Video source: EO

Translation: Cikey, Sanzhi

Translator's note: The original video "Is Web 3.0 Dead?" was released in early September, presented by Chris Dixon, a partner at a16z and a leading figure in Crypto. Since joining a16z in 2013, Dixon has not only helped shape the company's strategy but also founded and led a16z crypto, which focuses on Web3 and blockchain technology, in 2018. Today, he manages an investment fund of over $7 billion, driving the rapid development of the next generation of the internet. So how does he view "Is Web 3.0 Dead?"

Currently, Crypto is indeed facing some challenges, especially with the FTX incident in the U.S. and the Terra Luna incident in South Korea.

Although many negative events have occurred in the past few years, I do not believe that Crypto is dead.

In fact, every innovative technology goes through ups and downs. It is incorrect to directly infer that "some use cases of certain technologies are inappropriate" as "the technology itself is bad," because technology itself is neither good nor bad.

Hello everyone, I am Chris Dixon, a partner at a16z and also the founder and head of the Crypto foundation.

For the past 25 years, I have been closely connected to the internet industry. Initially, I was a software engineer, and later I transitioned into an entrepreneur. My first company focused on cybersecurity and was eventually acquired by McAfee; my second company focused on AI and was later acquired by eBay.

Since 2006, I have also been involved in angel investing, investing in several well-known internet startups, including Pinterest, Stripe, and Kickstarter.

In 2013, I joined Andreessen Horowitz, leading our investment in Coinbase. Five years ago, we acquired Oculus's VR company. Since then, I have been responsible for the business development and strategic planning of our Crypto fund.

In the early days of the internet in the 1990s, most online services were one-way, which we called "read-only." Websites at that time were more like electronic magazines or digital brochures, where users primarily went to obtain information, and the concept of social media was almost non-existent.

Entering the 2000s, with the rise of Web 2.0, I also got involved. This movement emphasized "read-write" capabilities, giving rise to many related conferences and blogs. The core idea was that the internet should not just be a platform for passive information consumption but an interactive platform where users could not only consume content but also create it. The rise of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is a manifestation of this idea, making the internet a truly participatory medium.

By the 2000s, network-based services became dominant on the internet. Platforms like Facebook, Uber, and WhatsApp are all about connecting people, and they have a strong "network effect"—the more users there are, the greater the value of the service. As these services expanded, their influence also grew.

However, we are facing a risk: the internet may ultimately be dominated by a few large tech companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. I believe this is not good for emerging businesses and innovation in society as a whole.

The internet was initially intended to create a decentralized network, returning power and wealth to ordinary users rather than concentrating it in the hands of a few large companies.

In the traditional media industry, especially in American television and broadcasting, resources and revenue are highly concentrated, controlled by a few major channels. In the 1990s, when many of my peers and I began to explore the internet, we were incredibly excited about its potential—it promised to redistribute wealth and power, bringing them back to the edges of the network, to ordinary users.

In the 1990s, the internet did achieve this to some extent, but by the 2000s, this trend of decentralization began to gradually disappear.

Fast forward to today, the top five tech companies account for 50% of the market value of the Nasdaq 100 index, and over 95% of the traffic and revenue on the internet is concentrated in these few companies, with all trends indicating that this centralization will continue to intensify.

At the same time, the development of AI is remarkable, but if left unchecked, it will further accelerate this centralization. This is because AI technology requires companies that possess substantial funding, data, and powerful computing capabilities, which are resources that large companies have.

In my book, I propose a solution: a new generation of internet services based on blockchain.

In simple terms, these services aim to eliminate intermediaries, such as "gatekeepers" and "toll booths." Taking Facebook, Uber, Amazon, YouTube, and Twitter as examples, these platforms have financial flows, whether it’s advertising fees or transaction fees, and they charge a certain percentage as commission, which is known in the internet industry as the "take rate."

The "take rate of internet services is very high," usually between 50% and 100%, with most of the flowing funds going into the pockets of these service providers.

Moreover, these companies control the entire network, deciding who can access the network, who gets banned, and how algorithms operate. They often change the rules, such as the type of links or content you post, which may affect whether it gets recommended or demoted. These algorithms are highly opaque and completely controlled by these companies, while users and content creators who rely on these networks have no say in the matter.

