Black Americans and Web3
This is part 8 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 main sections of chapter 5 ("Race and Technology"), and is adapted closely from my original writing.
When considering the potential transition from Web 2.0 to Web3, it may be helpful to recall the issues that exist for African Americans in the current Web 2.0 era and examine which problems may be solved by the transition and which ones may persist.
The first issue that was mentioned was the digital divide, or lack of access and education about newer technologies. Beyond the divide in access, there was also an observed divide in the ways the web was being used and how this both reflected and magnified social stratification offline. There is not much reason to believe that Web3 will inherently solve this problem based simply on its values and technical details. It would require deliberate intervention and outreach to ensure African Americans equal access and understanding, especially because of the relatively high learning curve that exists with Web3.
To accomplish the goal of decentralization, interacting with Web3 applications involves more moving parts and a different way of navigating the online world. For example, adding data to a Web 2.0 application, like filling out a form or commenting on a post, is usually user-friendly and intuitive, such that the user likely only has to navigate on the screen to click buttons and use the keyboard. In Web3, an interaction like this requires a cryptocurrency wallet to connect to the application, sign transactions, and pay a small fee to add to the blockchain. Even using a cryptocurrency wallet requires users to remember their credentials and not share them with anyone since there is no centralized entity to recover them.
Web3 can create and reproduce divides based on levels of understanding how the system works, because it is common for people to be taken advantage of and scammed due to small mistakes, vulnerabilities, and exploitative strategies related to cryptocurrency. Even though Web3 is "open to all" and technically accessible to anyone, just as with other technologies, digital divides along multiple dimensions will be reproduced, leaving marginalized communities excluded from potential benefits, unless there is a dedicated effort to explicitly combat this issue ahead of time.
Whether the issues of privacy and surveillance of African Americans will persist in Web3 is not completely clear. As described in an earlier post, privacy is thought to be the extent to which someone can keep their personal information private. Based on this definition, due to the openness and transparency of everything that happens on the blockchain, Web3 does not necessarily grant users complete privacy. However, users are granted pseudonymity via the public address of their crypto wallet. This pseudonym is a way of tracking the activities of one entity on the blockchain, serving the purpose of transparency and accountability, but that entity or information about them cannot necessarily be deduced simply by the pseudonymous hash address unless the real owner of the address announces it publicly.
A prime example of this is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. They have not publicly identified themself, so we do not know for sure who the person (or group of people) is, but we are able to see all of the activities of the associated address on the blockchain using blockchain explorers.[1] On its own, Web3 is relatively agnostic of racial identifiers, and pseudonyms "act as a protective layer between personal information and the public, allowing the user to choose how much of themselves they want to reveal on the internet[sic]."[1] In this way, users are granted a sort of autonomy over their identity online by being able to choose what they share and what they keep private. This is beneficial for African Americans that are often hyper-exposed due to their race and racial profiling done by data brokers and advertisers – in Web3, the social categories that might make someone more vulnerable to harm can be essentially invisible.
Still, it is not completely impossible for a person's identity to be discovered from a public address. Some transactions require verification of identity, particularly those that interact with the real world. For example, if someone purchases a physical copy of a book using cryptocurrency, the merchant will likely need a name and an address to ship the book.[2] Additionally, when Web3 components are used with external, centralized services, like Internet service providers or exchanges with national currencies, those services will have access to the personal information of the individual associated with the account. It is possible for law enforcement or other government agencies to require these entities to provide certain records. However, unless the merchants, server administrators, or exchange owners are hacked or willingly give away the personal information, the real identities of public addresses are not easily accessible.[2]
This is especially beneficial in the case of peer surveillance that can be conducted with the vast amounts of publicly accessible personal information on Web 2.0. Because "the social web... offers opportunities for participation and collaboration, but requires the user's willingness to reveal private information," users are able to access and monitor each other's data and contribute to a surveillant environment.[3] Again, social biases against African Americans become present and harmful in this environment of surveillance "that is often rife with "people's suspicion of others who look like they 'don't belong'".[4] In Web3, though, these markers of who may or may not "belong" do not necessarily have to be present unless users choose to do so. Nonetheless, it is important to keep in mind that if a user does choose to disclose their identity or certain aspects of it, the privacy and surveillance concerns of Web 2.0 could be replicated similarly on Web3, but it is not the fault of the individual. Web3 is not a complete panacea to the user privacy and surveillance issues of Web 2.0, but it is certainly an improvement in some ways.
Inequities embedded in technologies in part arise from underlying racial assumptions and bias being built into them, especially when they are developed with and rely on racially biased data, which has often been the case for artificial intelligence and machine learning. Web3 is fundamentally different from those types of data driven technologies because its applications and the blockchain are not inherently data driven – they are not built, trained, and developed on potentially biased data. At face value, it seems unlikely that Web3 would face similar issues as Web 2.0 and AI in terms of embedded racial bias.
