Does the World Actually Need Web3? Spoiler: Yes.

Cryptocurrency and Web3 technology are steadily moving from the fringes to the mainstream, with household names like Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, PayPal, and Venmo all making significant moves toward crypto adoption. But beneath the corporate headlines lies a fundamental question we explore in this episode: Does the world actually need Web3?

The answer becomes crystal clear when examining the practical benefits blockchain technology offers everyday people. Web3 represents a profound shift in internet architecture that returns control to users – your data, your identity, and your money remain firmly in your hands, not controlled by tech giants or financial institutions. This decentralized approach solves real-world problems like data breaches, censorship, financial exclusion, and the limitations of traditional banking systems.

Major corporations aren't embracing crypto on a whim; they recognize the potential for simpler, faster, and dramatically cheaper global payment systems. When Amazon and Walmart launch their own stablecoins (reportedly in development), they'll instantly introduce billions of customers to cryptocurrency through trusted platforms. This represents the tipping point Web3 advocates have long anticipated – the moment when blockchain technology becomes accessible to everyone, not just tech enthusiasts.

The benefits of Web3 are straightforward and compelling: financial freedom without reliance on traditional banks, instant transactions without delays or arbitrary holds, true ownership of your digital assets, and equal access for anyone with an internet connection. This may be the most equitable technological revolution in history – unlike past innovations that required expensive equipment, blockchain is accessible to nearly everyone with a smartphone.

As this shift accelerates, education becomes crucial. Understanding the basics of Web3, cryptocurrency wallets, and digital identity will be essential skills in the coming years. Whether yo

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Domain Updates
• 5:47 AI Domains Market Explosion
• 8:05 Does the World Need Web3?
• 12:41 Big Brands Entering Crypto
• 16:12 Practical Benefits of Web3
• 21:42 Preparing for the Web3 Future
• 25:04 Closing Thoughts and Announcements

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 2:35

Yeah, doing this on a different day and different time this week, but this is a live discussion that we record here weekly on X, where we highlight news, innovation, education, alpha and business development in the Web3 domain and digital identity space. I am your host, marcus aka Wynn Airdrop, the founder of iHeartDomains, and we are your number one resource for unbiased blockchain and Web3 domain educational content, with over 150, now at this point Tech Talk episodes and YouTube videos produced and archived over the past two and a half years. If you want to search our podcast archive for any additional episodes, you can do so easily at iharkdomainscom, where every single episode is on full display. It's also accompanied with a nice little blog post, so a good way to digest the information, whether you like to read or whether you like to listen. Also, if you have a favorite podcast player that you'd like to listen to, all of these episodes are also available on every major podcast player, including Apple Podcasts, spotify and iHeartRadio. You can easily reach our episodes at techtalkhost or, if you're in any of those players, just simply type in techtalk by iHeartDomains.

Speaker 2: 3:54

With that being said, I'm going to get started with a little bit of opening news. First and foremost, I want to announce and I've pinned a couple of things at the top of the space, but I wanted to announce that Freename actually, just as of yesterday, has relaunched their brand new website on the fresh domain, which is Freenamecom. So now if you visit Freenamecom, you will see fresh UI. You'll see updated features, not only in terms of registration, search features, connection to the aftermarket, etc. But also features in the back office. As far as you know, if you hold any TLDs or SLDs, there's a lot of features that have been added as far as back-end management. So definitely kudos and congrats to Freename for this incredible and successful launch of their new website. I've enjoyed using it so far. Credible, successful launch of their new website. I've enjoyed using it so far, definitely bullish on. You know both what it can do now and what it's supposed to do in the future. It's actually and if you've been in the back office at all, you'll kind of get a hint at some of the things that are going to be worked on in the future that'll be eventually coming to the Freename ecosystem. So again, really excited. If you aren't already familiar, you can become familiar by either going to Freenamecom and joining the community there or, of course, iheart Domains and our community definitely can guide anybody on their path to getting their first, either SLD or TLD. On Freename and, yeah, right now, along with the new website launch, is a brand new promo, which is pretty much the most aggressive promo that Freename ever launches. So, no, really no better time than now. If you're interested, it gets you 50% off. That code is new site. You'll also get airdropped to free domains on one of Freename's flagship TLD. So, yeah, pretty good value there.