These centralized service providers effectively hold the fate of users in their hands. That is why I value the potential of blockchain technology, as it can bring a new attribute to the internet—ownership.

Blockchain is a revolutionary invention that can achieve many functions, and I see it as a new type of internet computer. They are cloud-based and can perform various tasks, but the most critical aspect is that they can grant true ownership of digital assets.

Take Bitcoin as an example; one of its most interesting features is that the owner of the private key is the true owner of the Bitcoin, a form of ownership that does not exist on Twitter or Facebook.

For instance, I have accumulated followers on Twitter for many years, but if the owner of Twitter decides to close my account tomorrow, my account will be gone the next day. From this perspective, I am not the true owner of that account. This situation has occurred multiple times on the internet, whether it’s virtual items in games, content on social media, or your account on PayPal. In the current mainstream model of the internet, users have almost no real ownership.

Bitcoin introduced a new concept—users can own digital assets. Since the birth of Bitcoin, technologists have expanded this concept of ownership to broader fields, such as NFTs. The core idea of NFTs is that you can own a piece of art, a game item, or even an NFT representing a social media username. In this new blockchain-based model, users can truly own these assets, and these assets cannot be easily taken away.

Imagine if I owned my username and follower list on social media, and if I were dissatisfied with a service, I could take my username and followers to another platform. In this new blockchain model, I can own my username, follower list, data, and even a set of data that I provide to AI algorithms. In the current mainstream model of the internet, only service providers or the companies behind them can own this data and resources.

Early internet protocols, such as email, also had similar characteristics. For example, the revival of newsletters is a case in point. Many journalists choose to leave traditional media and start their own newsletters through platforms like Substack. This is because when you have your own newsletter, you truly own your subscriber list, and you have their email addresses. The take rate on platforms like Substack is only about 10%, and such a low take rate attracts many people to use it.

If these platforms change the rules, you can completely choose to leave and turn to other services. Blockchain-based services are also based on the same concept of ownership.

Now, we are at a critical moment where Web 2.0 companies like Facebook have billions of users, while the users of blockchain services, including those in Crypto, number only a few hundred million. Although the number of users engaging with emerging blockchain games and social media is around several tens of millions, it is still a relatively small proportion of the entire internet user base. Therefore, we are still in a relatively early stage of development, which I believe is related to several factors.

First, there is the infrastructure. For example, if you are currently playing a blockchain-based game, the experience is still different from that of a non-blockchain game. The underlying infrastructure of these services is still in its early stages and will take some time to reduce costs and improve user experience. However, I am very optimistic about the breakthrough developments that may occur in the coming years.

Additionally, in my book, I mentioned that there are two cultures within blockchain: one is the speculative "casino culture," and the other is the more technology-focused "computer culture."

The casino culture focuses more on the short-term buying and selling of tokens, while the computer culture is dedicated to building a new generation of internet services that return digital ownership to users, reduce intermediary costs, and are controlled by users. The latter is what we are more willing to promote and invest in, but unfortunately, the casino culture currently seems to dominate, which is detrimental to the healthy development of the industry. I hope for wise policies and regulatory measures to curb speculative behavior while promoting the positive development of technology. Unfortunately, some policy decisions in the U.S. in recent years have actually fueled this unhealthy trend.

For example, the number of meme coins created last month exceeded 500,000, setting a historical high. At the same time, regulatory policies have imposed restrictions on productive behaviors within the computer culture, which is contrary to the wise regulatory policies we hope to see. I look forward to a change in this situation, and there have been some positive signs recently.

Although the Crypto space has faced some challenges, such as the FTX incident in the U.S. and the Terra Luna incident in South Korea, this does not indicate a failure of the entire field.

History tells us that every interesting technology goes through ups and downs. AI and neural networks have existed since 1943, and the concept of AI has a long history. Alan Turing published his famous paper in 1950, describing what is now known as the Turing Test. Although twenty years ago, chess systems like Deep Blue had already become world-class, the development of other applications, such as natural language processing, progressed relatively slowly. However, in the past decade, machine learning algorithms have gradually approached and surpassed human levels in the ImageNet competition, and language systems have also been improving. Although the development process has been slow, significant breakthroughs were indeed achieved two years ago. If you have been paying attention, you might think AI is an emerging field, but it is actually a long-established field that has experienced many ups and downs. I believe many technologies have such developmental trajectories, including blockchain and Crypto.

