jmh | Alternate Visions and Opportunities

This is part 9 of my series, The Black Purposes of Web3, where I post my undergraduate thesis in sections. Read the series intro.

This post corresponds to the sixth chapter ("Alternate Visions and Opportunities"), and contains some academic analysis and citations. It's adapted closely from my original writing.

Throughout this series, we've explored Web3's promises of decentralization, ownership, and empowerment. We've heard from maximalists who see it as revolutionary, and critics who see it as a scam. We've looked at the history of Black Americans and technology, and the patterns that emerge. So can Web3 actually deliver on its promises? And if not, what might work better?

In general, a major drawback to Web3 is its reliance on cryptocurrency, an asset that can provide major profits for those involved. Experienced users and bad actors in the space rely on other users' vulnerabilities and lack of knowledge to game the system as much as possible to gain more monetary value. As a result, it has been plagued with scams and scandals, even if they exist alongside success stories and positive experiences for some. The decentralized nature of Web3 could be beneficial for all that participate if it weren't for some that abuse the system. A system built on these unstable circumstances undermines the original ethos of its value proposition and the idea of an empowering solution for Black communities.

Furthermore, although the idea of Web3 is centered around the power of the people and not companies, in practice it can end up being a very isolated experience. The fact that it is considered "best practice" to go to relatively extreme lengths to not expose your crypto wallet private key is a reflection of how "privacy tends to reinforce individualism, rather than community, sociability, trust, and so on."[1] This security measure is in line with Web3's goal of privacy, but it is also in part due to the priority placed on gaining and protecting digital assets because of the system's basis in cryptocurrency.

The value of community among Black people in Web3 exists in direct contrast to this individualistic quality, as demonstrated by Ohnahji and other projects in the space. These groups are focused on sharing knowledge rather than gatekeeping, empowerment rather than exploitation, mutually supporting one another rather than undermining each other's goals. In addition to cultivating community as a priority for African Americans in Web3, significant value is placed on art and creativity. Looking at Ohnahji again as well as the Black Arts Project and the 50mm Collective, this seems to be a common use case in the Black community that has been brought into Web3. It could be a positive avenue of maintaining ownership of artistic creations and building real wealth through the digital world. Education, community, and creativity are some of the main principles that guide Ohnahji's offerings and operations, and I believe that remaining true to these while continuing to evolve with the Web3 space will help them and other similar projects carry out their mission of elevating BIPOC artists and entrepreneurs in Web3.

Alternatives to Blockchain

In response to the criticism of Web3, especially related to the fact that it is implemented using blockchain technology, there have been some alternative solutions developed with similar goals that use other methods. One example is Solid, Tim Berners-Lee's solution to give users ownership of their personal data, rather than it being controlled by large corporations. As described on the project website,

"Solid is a specification that lets people store their data securely in decentralized data stores called Pods. Pods are like secure personal web servers for data. When data is stored in someone's Pod, they control which people and applications can access it."

Solid Pods are designed to store any sort of data that the user desires, and their use of interoperable data formats and protocols allow the data to be used with various applications. In order to store data in a Pod, users can choose to either get a Pod hosted by a Pod Provider, or they can choose to host their own Pod Server, removing the need to trust a third party with their data.[2] Even if a user chooses a Pod Provider to store their data initially, Solid Pods promote data portability such that a user can later choose to move their data somewhere else – one sign of true data ownership.

Different applications have been built within the Solid ecosystem, which allows those applications to "access the same data instead of requiring separate data silos specifically for the applications"[3] using users' unique WebIDs that serve as user identity within the ecosystem.[2] This would look like, for example, "instead of inputting your email with your bank statement notification service, with your phone's billing service, etc., you can instead store this information in your Pod and grant access to read your email information to these disparate services/applications."[3]

Berners-Lee's Solid project is a data ownership solution implemented entirely without blockchain or its native cryptocurrencies. In light of the issues of monetary scams found in Web3, the solution of Solid Pods could be seen as an improvement over Web3 in terms of the goal of data ownership on its own. It is a more direct implementation of that goal without additional motives or incentives.

Another alternative to the blockchain itself is IOTA, a distributed ledger technology built on the IOTA Tangle network. It is scalable, feeless, and open source, and differs from blockchain primarily in its underlying data structure, the Tangle.[4] This data structure (Figure 6.1) is made up of individual transactions, rather than blocks made up of transactions as in blockchain, and uses a "novel leaderless, probabilistic consensus protocol that enables parallel validation of transactions without requiring total ordering" like the blockchain does.[5] Transactions are validated by new transactions, forming connections between them in a directed acyclic graph which reduces the bottleneck issue that blockchains face.[5] As a result, IOTA is more scalable and energy efficient, eliminating the need for users and developers to pay fees for sending transactions. Since it has similar capabilities to the blockchain and still provides the same decentralization and trustlessness, but in a more scalable and efficient manner, IOTA "is designed to be the most reliable distributed ledger technology for Web3 applications and digital economies."[4]

