Many hot-takes in the past 24h of #Consensus2022 have been along the lines of "haha what is #web5 anyway is this a Fibonacci sequence π« "
You can hate the game behind buzzword bingo, but THIS is why you should pay attention to @blocks' announcement π§΅ππ½
twitter.com/TBD54566975
"#Web3" is only really decentralised when it comes to financial assets, and even then it can often be limited. Yes, you can theoretically access your crypto/NFT wallet in "any" supported app.
But once you start considering anything more complex than "token", this is hard π
Let's take a simple example: if I wanted to take all of my Twitter data, and move it off to a competing social media service, I simply can't do that easily.
(I guess I could dump it onto a 50 GB USB stick, but what good does that do for me? twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1534939289653592065)
There are *few* things where I could switch: email, perhaps a file storage service like @Dropbox etc.
But I can't port my viewing history from @Netflix to @disneyplus. I can't switch from @Spotify to @AppleMusic without extremely hacky workarounds wired.com/story/apple-music-spotify-playlists/
The irony of where we are with the Web is even @TBD54566975's announcement deck...linked to Google Slides (a centrally-hosted service)
(This is not to throw shade at the TBD team, but to highlight how truly broken our relationship with our data is π)
docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SaHGyY9TjPg4a0VNLCsfchoVG1yU3ffTDsPRcU99H1E/edit#slide=id.g11d24dbeb84_0_0
"I'm happy with Google Slides, why should I care?"
You should care because, at a macro-level timescale, companies will *always* change their minds. Here's only a handful of headlines where users were rug-pulled and their data held hostage π«
duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Atheverge.com+%22forcing+users%22&atb=v318-1&ia=web
Every time, Web 2.0 companies turn us into "data refugees" who dance to *their* whims on how long we have access to *our* data:
. List of discontinued services from:
$GOOG: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_services
$MSFT: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Microsoft_products
Catch-all list: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_software
Just take where #crypto communities congregate: @Twitter, @Discord, @Telegram, @WhatsApp, @Reddit. We all use @Outlook or @Gmail. We register for events through @Eventbrite. Etc etc etc.
#Web3 is built on the bones of Web 2.0...and worse off for it twitter.com/ankurb/status/1534248693456568320
Okay, enough doom-and-gloom: how does "web5", or more generally decentralised identity, save us from this data hellscape? π€
The core idea here is that *my* data *can* live somewhere else, I can grant people access to it, etc etc - but *I* should always have a copy.
*This* is why we need decentralised identity, and not just non-transferrable "soul-bound tokens". A vague notion of reputation or "crypto-creditworthiness" isn't enough. We need to make *all* of it portable.
twitter.com/BanklessHQ/status/1534569018702831616
"Ah, but #Web5 is just self-sovereign identity by another name, they are stealing our idea π€¬"
Honestly, I've come to realise over the years I've been working in #SSI that "self-sovereign identity" is a *terrible* phrase to explain the concept to a general audience.
It's too "academic". Too often the reaction is "This is boring π₯±, I love my Instagram ads, why is this a problem".
This is partly why all of these "Let's do identity using #NFTs!" projects take off. Because they are *fun*.
Nobody wakes up in the morning excited about #KYC
Which is why I'm excited to see digital identity projects like @discoxyz that are bringing the *fun* back into talking about digital identity, and therefore helping adoption.
We need to move past "zero-knowledge I'm above 18" and KYC ππ½ββοΈ
twitter.com/ankurb/status/1534277685358338050
Far too often, when I'm at #Web3 conferences like @Consensus2022 I hear "ugh, I hate identity, viva la pseudonymity revoluciΓ³n! πΊπΊπΊπΊ"
But guess what? "Identity" is *also* your Twitter handle / NFT avatar / reputation in a DAO / .eth address
twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1535211774697414660
Which why I'm excited about @TBD54566975's #Web5 pitch: it's sparked an *interest* outside usual decentralised #identity / #selfsovereignidentity circles.
Fine, it might be a tad "Apple FaceIDβ’οΈ with TrueDepthβ’οΈ camera and our best-ever Neural Engineβ’οΈ", but who cares?
It nearly distinguishes that:
#Web3 is about the democratisation of ownership and governance, with a pinch of financial "LFG to the π!!!"
#Web5 is "but do I *really* have control over my data?"
(It's also a search-engine ranking / SEO masterstroke π«‘)
I also like that the concept looks beyond just cryptographically Verifiable Credentials, since #DIDs / #VCs aren't, on their own, able to shift large volumes of data.
Our thinking @cheqd_io is that Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs) are *metadata*, that can be used to manage other off-chain data stores, such as schemas or even large-scale exports (e.g., a Twitter profile) blog.cheqd.io/a-new-hope-in-the-data-wars-our-first-ever-non-fungible-did-on-the-cheqd-network-7649cad8cb06
What does this #Web5 vision still lack? At least as far as I understand it, it doesn't address the financial *incentives* for why companies would give users their data.
@brockm @csuwildcat @emilycchiu would love to chat about what we've been building @cheqd_io ππ½π