🤖Web3

Web3 is a new generation of web technologies relying on chains of blocks (blockchain) enabling the development of a whole decentralized ecosystem.

First application of web3 concept was for the cryptocurrencies, with introduction of Bitcoin early 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. This was the begining of a new money paradigm, the first decentralized cryptocurrency, meaning that the emission of a money operating outside the control of a centralized government or bank like the Central Bank (Europe) of the Fed (USA), and fully transparent (the Bitcoin protocol is available to everyone) and running by itself.

After that, a lot of cryptocurrencies have been released for many applications, and many blockchains too. As of March 2022, there are around 10,300 "alive" cryptocurrencies in existence.

Among what, Ethereum (released by Vitalik Butterin), the second most popular blockchain came out in 2016 not only with the idea of providing as Bitcoin a decentralized currency, but also being able to store on-chain pieces of code that can be used to automate interactions with its users (smart contracts and decentralized apps [Dapps]).

Early after the introduction of smart contracts by Ethereum came the era of the non-fungible tokens (NFTs). They are virtual crypto-assets stored on the blockchain and enabling powerfull caracteristics:

• Uniqueness of the asset : your asset has a unique token id linked on-chain with your public wallet address

• Proof of property : the transaction hash shows that you are the owner of the NFT

• Reserve of value : the NFT has an intrinsic value that fluctuates according the offer and the demand on the market

• Can be easily sold : it is much more easy to sell an NFT on a marketplace than to sell a physical piece of art

• Smart interactions : depending on the project, NFT can provide deeper experiences to owners. For instance, the ability of staking your NFTs to get rewarded by tokens. The ability to vote as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) as we will see on the next chapter.