), peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

Each of those building blocks already has real-world applications in many sectors.

The cascading bankruptcies of 2022 have undoubtedly contributed to a major undercutting of confidence in the Web 3.0 ecosystem among consumers and businesses alike. And yet, the players behind those failures were centralized, far from transparent, and more interested in speculating and profiting from the naivety of their customers than in the potential of an extremely promising technology.

In contrast, pure Web 3.0 projects, such as the public blockchains Bitcoin and Ethereum, have withstood the downturn, which highlights the absolute necessity of decentralization, openness, and consensus. This has the merit of proving that the fundamentals are there, and those fundamentals remain despite the ventures that have failed over the past year. Those events of 2022 will have the positive effect of drastically purging the Web 3.0 ecosystem. Indeed, that phenomenon has already begun and is expected to continue through early 2023.

Fraudulent players with no added value or whose only business model is speculation will find it difficult to survive. That purge is ultimately a godsend, because from it will emerge players with proven resilience. Those will be safer potential partners for investors. And that is not the only factor that leads me to think that 2023 will be the ideal year to take an interest in, experiment with, and build Web 3.0. I also expect 2023 to be a year in which regulations are strengthened, both at the national level in France with the PSAN (Service Provider on Digital Assets) accreditation issued by the financial markets regulator (AMF), and at the European level, with the DORA and MiCA laws. This will restore the confidence of market players and investors and lay a solid foundation for the future.

And lastly, numerous experiments with Web 3.0 are already under way in many different companies. The findings from those experiments will highlight mistakes to be avoided and contribute to the establishment of better practices., and that knowledge will form the foundation on which future projects will be built. In this way, from multinational corporations to start-ups, from forerunners to followers, all will be impacted in one way or another by Web 3.0 and will have to come to grips with the subject as early as 2023 or risk being left behind. While we do not yet know just how far Web 3.0 will go, it is almost certain that it will sooner or later replace or at least compete with Web 2.0 companies.