Web3: The Next Global Public Good? Here’s the Missing Piece

In my view, Web3 has the potential to be an immense global public good, bringing financial inclusion, transparency, and decentralization to billions worldwide. But for this exciting vision to become reality, we need to fund its infrastructure properly as a shared public resource.

What Are Public Goods?

Let me take a step back and explain what public goods are for anyone unfamiliar with the concept. Public goods are things like clean air, lighthouses, and open-source software benefiting anyone who uses it. They are non-rivalrous — my breathing clean air doesn’t reduce its availability to you. They are also non-excludable — no one can prevent us from benefitting from them. The upshot is that we can all gain from public goods without reducing benefits to others. Pretty cool.

“Public goods are good” By Kevin Owocki

Web3 As A Digital Common Resource

Now, here’s why I see Web3 as having this public goods character. Many of its core components like open-source software, decentralized blockchain networks, and permissionless applications are digital public goods that anyone can use or build on top of freely.

Platforms like KodaDot, a decentralized NFT marketplace for Polkadot, are public goods too. By enabling cross-chain interoperability and open participation with over $200k distributed in bounties, KodaDot creates shared value for all of us in the Web3 community.

Visualize a utopian future where Web3 has become a global public good. Imagine a sky filled with holograms, digital ads, and online interfaces accessible to anyone, anywhere. Keep the style realistic but with a hint of impressionistic exaggeration, using generous strokes of blue, teal, and silver to emulate a digitized reality. — Image #3 damsky

Funding Web3’s Public Infrastructure

Of course, for Web3 to achieve its global potential, we need to fund its underlying public infrastructure properly. This is tricky due to the “free rider” problem facing public goods. Folks don’t want to pay if they can access it for free.

But platforms like Gitcoin show ways we can coordinate funding as a community. I’m especially inspired by their quadratic funding approach that reflects the interests of the many over the few.

Source

A Shared Responsibility

At the end of the day, what benefits the broader Web3 community ultimately benefits each of us. By working together across borders, we can nurture Web3 as a digital public good for the future of humanity. New funding models recognize our common interests in its amazing potential.

Our journey building KodaDot reflects a broader opportunity to develop Web3 as a digital public good through aligned incentives and collective responsibility. When we come together to fund and govern shared infrastructure properly, we all stand to benefit from the amazing potential of this technology. By lifting each other up, we lift up humanity.

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