Technology can be used for good purposes or bad purposes. A hammer can be used to build a house or to destroy it; fertilizer can be used to grow crops or to make explosives. AI can be used for fraud and scams, or it can be used to enhance human creativity. Blockchain can also be used for improper purposes, but it can also be used to create a wave of new internet services that return funds and power to internet users. The way to ensure technology is used for good is to set rules for it. I believe it is a mistake to confuse the application of specific technologies with the technology itself. In my book "Read Write Own," I strive to comprehensively describe the productive uses of blockchain. Jumping from "this technology has bad uses" to "therefore this technology itself is bad" is a mistake. Technology itself is neutral; the key lies in how people and governments guide its potential in a positive direction.

My book "Read Write Own" discusses the potential of blockchain and crypto technology. Over the years, I have had conversations with many people about the value and prospects of blockchain, and I found it difficult to explain clearly in a single meeting because the knowledge background involved is often shared among internet entrepreneurs but not universally recognized by a broader audience. Therefore, I believe that writing blogs, articles, or books has several important values.

First, I hope to inspire entrepreneurs by sharing ideas that may help them, promoting their thinking, and attracting more people to pay attention to this technology, encouraging them to think about it in the right way, thus creating more interesting entrepreneurs to engage with us. This way, our conversations will become deeper because they have read a lot of content, and I hope they will also read my work, allowing us to enter a higher level of dialogue. This is very effective in saving time. We want to collaborate with the smartest people, and these people always want to read interesting content. Therefore, this approach helps build relationships, share knowledge, and accelerate the development of this field.

The key feature of blockchain is that you can build new internet services, which can be anything we use on the internet today, including social networks, games, marketplaces, and AI services. A significant characteristic of these services is that there are no barriers or toll collectors; the services are entirely controlled by users, and funds flow to users.

In my book, I explore these concepts and apply them to seven specific areas, trying to imagine what the future might look like once entrepreneurs build these services. For example, after a Google search, you need to click into websites that rely on advertising and paywalls for profit. In an AI-driven world, you will no longer need these intermediary steps. We are rapidly entering a new era where many traditional profit models for creators may disappear. If illustrations can be directly generated through AI services like MidJourney, why pay illustrators? These AI services learn from user data but do not pay for it, which is a frustrating outcome.

I worry that the internet may be dominated by a few giants, which will push out many people currently making money on the internet. Therefore, I predict that in the next 3 to 5 years, we will face a crisis on the internet, and many existing business models will disappear.

Thus, the concept of story protocols brings many exciting possibilities, introducing an innovative business model to the field of digital creation. This model can bring together everyone's creativity. For example, someone may excel at weaving storylines, another may be skilled at designing characters, and yet another may be adept at merging these elements. There may even be someone who forks this content to create new versions, similar to open-source software projects. Whether it's hand-drawn comics or AI-generated content, as long as the creator sets the rules, these creative methods are viable.

The essence of story protocols is that they allow you to define the creative content and terms and record them on the blockchain. Blockchain technology excels at ensuring that records are immutable, with each record linked to a legal agreement that can be enforced through legal means when necessary. This model relies not only on trust in blockchain but also connects with the existing copyright law system.

AI's involvement will not be restricted; you can use AI to create or utilize these "LEGO blocks." As long as you follow the economic rules set within the blockchain, you can participate in any way. This system provides the potential for creative contributions and consumption on an internet scale, ensuring that creative workers receive the compensation they deserve. This is especially important today when AI systems may disrupt or render many existing business models obsolete.

So, I hope this book can serve as an understandable guide for non-technical people, explaining in simple, straightforward language how the internet works, the history of the internet, the potential of blockchain, and why I am excited about all of this.

This book is also prepared for policymakers because I discovered early in my career that when people think a technology has reached its end, the best opportunities are often hidden.

In fact, at the beginning of my career, people told me the internet was dead. When I founded my first company in 2003 and 2004, I found that the best opportunities in my career came when people said something was dead. My experience is that AI has its ups and downs, the internet has its ups and downs, and Crypto has its ups and downs. If you wait for things to improve before taking action, you will find yourself doing the same thing as a large group of people.

Whether it's AI, the internet, or Crypto, they will all experience ups and downs, but the key to success lies in maintaining faith and daring to invest amid these fluctuations.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。