Exploring the Decentralized Web is a 12-part documentary series produced by Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW). These videos, featuring leaders and visionaries from top projects across the space, explore the emergence and impact of decentralized technology.
Decentralized web technology is enabling web developers and users alike to solve some of the issues that arose during the Web2 era, such as a lack of community governance and the stripping of web content’s value.
Episodes 9–12 cover how Web3 re-establishes the internet as an inclusive community and returns content ownership and control to users. You can find recaps of episodes 1–4 here, and episodes 5–8 here. See below for a sneak peek into the final four episodes:
Episode 9: "Beyond the Ad Model"
“For a long time, distribution of media was very coupled with advertising. This has happened for centuries — it’s not a recent thing.” (Tara Tan, IDEO Colab Ventures)
Episode 9 looks at the evolution of the advertising model and its relationship with media. “Can we make a system that works without all the middlemen, so you don’t have to host things on iTunes, or Amazon, or Spotify to be able to be discovered and to be able to be paid?” asked Brewster Kahle, Founder of Internet Archive. The answer, when it comes to Web3, is yes!
Learn how advertising models will change when the web is decentralized, from experts including James Young of Abridged, Tara Tan of IDEO Colab Ventures, Brewster Kahle of Internet Archive, Doug Petkanics of Livepeer, Mariano Conti (formerly) of MakerDAO, and Andrew Hill of Textile.
Episode 10: "Communities and Coordination"
In episode 10, experts dive into the history of community governance and decision making, the importance of stakeholder engagement, and DAOs as an alternative governance structure to traditional corporations.
Explore step-by-step how DAOs work and what a future built on networks of DAOs could look like with guests Scott Gralnick of Lago Frame and Portis, Jonathan Dotan of Starling, Mariano Conti (formerly) of MakerDAO, Clara Tsao of Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web, James Young ofAbridged, and more
Episode 11: "Digital Creator Economy"
We are in the midst of the transition from, Web2 — which focused on publishing your own work––to Web3, which focuses on monetizing that work. This episode addresses the shift in thinking from scarcity of access to scarcity of ownership in art and the rise of NFTs, as Matt Condon of Digitally Rare positions it “It’s the ‘seeing’ that creates value. It’s not ‘I want to own this so nobody sees it,’ it’s ‘I want to own this because everyone has seen it.’”
Learn how the decentralized web allows us to build new spaces and leverage existing web2 platforms to create new community spaces with experts Matt Stephenson of Planck, Scott Gralnick of Lago Frame and Portis, Maria Paula Fernandez of jpg.space, Carson Farmer of Textile, Matt Condon of Digitally Rare, Jimmy Lee of the Application Resource Group, Tara Tan of IDEO Colab Ventures, and Matt Lockyer of Satori.
“The surveillance state that exists now was not conceivable to anyone at the beginning of the era of Web2,” says Sarah Friend, artist and software engineer. “A lot of the use cases we’re seeing for Web3 are corrections to those problems that we now understand.”
Web3 enables a new iteration of the internet that fixes problems that emerged in earlier eras. In this last episode experts talk about how this next generation of the web benefits content providers, consumers, and platforms alike. As digital rights activist Raney Reitman puts it: “The decentralized web, if we get it right, is going to offer an alternative version of the internet that isn’t driven by advertising and isn’t driven by surveillance.”
Learn more about how to get involved with Web3 from experts Sarah Friend, artist and software engineer, Matt Condon of Digitally Rare, Rainey Reitman, digital rights activist, Mike Masnick of Techdirt, Simona Pop of Status, Doug Petkanics of Livepeer, Mariano Conti (formerly) of MakerDAO, Clara Tsao of Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web, Jimmy Lee of the Application Resource Group, and Wendy Hanamura from Internet Archive.
Exploring the Decentralized Web is a 12-part documentary series hosted on FFDW’s YouTube channel. Make sure to subscribe to the channel to receive notifications for future content!
If you enjoyed the documentary and/or have any questions, reach out to FFDW on Twitter @FFDWeb.