Speaker 2: 5:47

Second thing I wanted to mention is, well, ai domains, and this is just a quick, brief observation. Right now, ai domains are pretty much all on the crypto Twitter crypto domain or timeline. If you're tapped into that bubble, if you're following a bunch of domainers, you probably noticed that almost every sale it seems like it's in the five figure, even some in the six figures seem to be directly related to AI. Ai is on fire. A lot of debates, a lot of tweets, a lot of conversations going on. It seems like the magic combo is obviously single keywordai or keywordaicom. So seeing a lot of sales and a lot of activity in that field. So I've recently posted you know the couple that I'm lucky enough to hold that fit the criteria of maybe being an OKAI domain. So I'm glad I've got a couple that are, you know, some good contenders and some that I can stand on.

Speaker 2: 6:46

But yeah, if you have any domains in the AI space, right now is a great market for them. I would say it's probably a seller's market right now. I don't know if it's going to become a buyer's market again anytime soon, but AI is definitely positioning itself and has positioned itself definitely as a signal right. Carrying AI in your name is a signal and it doesn't seem like it's going to slow down any soon. If anything, we're just seeing the beginning of AI. A lot of people are, you know, speculating that it's a trend that'll fall off in the next couple of months or years. But no, I think it will actually pick up and quite a few others feel otherwise. And with that being said, speaking of AI, ai agents, ai and Web3 domains and names registrations are available on any of our Web3. Tlds owned on the free name protocol, tlds owned on the free day protocol. You can find those TLDs easy in the registration pass to get your own SLT very easily at iHeartDomainscom. Those TLDs are dgen, exchain and defi, wallet. And again, buy once, own forever, no renewals and growing every single day with utility, all right.

Speaker 2: 8:02

Well, now, without further ado, I'm going to get into the main discussion. As you can see at the top, the title is Does the World Need Web3? And I know we've talked about this in some capacity. Probably in every conversation that we have or every conversation that is had right. We're continuously justifying the existence of Web3 or justifying one platform or project or another, but I think it's usually from the lens or the context of our specific product, and we have this invisible user base of customers who think are just going to get it.

Speaker 2: 8:39

And I don't think ever we well, not often. I don't think we ever step back and really ask ourselves does the rest of the world right? The people outside of the bubble, outside of the neural bubble, right? Do they actually need Web3? And how do I communicate that value right? And that's probably one of the major hurdles. I think that, if we learn to perfect, to overcome can lead to other conversations. Last week or the week before, we talked about things like our elevator pitch and onboarding normies into Web3. And the obstacle in that is that often we have to have the conversation about Web3 prior to being able to dive into the value of what we're actually in the space to do. Learning about the why of Web3 can help make that conversation easier. So, diving in, right now we're seeing major brands like Amazon, walmart, shopify, paypal seems like Venmo more every single day, and I know I'm leaving out some big ones, but we're starting to see these major household brands embracing crypto and stable coins.

Speaker 2: 9:44

Why are these industry giants suddenly jumping into crypto? Is it just hype or does it signal a real shift? Well, I personally think that they see the future that is destined to come. So let's talk about first things first, right, when we talk about does the world need Web3, well, what exactly even is Web3, right? Well, simply put, web3 is the centralized feature of the internet. Right, it's unlike today's internet, which is controlled largely by a few giant companies. Web3 puts power back into your hands, giving ownership of your data, identity and money. Think about it, right. Instead of your data being owned by big conglomerates like Facebook or X, which we're on right now, or Google, you control it. Instead of banks controlling your money, you're able to hold the keys to your own assets and move money around your money as you please. And I'm sharing that whole definition, because really understanding the true value, the core value and ethos of Web3 can also aid in helping you communicate the value to other people. But again, why is this suddenly now gaining steam? It's because people are starting to realize that the older that is broken, right, we're facing constant data breaches, censorship issues, financial exclusions. I mean, again, we just told you about what's going on with AI right now To get a good AI domain. You're not looking at hand registration numbers, right? People are looking for something better, something more accessible. Web3 is more than just cool tech. It's about returning control, ownership and fairness back to the users. So, at the end of the day, it's really important to understand that there really is a point and an ethos behind this, because it makes it easier for you to stand right, like people say, say it with your chest. It makes it a lot easier to do that when you have that true conviction.

