What is Jack Dorsey’s “web5”? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 189 - by cryptohunt.it

What is Jack Dorsey’s “web5”?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Just as you thought you finally understand roughly what web3 means, Jack Dorsey – the co-founder of Twitter – is here to confuse you some more by introducing web5.

That’s right. Nevermind web4, we are jumping right to web5. And to make things worse, he’s releasing under a company called “TBD” - which usually stands for “to be determined”. But don’t worry, we are here to untangle his confusingly named new ideas.

His web5 wants to be a combination of web2, which represents the existing “big company controlled” internet and web3, the new wave of community owned and operated organizations. 2 + 3 equals 5. Yeah… we didn’t giggle either.

The greater idea is to give people control over their identity and data back.

Consider this example: If you sign up with Facebook, your account and all the content you post is stuck inside Facebook. You can only use it there. They can do with it what they want. If Facebook wants to go through your messages to target ads, they can and will do that.

Web5, in contrast, would provide an open service that allows you to keep those all in one place, and only you control them. Like we showed in yesterday’s episode, this is similar to crypto wallets, which also let you log into websites, or store credentials such as proof of ownership of digital art, on them. Those sites could then build traditional products like Facebook, making this the “2+3=5” hybrid approach.

And that’s also where our questions are about web5: What is it actually trying to do that wallets don’t already promise? We guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

And lastly, Dorsey and the web5 creators are big Bitcoin fans and propose to use it as the underlying technology to verify data. And you know how much we always bash Bitcoin for its energy footprint: We don’t think we really need another projects contributing to the destruction of our planet.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.