Like many of you investors, entrepreneurs and corporate decision-makers, we at Momentum Works were sceptical about Web3 at the beginning of the pandemic. Cryptocurrencies, the main popular use case of the blockchain back then, felt like pure speculation; and many of the transactions could have been best described as ‘shady’.
However, like many of you, our stance shifted gradually over the last two years. The main catalyst for this shift is the emergence of real NFT use cases. The ability to certify ownership of digital assets in a cheap and efficient way, proven through GameFi and DAO examples, is revolutionary.
We even launched a report deep-diving into Web3 now. You can download a complimentary copy here.
It now becomes possible to imagine many other use cases, from insurance to lending to equity investment, happening on the blockchain through NFTs. The bubble holding many digital assets/tokens over the last two years will probably burst, however, just as it did for the dot com crash and the global financial crisis. This burst will usher in a new era of real applications.
In fact, we should be grateful for all the hyped products, as they raised awareness and participation in Web3. Of half of the global population on the web, only a tiny percentage are using Web3 products right now (we should not count those who only trade through centralised exchanges). Therefore, we are only at the beginning of the Web3 – you have not missed the boat.
Many of the issues often debated in media and on social media, such as ‘DeFi/DAOs are too centralised’ or regarding data privacy concerns, are either technical and can be resolved, or non issues at all. For example, owning your data entirely negates a large amount of privacy concerns.
The question is, what should we do now?
Many of the applications and use cases, while theoretically make sense, might take unspecified amounts of time to mature. Even if they do, it is very hard to figure out which team or company will succeed at this stage; who could tell, before the burst of the dot com bubble, that Google would become the dominant search engine, and Amazon the dominant ecommerce platform, beating out a large cohort of their competitors?
There are ways to catch the ride while decreasing risk.
The Web3 report from Momentum Works seeks to give a fundamental overview of the space. Do look forward to our future pieces which will seek to answer more specific and detailed questions.
You can download our Web3 report here – https://thelowdown.momentum.asia/country_sector/web3-the-inevitable-next-step/?option=2021-southeast-asia&code=15048
We’ll be deep-diving into Web3, the major concepts and use cases in our event “Web3: The inevitable next step” happening on 29 June between 3-4pm SGT.
RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/web3-the-inevitable-next-step-tickets-359134700557