Blockchain and Web3

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the inadequacies of the world’s collective approach to data. The inability, and sometimes unwillingness, to share and use data to combat COVID-19 or to protect against predatory uses of data has negatively impacted individuals, private enterprise, research institutions and governments around the globe. A lack of trust combined with asymmetric economic interests are slowing progress – especially in the cross-border context. The explosion of ransomware and software supply chain attack in 2021 exposed the vulnerability of the centralized data storage within enterprises, big and small. The current crisis illustrates that without proper technology, protocols and governance, society risks creating either a world in which access to data is overly restricted and impedes human progress and innovation, or one in which data-sharing solutions are created without properly respecting the rights of the individual parties involved, including businesses.

A balanced combination of hard science and real-world case studies, The Blockchain Internet is a comprehensive and accessible guide to both the present and the future of blockchain technology and how it empowers the future internet, providing a timely, in-depth analysis of this rapid-developing blockchain world for wide audiences. Itpresents how Blockchain, fused with similar emerging technologies, can provide the crucial foundational technology for the future digital world by:

• Accelerating data flow and data exchange/transactions to create value and impact (true data portability) and enabling the potential value of data exchanges and marketplaces (e.g. post-Covid global supply chain)
• Protecting user privacy (Blockchain is an enabler for GDPR privacy enforcement), empowering data privacy and sovereignty through decentralized web infrastructure
• Ensuring data security from data theft and cybersecurity attack – As the world’s population increasingly moves online amid a global pandemic, never before was security so essential

Blockchain-based digital currencies from the sovereign governments are also coming into the scene, prompting tensions between online vs. offline, decentralized vs. centralized, fungible vs. non-fungible ever more complex. Furthermore, nations are in the process of developing blockchain industry policies to promote blockchain-related innovation in the real economy. For example, China’s cross-border Blockchain Service Network (BSN) promises to enable Blockchains on its platform to interact, the so-far elusive “interoperability” that could become the magic key to the maturing of the new data economy. The book will touch on all these topics and more.