Since the start of this year, a loud query resonating across the bitcoin community has sparked conversations and reflections. Which current crypto products would continue to attract significant user interaction if the chance of financial gain was excluded? This question, which has been addressed at conferences, live panels, podcasts, and virtual meetings, captures its simple core.
By itself, this provocative question reveals a domain of reflection and invites investigation into the practical utility of cryptocurrencies beyond the attraction of quick money acquisition. Shiv Malik, the creator of Pool Data and a former investigative journalist, is the IT industry icon in question. He has steadfastly looked for complete solutions to this conundrum.
The parallel offered is strong and relevant. The regular use of services like Uber, Google Docs, Twitter, Gmail, Spotify, Netflix, PayPal, Calendly, Slack, and iTunes is evidence of the persistent engagement with platforms that go beyond money-making. Without any desire for financial rewards, Malik shows how often he uses and seamlessly incorporates these technologies into his regular activities.
Moving on to the Web3 domain, Malik conducts a thorough analysis of the ecosystem’s functional contributions, highlighting the industry’s enduring association with speculative thinking. His investigation is set against a poignant background because to his long-standing involvement in the field, which began in 2016, and his work with numerous Web3 groups.
Malik highlights the crucial significance that Web3 innovations like Uniswap and the Metamask browser extension play in the token movement and trading space while expressing his appreciation for them. But he explains how the prevalent use cases revolve on exchanging tokens with the overriding objective of wealth augmentation, exposing a reliance on speculation.
In the middle of his reflection, Malik aspires to reveal the illusive Web3 usefulness that goes beyond conjecture and provides the larger community with real value. He lists self-custody, peer-to-peer (P2P) connections at scale, and novel business models as three areas where the Web3 story clearly outperforms its Web2 equivalents.
Self-Custody: Web3’s unrivaled capacity to offer asset self-custody is highlighted by Malik. This feature is made possible by private keys and supported by smart contracts and blockchain verifiability. In his theory, this paradigm might be expanded to include not just financial assets but also personal data, giving people authority over their data and perhaps changing data privacy. Although acceptance is still difficult, Malik sees this paradigm change in data ownership as an exciting possibility.
P2P Connections: Malik examines the prospect of real P2P connections in Web3 by drawing comparisons to messaging services, which dominate Web2. He draws attention to the ease and empowerment that come from linking wallets to services like Uniswap or Aave, demonstrating the striking difference between the magical Web3 experiences and the time-consuming activities that are characteristic of Web2. In Malik’s vision, SSO built on Ethereum will take the role of OAuth to enable efficient, secure, and customized interactions throughout the digital world.
New Socio-Economic Models: Because of its adaptable smart contract features, Ethereum has the ability to support a variety of socio-economic models, as stressed by Malik. He contrasts the libertarian principles of Bitcoin with those of Ethereum and sees Ethereum as a favorable environment for novel economic structures. Malik applauds Ethereum’s capacity to support open-source projects through ICOs and utility tokens, illustrative of its significant influence on the development of the cryptocurrency environment.
In conclusion, Malik’s provocative reflection supports a change in attention from wild conjecture to significant usefulness in the Web3 sphere. His investigation lays the path for a greater comprehension of how this developing technology might concretely improve everyday lives and handle real-world problems inside the vast bitcoin ecosystem.
