Muneeb Ali, founder of Blockstack PBC, an open-source blockchain project building software for a user owned internet, told Forbes contributor, Justin O’Connell: “In human civilization, whenever you have introduced property rights, the living standards for those people and societies have gone up, because, as soon as you introduce property rights, people start to self-organize. They try to work for themselves, all sorts of capital formation happens, markets develop, and so on and so forth.”
Ali goes on to talk about the ‘global layer’ and how bitcoin could become that global layer and a “source of truth”. He argues that while the Internet has become critical in everyday life, property rights have not existed. But now, Ali claims, the web has property rights, because we can own cryptocurrencies, use smart contracts and Web 3.0 apps, which are derivatives of property.
Two eras of the Internet
Rather like dating historical time BC and AD, Ali suggests the Internet can be divided into two eras: before digital property and after digital property. In his words, the Crypto 2.0 community, started by the bitcoin blockchain, provided an early definition of digital property rights and then merged with the web to produce Web 3.0.
He goes on to say that Web 3.0 will merge with the top blockchains, and he may have good insight as he worked on next generation Internet infrastructure before entering the crypto industry. He told O’Connell, “There were very specific problems that we were trying to solve,” he says of his pre-blockchain work. “And, when we discovered blockchains, it was a perfect solution for the problems that we were looking at.”
However, even Ali is unsure about which blockchains will become the leaders in Web 3.0, because there is no clear idea about which design works best. “That’s where you’re seeing a lot of experimentation, with different projects trying to propose different types of designs,” Ali said. He then added that the bitcoin blockchain couldn’t be discounted from being one of the leaders, as it is the most secure blockchain available. The current bitcoin network is another factor, because the majority of people get introduced to cryptocurrencies through Bitcoin.
Unsurprisngly, Ali believes that his Blockstack product can anchor Web 3.0 with bitcoin. He said, “As users start moving away from Web 2.0, we realize how the underlying technology to enable cryptocurrencies is the same as the technology that enables Web 3.0 apps. Users can own digital currencies and Internet assets with similar private keys. The artificial line between money and data disappears, and a unified digital society emerges.”