However, there have been some efforts to use AI to help generate smart contracts and other aspects that would live on the blockchain,[5] which then poses a similar issue. This creates the possibility of biased code being written into smart contracts, such as those used for borrowing and lending protocols in DeFi applications, which are usually carried out based on certain conditions. Furthermore, the difficulty of updating smart contract code and their immutable state changes could exacerbate the risk of harm to African Americans because if a smart contract executes some state change with detrimental impacts, it cannot be reversed easily or intervened in. Note that this remains a problem even if a human programmer creates smart contracts rather than AI. Web3 developers and users need to not only be aware of racial bias embedded in the applications, but also knowledgeable about principles of ethics and racial equity in relation to programming in order to recognize and mitigate potential harms if Web3 is used at a larger scale.
Technological Creativity
Beyond surveillance, privacy, and racial bias, an additional theme found in the relationship between African Americans and technology that could be applied to Web3 is technological creativity. Mainstream definitions of "technology" tends to fit the values and visions of society's most privileged. The dominant view of what technology is often overlooks the alternative forms of innovation informed by cultural practice and creativity, especially in discussions about impacts of technology on society and different groups. Focusing simply on the impacts that technological innovations have on African Americans assumes that they are only consumers of technology, rather than innovators of alternatives in their own ways.
To account for this, artist and scholar Nettrice Gaskins explores the practice of Techno-Vernacular Creativity (TVC) "as a lens to witness and examine all the ways that people are creating and experimenting with technology," especially in the case of people of color.[6] Methods that are characteristic of TVC and differ from the development of mainstream technologies are 1) re-appropriation, the process where underrepresented groups reclaim artifacts from dominant cultures into their own work, 2) improvisation, or the act of incorporating materials spontaneously and inventively, and 3) conceptual remixing, where innovators construct something from "seemingly disparate knowledge sets, artifacts, identities, and practices."[6] A prime example of this is the technology and techniques used by DJs in African American culture to produce unique sounds and music. Kelvin Doe, also known as DJ Focus, is a self-taught engineer from Sierra Leone who created batteries, transmitters, audio mixers, and other music production devices by experimenting with metal scraps and spare parts.[7] This form of technological creativity informed by cultural values and knowledge results in alternative uses of mainstream technology, which in turn produces innovations and techniques that reflect the priorities of a particular group.
Looking towards Web3, ownership of artistic assets is one of the primary characteristics that demonstrate why Web3 could be beneficial to African Americans. On the social, user-generated content platforms of Web 2.0, it is common for Black artists and creators to contribute popular trends and creative works, only to have them co-opted by their White counterparts who end up being compensated significantly more.[8] With Web3, the ideals regarding ownership and verifiability of assets like NFTs add to its appeal for Black creators, presenting "new opportunities to level the playing field for all artists, especially those who have been systematically prevented from full and meaningful access to, and participation in, capital markets born of property created with the mind."[9] This appeal has resulted in an African American presence in Web3 that, due to their unique priorities and cultural backgrounds, represents re-appropriation as a method of TVC in their use of these technologies.
Although African Americans are not the dominant group in the Web3 space, there are many Black community platforms and projects making significant strides in this area in ways that are slightly alternative to the technology's dominant uses. Beyond the mainstream headlines of NFT hype and crypto scams, many Black Web3 communities aim to use these technologies for the good of marginalized groups, especially in the art world.
One example is the Black Arts Project (BAP), a "curated NFT project that celebrates and supports Black creativity" by "collaborating with established and new Black artists in the design, music and art fields to make exclusive and innovative NFT collections that will be used to support important Black causes from grass roots to the metaverse." Through creativity in Web3 and the monetary value that can come from it, BAP aims to promote social justice and progress for African Americans.
Similarly, the 50mm Collective is a digital arts collective "dedicated to providing resources and opportunities to historically underrepresented artists." Not only does the collective feature and uplift artists in digital NFT art galleries, but they also have workshops for educating people about NFTs, crypto wallets, and other aspects of the Web3 ecosystem.
Another example of one of these communities is the Ohnahji NFT Project. Historically, one barrier for African Americans adopting new technologies is lack of education about them and access to them, but when it comes to Web3, one project is trying to help change that, as well as cater to the demonstrated interests and values of the community. Ohnahji NFT Project, also known as Ohnahji University, is a 10K PFP collection dedicated to educating Black and brown creators about Web3 and uplifting them in the space. "10K PFP" is shorthand for 10,000 profile pictures, which is a popular type of NFT collection of images intended for use as profile pictures on social media, and typically generated by an automated system to reach higher numbers of images. Founded, developed, and run by people of color, Ohnahji is a unique Web3 platform with an admirable goal. I had the opportunity to speak with the founder of the project, Brian Vaden, and learn more about "Web3's first HBCU," its goals, curriculum, and outcomes.
Prior to developing Ohnahji in January 2022, Brian had been in the Web3 and cryptocurrency space for some time. He has a creative background as well, and he became particularly interested in the music and arts side of NFTs. He reached out to an artist to create an NFT collection of animated, avatar-style images after realizing how rarely he saw images of Black and brown people. Ideally, people of color would be able to mint tokens that look like them and their family, something they could be proud of, so he set out to try to make this happen.
