Over the past we were at the mercy of platform -based giants such as Google and Amazon, acting as digital landlords. We become cloud-serfs, providing our data and making trillion values for algorithms we do not own.
More than 80% of Netflix viewing is dictated By its recommendation algorithm, and Amazon is far from a neutral market-its engine matching gives preference to treatment of Amazon’s own products, and third-party sellers Pay up to 50% of their income on fees For the privilege to compete for Amazon customers.
Web3 promise is a world beyond digital landlords.
Web3’s reclaiming thesis
Web3, as Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood in 2014, was a “post-snowden web” —a antidote in centralized control built with peer-to-peer trust.
The vision of Gavin’s architecture was twisted.
Created by Ethereum “More individual millionaires than other projects” And with the rest of the ICO waves moved the focus from technological principles to financial acquisitions.
Billions -billions of dollars that have been phannenel in speculating ico, Up to 90% which has suffered major losses or became a defunct within a year. It ended with the 2021 Bull Market, where the Crypto Market Cap easily touched the $ 3 trillion, and the “Web3” melted in a catch-all marketing term to attract investors.
The mission of developing a unbelievable, peer-to-peer internet is for a time to be buried under hype layers.
No longer the mediators
The power of centralized platforms comes from their role as a trusted mediator.
You trust Amazon to handle payments and arbitrate misunderstandings with sellers; You trust Google to be able to use, rank and display information. This trust-as-a-service model creates a gold cage: the mediator owns the rules, the data and a significant cut of the amount exchanged.
Early Web3 tried to solve this problem with on-chain transactions, where each contact was a public, permanent record. But it’s like asking a global commerce system to run a single, congested highway. The real-world commerce requires an infrastructure that can match its speed and complexity-not all should be an on-chain transaction.
State channels show a great infrastructure
Think of a state channel as a high-speed, private line between the two parties that exceeds the congested blockchain. Thousands of contacts -Value transfer, data permissions and contract updates -can occur immediately and for free, at each step signed cryptographically.
The main barrier to peer-to-peer digital commerce is the risk that a party will not fulfill their side of a deal. State Channel (ERC-7824) The design eliminates this risk without sacrificing efficiency. Before transacting, the parties made funds in an on-chain intelligent contract. It acts as a security deposit. If a party is walking away, their committed on-chain funds will ensure that the other party has been made intact. By adjusting the income and losses near real-time, the system removes the need for a trusted middle mediator.
- For Commerce: Instead of renting a space on the Amazon platform and paying up to 50% on fees, a buyer and seller opens a direct channel managed by a neutral intelligent contract.
- For data: Instead of giving up your life story on Google, you open a channel with an app, providing temporary, paid access to your data and retracted it to preference.
The combination of on-chain security and off-chain efficiency enables a new creation: the autonomous enterprise. It is a system where business logic is discounted of intelligent contracts, conducted clearly and operating around the world without the need for a traditional corporate structure.
Bitcoin has eliminated the need to trust government money printing. Ethereum removed the need to trust people to implement contracts. Now it’s time to remove the need for people who are blind to trust the platforms.
