Somewhere in my youth, I read and thoroughly enjoyed a delightfully accurate and understandable treatise on global political systems that employed the metaphor of, well, cows. In that unmatchable dreamspace that only brainstorming from 30,000 feet can induce, it occurred to me that the same metaphor could be applied to the seemingly suddenly confounding world of Web 3.0.
Cryptocurrency You buy a cow.
It is branded with a magic brand that lists every time ANY of the cows in its herd is bought or sold, including yours, so you can always verify a cow’s history.
Blockchain
The multiple copies of the magic brand, which exists on all the cows in its herd, listing every time one (or part of one) is bought or sold.
NTFs
You take a picture of your cow.
You magic-brand-it so everyone knows it’s one of a kind, recording its existence in a blockchain. Because it’s verifiable as one of a kind, it’s now NOT the same as any other cow pic (ie, non fungible). You can then sell it as one of a kind, making it more scarce and thus valuable. Anyone who tries to forge your cow pic can’t forge your magic-brand because it wouldn’t match the cow lineage information of yours (because it would be created at a different time with different cow-parents.)
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations / DAOs
People (i.e. “decentralized”) interested in cows get together and make a cow club (“organization.”) To join, you can pony up coin, cows, and/or work the farm. Everyone votes on how the farm is run based on rules the group has agreed on, which are also recorded on the magic brands.
But the cows are smart. They can read the magic rule brands (wouldn’t you want to if someone kept branding you with new stuff all the time?) So rather than anyone needing to enforce the rules, the cows do it automatically when a rule or agreement is triggered (autonomous).
Gas Fees
So while the Magic brands are certainly magic, they aren’t effortless. Updating all these cows with rules and transactions and lineage takes time and energy. Gas fees are the cost of workin that magic.
Web 1.0
You bought a farm. With real non-magic cows. You want people to know so you put up a billboard out front so people will know you have a farm and a bit about it when they drive by.
Web 2.0
People are into your cows. You create a club where people can share pictures and stories of cows doing cute cow things. You learn to sell the tools you’ve created to run your farm and membership in your super cool cow club.
Web 3.0
A Magic State Fair is created that runs 24/7, where digital cows, chickens, pigs, corn, flowers, and more can be made, displayed, bought, and sold. Magic brands keep track of all the flora and faun’activity so trade (and work+reward) of these once CTRL+C’able assets is now possible, all continually recorded via the magic-blockchain-brands.
Metaverse
People from around the world want to visit your farm, so you create a virtual version of your farm on the new web 3.0 version of the internet that anyone can visit. All your friends from the State Fair also build virtual farms, creating veritable cornucopia of digital farm goodness. Mooooooooo.