Hot summer in New York, I met JF, the ecosystem lead from Chainbase, a Web3 startup that focused on designing Web3 interaction layer infrastructure that enables developers to better build Web 3 applications (of course I didn’t understand any of it at the time), I had a very long and yet fruitful conversation with her about her work. Ever since I graduated from an ivy-school, where most of my friends are working in finance, consulting, and big tech companies, I noticed the wind has slightly shifted: more and more friends of mine like JF are quickly migrating into the Web3 world. After talking to different friends in the industry and participating in several events, I realized Web3 is taking up a trend by storm, albeit during a global declining economic cycle. However, as a traditional econ major with zero cs background, is there any way that I can break into this trend, I wondered?

What is Web3?

In the limited time that I learned about Web3, the essence of Web3 is centralized around the idea of “decentralization”. However, there are different doctrines when it comes to Web3-related products, some solely rely upon the idea of “complete decentralization” or “pure ownership”, whereas others are more pragmatic and restraint and put more focus on using blockchain or crypto technologies for application uses (companies like Chainbase, for example). The first question we need to ask is, why do we need decentralization? To answer that question, first, we need to look into the different stages of the Web, starting from Web1.

Web 1.0 (1998-2004) Read Only

The birth of Web1 enables users to read information from the internet. The main focus was to make information visible on the Web so that anyone who has access to the internet can browse the information. Namely, read-only websites and directories such as Yahoo and Google were born to better help average users surf the internet.

And of course, you can create your own websites with very little cost (hence many internet companies quickly emerged during that period). And due to the technological limitations and limited content, Web 1.0 companies usually host servers in offices, or use early colocation data centers.

Web 2.0 (2004-present): Read and Write, with Cloud Service

The biggest breakthrough of Web 2.0 was that internet users can not only look up information online but can communicate in real-time and create content. First on websites like MySpace, and later on, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

However, a huge amount of data need to be stored, hence the companies that provide cloud services were born.

Web 3.0 (2021): Read, Write, and Own

In Web3, websites can still operate on traditional web servers just like in Web2, however, the rising urge for data ownership giving back to individuals is imminent. Blockchain technologies can now help websites connect directly to an underlying blockchain network, like Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Solana, etc. to better facilitate data ownership.

The reason why data ownership in Web2 has caused controversies is that Web2 is driven by the entities that have the most data, whereas average users have not benefited from their data being monitored and sold. Essentially, Web2 companies design fun products that attract a staggering number of users to use them daily. For instance, from the obsolete Facebook to Instagram, Twitter, and now TikTok, they usually can gather up to millions of users to use their products on the daily basis. Noticing almost all those fun products are free to use, how do they make money? The answer is by selling your data to other business enterprises. Essentially, the data collected from their users are the products that those companies are selling.

This could be dangerous since all your data are subject to their use, which means you are almost naked to any other companies who want to profit from you and they can now know what you desire when you are just browsing, let’s say, TikTok videos.

Therefore, decentralizing the ownership of data is the key to Web3, it gives full autonomy to every user when it comes to their data ownership. Through blockchain and crypto-based technologies, users can access the Crypto world without the fear of being stripped of their belongings and can achieve full self-sovereignty online - almost utopia-like (of course in a data-owning sense, not in a privacy-protection or cybersecurity sense).

Why data infra is essential to Web3?

Now we understand why data are crucial to the idea of Web3. What about its applications? We have seen some of the Web3 applications have made their presence in the world: NFT assets, decentralized e-commerce, the DeFi ecosystem, and blockchain-based applications (Dapps) will continue to grow their influence. To understand why infrastructure providers are so crucial to Web3 development, we need to understand why such infrastructure is needed in the first place.

Blockchain technologies allowed data to be stored on a network that is no longer controlled by any centralized party thus granting full autonomy to each user, but made accessing on-chain data a challenging task. Data are stored in blocks on different blockchain networks, and fetching them needs a whole new backend with multi-chain capability to be built and maintained. Missing such data infrastructure can be a hassle for Web3 developers.

Currently, there are no major players that can help Web3 developers to better focus on creating their projects rather than fixating on all the infrastructure regarding the chain itself. Therefore, an easy-to-use one-stop third-party solution - Chainbase - is desperately needed to develop Web3 applications.

My primary focus will be more on the business side of it—not to say I won’t get into the technical part of the equation but more focusing on how to correctly value and position each company’s product in the industry.

For instance, Chainbase is a leading Web3 data infrastructure that provides datasets accessed with APIs and lets you build custom data pipelines. I will be analyzing how this particular sector of the industry works, how well each product on the market works, and finally how we can better help developers bring more innovative ideas using blockchain technology.

At last, I am grateful to Chainbase for providing me with this opportunity to use my individual voice to break into the Web3 world and I cannot wait to see more breakthroughs along the journey.