DEFIPEOPLE

Founder of Terra Reflects on the Past and Looks to the Future: Web2 as Digital Communism, Aims for Terra to Become the Currency of the Future

share
Founder of Terra Reflects on the Past and Looks to the Future: Web2 as Digital Communism, Aims for Terra to Become the Currency of the Future

Terra LUNA founder Do Kwon shared his outlook for 2022 on Twitter, emphasizing that Web 3.0 is not just adding tokens to Minecraft. He expressed optimism for the shift from Web2 to Web3 and the future of Terra.

Review of Crypto in 2021

2021 was a great year, especially for cryptocurrencies and Terra. In the crypto space, we saw the DeFi summer trend from last year continue into the beginning of this year with NFTs and later in the year on layer one public chains (L1), generating billions of dollars in revenue, which led to the flourishing of the world's most intelligent infrastructure.

However, the field still faces many criticisms:

  • DeFi is just printing new tokens like fiat money.
  • GameFi is just repackaged liquidity mining.
  • NFTs are just JPEG files.

They are not entirely wrong; it feels like recent crypto applications are just existing services with a 2017 token attached, with many applications essentially being exchanges, image files, and games with token rewards added.

Transition to Web3

For me, the most exciting thing about the crypto space is that it will facilitate the transition of our lives from the physical world to the internet on a large scale, creating a world rich in human intelligence free from physical laws such as gender and geography.

Most economic activities in the past were limited to the physical world because the internet lacked the concept of ownership, such as digital scarcity. Labor and capital were kept away from the internet because no one owned anything on the internet, resulting in a form of "digital communism."

Crypto solves this problem. If Web2 can be seen as a form of communism driven by the dictatorship of the advertising system, then Web3 will inject capitalism into the internet.

NFTs and fungible tokens are early examples, with the former allowing the collection of unique items and the latter being a form of public goods. As labor and capital flow into Web3, applications built on Web3 will differ greatly from Web2 and even the crypto protocols of 2021.

Shift to Web3

Imagine a village in a game where buildings take time and resources to build and are dominated by valuable institutions that need to defend against external attacks like DAOs, and this village can be attacked by other villages or giant dinosaurs.

One can envision that in this new reality, the work of full-time mercenaries will emerge like mushrooms after rain, forming new diplomatic channels and trade routes.

I suppose the elderly will call this game "metaverse," but I just want to point out that Web3 will not just be a tokenized version of Minecraft.

The DeFi space will also undergo a similar transformation. The most successful DeFi protocols today are very similar to applications in the Web2 world, such as trading platforms, insurance, and so on. We will see experiments in DeFi that were not possible on Web2, such as DAO voting rewards for CRV/CVX.

Among early adopters, the understanding of the transition to Web3 has already begun. Most founders from 2016-2017 measure their wealth in dollars and will eventually cash out.

What we are witnessing this time is "Crypto-Rich, Cash-Poor," where they only want to hold a larger share of cryptocurrency in the future, except for some who will cash out for mansions, hehe.

I believe my responsibility is to play a small role in guiding everyone to the future as early as possible, while also working to make Terra the currency of the future.

Congratulations on surviving the roller-coaster ride of 2021; may the moon shine brighter next year.