Side-by-side comparison showing blockchain's linear structure versus IOTA Tangle's directed acyclic graph — Figure 6.1: Comparison between the blockchain and IOTA data structure

Possible Improvements

Web3 could potentially be improved in a variety of ways. As previously mentioned, blockchains that use the common Proof of Work consensus are extremely energy inefficient and difficult to scale, negatively impacting the user experience of applications built on it. It might be useful to explore other implementations of Web3's core principles besides the blockchain, like IOTA, though this may restructure the ecosystem itself and thus become something entirely new. Notably, IOTA does not involve miners, which is a primary method of making money from crypto and gaming the system, so a version of Web3 built on this alternate consensus could reduce some of the problems of scandals that we see today.

Beyond the scalability issues of the blockchain, Web3 could also be improved by finding a balance between decentralization and a more user-friendly interface, if possible. In order to achieve true decentralization of web applications, users must deal with many moving parts just to do simple actions on the web. Web3 proponent Josh Stark raised multiple important questions in this regard:

"Will the cryptographic components of decentralized applications be too challenging for most users? How can users manage private keys in a way that can be safely recoverable? Is that even possible without returning to some form of centralized service?"

A big reason for centralization of technologies in the first place is that it tends to make operations easier for people due to abstracting away the different elements under the hood. Users usually want their technology to be as easy as possible, and centralization has become the dominant and most efficient way to do that. Even now, many notice that "decentralized" applications still include some centralized aspects, because otherwise it would be too difficult to effectively use Web3. This issue brings up the possibility that, even though applications can be less centralized than what we commonly use now, full decentralization may not be compatible with a positive, seamless user experience.

Questions That Remain

Even with possible improvements and alternatives, additional questions and opportunities for future research remain, though this list is not exhaustive:

How can Web3 be organized and implemented in a way that truly reflects its guiding principles, and bring greater benefit to African Americans and other marginalized groups? The ideas surrounding Web3 are reminiscent of the Rochdale Principles, or the standards for the operation of cooperatives adopted by the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA). The ICA defines a cooperative as an "autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-controlled enterprise." Some of the cooperative principles are Voluntary and Open Membership, Democratic Member Control, and Autonomy and Independence, among others, all of which are based on values of democracy, equality, and equity. Since these are similar in some ways with what Web3 proponents and developers claim it is all about, measuring it against these principles during the continued development and dissemination processes could be a valuable way of moving forward with this vision. Future work should be done to explore methods of doing this both proactively and retroactively.
Is there a way to promote and stabilize other use cases of Web3 beyond the common get-rich-quick schemes that plague the space now? Some of the Black experiences in Web3 demonstrated alternative uses and priorities in this space that exist outside of the most dominant narratives about what Web3 really is. Additional research is needed to understand broader uses and applications of Web3 for different audiences as a way to make it more accessible and appealing to those who could benefit from it.
Are there any racially coded elements in the underlying technology, and if so, what might their implications be? Web3 users don't need to report their race, and there should not be any centralized entities hoarding data and trying to deduce identities for targeting purposes. However, it would be naive to conclude that Web3 will be colorblind or have no indications of race. We should be skeptical of the idea that any technology is truly "neutral," and it is important to understand these aspects before advocating for widespread adoption of Web3. Because Web3 is not currently extremely widespread, it may be hard to gain this sort of insight if it is not initially obvious, but nonetheless, investigation of this area should be anticipated.

In general, future work should be done to explore the feasibility of potential improvements to Web3 as it exists today, as well as alternatives that might succeed in carrying out similar goals. This research was limited by the lack of long-term, in-depth field work to better understand tangible impacts and interactions between African Americans and Web3. Near the end of writing this paper, I had the opportunity to meet Afrofuturist Ingrid LaFleur, who, due to her enthusiasm about empowering Black communities with emerging technologies, introduced me to the "Black Experiences in Web3 Report" created by the Crypto Research and Design Lab (CRADL). Released in 2022, the report "explores what is unique about Black people's motivations and participation in crypto [and Web3] and considers historic, systemic, and cultural drivers of this participation."[6] In order to understand more about experiences, opportunities, and trends of Black people in Web3, CRADL researchers conducted interviews with Black experts, community leaders (including LaFleur), and other people across the country with experience in the Web3 space.[6] This sort of collaborative field research would be valuable for the questions and exploration in my research, as well as for the proposed future work to answer remaining questions. Moving forward, more applied, participatory, and community-specific research beyond simply theoretical analysis is ideal to maximize the benefits of emerging technologies and minimize their harm to marginalized communities.

References

1. C. Fuchs, "The Political Economy of Privacy on Facebook," Television & New Media, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 139-159, 2012.