Wondering what Web3 really means for the future of business? Want a peek into the future opportunities waiting for you?

In this article, you’ll discover the positive impact that Web3 will have on how we interact with customers and how it could change your business.

Web3 Is Poised to Change the World

To understand the opportunities of Web3, it’s helpful to look at the past.

If you think about the personal computer back in 1980, it’s really the great-grandparent of today’s iPhone. These two devices, 40 years apart, have almost the exact same features and functions. They both can create a database, do word processing, and grant us access to email and chat rooms. Even location services, which were configured and tracked differently using IP addresses and phone numbers, existed back then. Now they exist in the palms of our hands.

As the computer of 1980 evolved, the whole world evolved with it. Everything we see around us computationally is based on the creativity of each one of us being democratically introduced to the technology. You can make a computer do anything you want it to do as long as the technology is available.

Fast-forward to today. The power and promise of Web3 is the democratization of value exchange at the same level that we democratized information exchange in 1980 with the advent of personal computers.

We all grew up in a world where our finances have been controlled by centralized authorities. The Federal Bank of the United States sets monetary policies, fractional lenders supply the money and make the capital available for us to borrow, and the rule of law governs it all. Based on this framework, we have assumptions about how business deals will be made and value will be exchanged.

But Web3 is starting to challenge these assumptions.

When you hear about Web3 and cryptocurrencies, NFTs, smart contracts, and so on, you’re probably wondering if all businesses need to embrace these. Think about it this way: does every business need to have a website? No, but every business needs a way to communicate. Does everybody need a widget or an app? Absolutely not. There are different use cases for different technologies, services, and business models. But everyone exchanges values every day.

Up until now, we haven’t had a lot of say about how that exchange happens. But as we evolve further into Web3, we’ll reach a point where we do have a say in how we exchange that value. We’ll be able to impose our creativity on finance in a way that has never been possible before. And it’s the technology that makes it available to everyone.

How Businesses Might Transition Into Web3

Decentralization is one of the big narratives around Web3 and it stems from the idea that big tech—Facebook, Google, Netflix—are centralized authorities or walled gardens. When you go to any platform owned by Meta, for example, they own 100% of the data you type or tap. They build wealth based on the data that we all create but they don’t share anything they don’t have to share.

If you think about Web3 as being based on decentralized toolkits, a social platform in that space might be peer to peer, rather than a centralized authority. It might also be a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO)–governed, meaning people get to vote. Ultimately, the simplest way to describe it is that both users and creators would get to share in the value they create.

While this idea of decentralization is all over Web3, it’s important to remember that many of the things we care about now are centralized and we’re fine with that.

For example, the NBA is the central authority for professional basketball and most fans would see no need for decentralization of basketball. Dapper Labs created Top Shot for the NBA, a fully centralized NFT platform. If you’re a basketball fan and hold one of those NFTs, you’d have all of the benefits of being inside a centralized world created for you.

But not every business model requires complete decentralization. A better way to think about a business model with Web3 is to ask what part will be centralized and what part will be decentralized?