web3’s Biggest Challenge is Identity

If it is all about better governance, web3 is going to have to come up with a way of knowing who’s there

At the most basic level, Web3 refers to a decentralized online ecosystem based on the blockchain. Platforms and apps built on Web3 won’t be owned by a central gatekeeper, but rather by users, who will earn their ownership stake by helping to develop and maintain those services.

Web 1.0, the story goes, was the era of decentralized, open protocols, in which most online activity involved navigating to individual static webpages. Web 2.0, which we’re living through now, is the era of centralization, in which a huge share of communication and commerce takes place on closed platforms owned by a handful of super-powerful corporations — think Google, Facebook, Amazon — subject to the nominal control of centralized government regulators. Web3 is supposed to break the world free of that monopolistic control.

The Identification Challenge

Identity for Participation

Off-Chain Options

On-Chain Identification

The web3 conundrum

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Skoll Chair in Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and Chief Economist, Creative Destruction Lab.

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Joshua Gans

Skoll Chair in Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and Chief Economist, Creative Destruction Lab.