What is Web 3 and How Can I Get in Safely
The problem with Web 3: you are an ordinary citizen and you don't spend your life in the world of technology. Yes, you have invested in tech stocks and taken a few courses in how to do basic word processing skills or spreadsheets, but that's not your world. You know enough about Microsoft to invest in it, ditto Google, Facebook and Amazon. They have been kind to you until recently.
Now the tech world has suddenly taken a turn that you don't understand at all. It's called Web three and you don't even know what the first two were. (Quick background: Web 1 was reading on the web, Web 2 was social media.)
But here is something you do understand: community. Having spent the best part of the last two years whipsawing back-and-forth between Covid variants and lockdowns, the thing that is most important to you is other people. The old group you hung out with at bars and in the gym has been taken apart by the pandemic and what do you have left? Family and a few close friends.
What got shut out? Affinity groups. The bowling team, the book club, concerts, theatre, and even sports.
Web 3 is your way to reconnect with those groups and support them, creating community for you and survival for them. Another term for this is “the creator economy.”
One reason it is difficult to understand all this is that Web 3 is different for everybody. We don’t all have the same communities. It’s easiest for sports fans, because it’s a form of connection to their fans, and also easier for music junkies. Baseball cards can help you understand its principles. For writers, it’s a bit more difficult, because writers don’t have the same manic fans as MLB teams.
Right now, there are two ways to connect with affinity groups: social tokens and NFTs. In my last piece, I talked about digital tokens as being similar to Chuck E Cheese money. They’re only valuable for people who go to Chuck E Cheese, because they can only be spent there. But the Web 3 version of Chuck E Cheese money is a platform like Rally.io, which issues creator tokens to different types of creative groups, which can be spent to get benefits from those groups. If we are fans of a band, and we buy that band’s social tokens, we become friends with benefits because we are likely to get backstage passes, VIP tickets, or pre-releases of songs. We can be fans of a You Tube streamer, or a martial arts instructor.
However, social tokens are better than Chuck E Cheese money, because you can swap one group’s money for another group’s money and support more than one group.
If social tokens are the “currency” for Web 3, NFTs are its products. If you already know me, you will get this. I am a “creator.” A writer. A conversationalist. I run a salon called the Karma Club on Clubhouse. This piece will be awarded to the people who hold my social token, in the form of an NFT, and also to you. It’s a benefit. You get to read this and learn from it. In return, you must hold at least 5 of my $KARMA coins, which are my social tokens.
What do artists do with their social tokens? They redeem them, they swap them, they use them for bread and butter.
What I do is a little different. I started $KARMA coin as a learning tool for my friends -- a safe way for them to enter Web 3 and do some good at the same time. I reinvest my rewards from my tokens into other creators’ tokens, and I have made a little Rally-based fund that supports over 80 of the other Rally creators and from time to time gives out a small grant.
But I persist, because my purpose is to teach, and to create a little more good $KARMA in the world. I did this to re-establish my own community, and to help you re-establish yours.
Soon you will receive a link to a way to get your first 5 $KARMA coins as a benefit for being a friend. (Friends with benefits). Hang on to them, and more benefits will come your way.