In the beginning, the collection was primarily about increasing the representation of people of color in the prominent NFT collections. However, he quickly realized that the people he wanted to represent did not know about the new technology and its possibilities, so he pivoted to educating more people about what he views as a "game-changing technology." Especially from a creative point of view, he felt that it was important to teach Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) artists how to monetize their art and maintain ownership of it. For Brian, monetization and ownership of art are some of the main ways that Web3 brings value to BIPOC communities. It is not uncommon for creators of color to have their work stolen, copied, or used online without any credit or recognition. The blockchain-secured NFTs are one way of making sure that an artist can be verified as the owner of an image and make money off of their creation. In this way, Brian believes that blockchain technology and Web3 applications are pivotal in Internet history due to their potential to help close the wealth gap and build Black wealth.
Most popular NFT collections, like Cryptopunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club, are created primarily to make money for the artists. In the case of the Ohnahji NFT Project, Brian found a way to make education the main goal of this collection. Its creative HBCU theme with the associated curriculum, faculty, student portal, and Metaverse campus help drive this point home. To join Ohnahji U, students "enroll" by minting an OHNAHJI token which costs them 0.01 Ether (ETH), or about $15. From there, they are able to access the student portal via the newly minted token. Brian described that the NFT is simply a tool to learn about different aspects of the Web3 environment, such that by learning how to create and maintain an NFT, students learn different best practices along the way. As he put it, the NFT is "really just a way to learn about Web3 applications, what it all means, and at the end the students have a piece of art that they own and are proud of."
Some topics in the curriculum include how to handle a cryptocurrency wallet, financial literacy, creating digital art, and Solidity, the most common programming language for creating smart contracts on the blockchain. In addition to the student portal, a lot of learning and sharing occurs in the vibrant Discord server, which Brian was pretty proud of. It is an open, inclusive space where people can learn from each other and support one another in their Web3 journey, even if they have not officially joined Ohnahji by minting a token. Brian mentioned that he has seen other similar platforms that are mainly concerned with personal promotion and making money, but he is committed to creating an environment where everyone can learn at their own pace with the necessary support, knowing that the founders and collaborators are trustworthy.
Brian was proud to say that "people love Ohnahji," in large part due to the inclusive and safe space that he and the other developers have fostered in order for everyone to learn and explore Web3. At the time we talked, he estimated that the collection had 940 wallets invested in it and about 4700 tokens have been minted. However, his goal is not for the collection to make money; it was clear that, to him, these statistics were an indicator of the size of the community and how many people are learning from it. He recognized that if the collection wasn't just for a specific niche in the overall Web3 community, it would gain more money and recognition, but he is devoted to keeping it centered around BIPOC artists and entrepreneurs.
I was struck by Brian's ideology and values surrounding Ohnahji and its mission. It's heavily centered around education, community, and collective uplift for marginalized communities. He expressed understanding about potential hesitation to engage in Web3 in light of how many other people in the space can be greedy and aim to scam people to get money. He hopes to counteract this by educating his community of Black and brown artists. He recognizes that, in comparison to the dominant crypto persona, this group is less likely to have considerable spare funds to play around with and invest in cryptocurrencies, which is why he made sure to set the price of minting a token very low. Affordable pricing is his way of acknowledging that there is risk involved when using personal finances while also encouraging people to keep an open mind towards the technology.
Ohnahji provides a supportive and structured environment to learn about and explore Web3, but with a lower financial burden than others might experience. Additionally, there is a maintained focus on art and creativity. The classes and discussions surrounding Web3 topics usually have an arts element, as evidenced by the AI classes geared towards creating art and the finance classes about how to price digital assets. Web3 is taught as a tool to promote artistic pursuits and grow BIPOC wealth - a means to an end rather than the end itself.
We've now explored Web3's promises, its technical foundation, the debate around it, and how it might impact Black Americans specifically. In the final post, I'll bring everything together and reflect on what the "Black purposes of Web3" might actually be.
References
1. Blockchain.com, "Bitcoin Wallet: 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa," blockchain explorer.
2. A. Narayanan et al., Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies. Princeton University Press, 2016.
3. C. Fuchs, "The Political Economy of Privacy on Facebook," Television & New Media, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 139-159, 2012.
4. S. Browne, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Duke University Press, 2015.
5. OpenAI, "GPT-3 for Smart Contract Generation," research paper, 2021.
6. N. Gaskins, "Techno-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation Across the African Diaspora and Global South," PhD dissertation, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019.
7. TEDGlobal, "Kelvin Doe: A self-taught engineer from Sierra Leone," TED Talk, 2012.
8. A. Jenkins, "Why Web3 Matters for Black Creators," Forbes, 2022.
9. A. Joseph, "NFTs and the Future of Black Creators," The Root, 2021.