Demystifying Web 3.0 – an interview with Antler

What is Web 3.0 (Web3)?  

This is a tricky question to answer as I believe we still have not established a ‘standard’ definition for what we mean by Web3 when we talk about it. To set the correct description, let's start with what we mean by Web1. 

Web1 is the first user interface with static HTML pages designed by the markup language Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). A great example would be any academic websites that stay as a legacy since the internet was built on sharing academic papers across universities in the United States.

Web2 improved the first iteration with interactivity. With improvement in infrastructure, the deployment of new interactive websites sky-rocketed. The latest iteration also allowed many platforms to aggregate data about the internet users, gaining a lot of value from the user. We saw that with all the mainstream platforms right now, especially with Facebook and Instagram – to name a few.

Web3 is the latest internet iteration with the decentralised component attached to the internet, mainly powered by blockchain technology. Regardless of being a research topic since the 1990s, blockchains came to light with the adoption of Bitcoin. Web3 – the umbrella term for all things decentralised on the web - is a phenomenal paradigm that can change everything from our perception of money to incentives on the internet. 

Many VCs are looking to find and fund Web3 companies. Antler announced an initiative to find and help develop Web3 founders and startups. What is the reasoning behind this move and what do you seek to accomplish? 

Since its inception from the monarchs investing money in explorers to find new lands, venture capital has been interested in and supporting everything innovative. Today, Venture Capital invests 90% of the tech companies traded in public markets, with the infrastructure of the web changing and upgrading itself to be decentralised from authorities – governments, data aggregators, etc. The web is evolving so that we don't need a Facebook to have social media, a government to keep track of our records (sometimes untrusted paths), and a bank for our financial needs.

In this evolution, Antler is committed to supporting founders who like to transition from Web2 to Web3 with comprehensive support from our team, who made investments in Animoca Brands and alike, and our partnerships with Polygon, Solana, and Avalanche - essential players in the industry.

As Medici states here, blockchain has yet to bring real value in Web 2.0? How does that change with Web 3.0?

With the current infrastructure of Web2, where most of the data and infrastructure reside at the hands of Silicon Valley, blockchain technology does not have a chance to bring value to the masses. Since these business models are built to get a user's attention without giving them monetary returns back to the user, Web2 fails to understand the power of the technology as blockchains are open and permissionless.

We, investors and innovators, are building Web3 without having the barriers of central authorities, let that be Facebook or governments, for the ways that people want and could be incentivised. A decentralised social media could look like a user would get tokens for the attention they would give to the platform. 

In Web2, centralised authorities gather all the servers in their own hands, utilising users to gain revenue. In Web3, users interact with the web, where the back-end is the blockchain – free of authorities. 

What benefits does Web 3.0 bring to the financial sector and what type of Web 3.0 apps can be developed?

Web3 does not require a bank to operate its financial needs. There are many ways Web3 could improve the financial sector. Banks are still running legacy code developed in the 1970s and could not execute transactions as fast as blockchains could because of so many layers that block transactions across borders. With the new iteration of the internet, a user could easily send his money and his assets to another account in a matter of seconds without the need for banks. 

A great benefit of this would be to the refugees worldwide, where they don't need a bank to move their assets across borders. This is an immense improvement for people who are affected by crises all around the world. 

About Altan Tutar

Having been trained as a computer scientist at Imperial College London and Georgia Institute of Technology, Altan Tutar geeks out over all things related to technology. His passion for working with early-stage founders and startups dragged him to one of the world's fastest-growing early-stage venture capital firms, Antler. At Antler, he is obsessed with improving our automated processes, maximizing our use of technology and data to find the world's most exceptional talent, and supporting them to create impact across the globe. When he is not fixing and improving processes at Antler, he helps Antler portfolio technical founders shape their product, hiring, and strategy journeys, mainly in the Web3 and artificial intelligence areas.

About Antler 

Antler is the world’s largest early-stage investor, supporting hundreds of technology startups and thousands of entrepreneurs across six continents or leading entrepreneurial hubs such as New York, London, Stockholm, Berlin, Bangalore, Singapore, Seoul, and Sydney. The firm invests in ~1% of more than 60,000 founders annually and invests from pre-seed and up to series C. Antler is on a mission to fundamentally improve the world by enabling and investing in the world's most exceptional people, by building complementary co-founder teams, supporting the teams with deep business model validation and providing a global platform for scaling. To date, Antler has invested in more than 400 companies in over 30 industries including AI, Robotics, drones, fintech, proptech and healthtech. Of these companies,~35% have at least one female co-founder, and the founders represent more than 100 nationalities.