Speaker 2: 11:42

So now let's talk. Let's go back to, like, the Walmart and all that. Let's go back to these big players, right, all these household brands that are making significant moves towards crypto adoption. And, for those of you who aren't already familiar with the news, right, amazon and Walmart are apparently going to introduce their own stable coin. So I don't know a Walmart buck, amazon dollar. You're eventually going to see one of those in the ecosystem. Right, it's coming Shopify, partnered with Coinbase, I believe, to integrate USDC payments, paypal and Venmo was at the beginning of this year, I think, or late last year.

Speaker 2: 12:20

Some little bit of time ago hadn't even been that long. Them and their integration and being able to now send crypto and enabling millions of their users to send and integrate with or interact with crypto just like it's cash. Right, these big brands have now entered the space and found a way to make their mark on Web3. But here's the question like why? Now, right, are these companies just chasing a trend or do they see something deeper? I've alluded to this in previous conversations and this is where I see, at least from their perspective, where I see the value. They see a simpler, faster and cheaper global payment system. Traditional money moves slow, it is very costly and it has limits. Crypto, and especially stablecoins, which would now justify their reason for wanting to issue their own dollar, that really solves it instantly. For brands, crypto isn't just cool, it's better business.

Speaker 2: 13:20

Again, there is a whole world behind merchant payments and merchant services. I come from that world right, that was a profession of mine for quite some time and there are real costs. I mean literally to get in the door of a business if you're in a merchant, if you're a merchant service account representative. 99% of them are leading with cost as the reason for why that merchant should talk to them about their program. Cost is a pain for any business owner, small or large, and it's ridiculous to a lot of business owners the fact that it costs money to accept money, and so it's natural that we're continuously looking for ways to optimize that.

Speaker 2: 14:01

Crypto is probably, at least right now, the technology that exists is the cheapest and fastest possible way to accept payments, so it's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when the rest of the world wakes up to this as a payment processing method. Like I said, what this does now. When these mainstream brands start to integrate this type of payment processing and, in essence, they integrate crypto right and understand when they do this, everyone that is now their customer, if they wanna take advantage of whatever it is they've integrated now becomes a customer of crypto. So overnight, amazon, walmart, shopify have essentially introduced crypto to billions of people. For those same billions of people, this may potentially be their first crypto experience, and they'll do so because these are brands that they trust, and there are gonna be many more, and this first experience is gonna introduce people to wallets. A percentage of them, just like anything else, will take the deep dive further, will wanna look at decentralization and taking their money off, whatever Amazon wallet or Walmart wallet gets created, and then this is where the opportunity for us and for additional naming becomes really pretty much a no-brainer right. So now think about the impact. Small businesses worldwide eventually will start accepting crypto payments from anywhere. What this enables for individuals, right, is people who don't trust traditional banks now have access to financial services and, of course, global instant transactions. This improves the payment processing system. So we're looking at potentially crypto with any one of these particular merchants moving the needle from niche to mainstream overnight. That's the tipping point that we in the naming space and everyone who's building a Web3 is waiting for.

Speaker 2: 16:00

So now let's get to the nitty gritty, right. Let's be practical. Why should the average person really care about Web3 or crypto adoption? Well, again, going back to explaining benefits that the average person anyone can understand Financial freedom. So going back to controlling your own money, no reliance on traditional banks or borders. There is a substantial portion of the demographic that is unbanked. Some are unbanked because of choice, some are unbanked not because of choice. And access to wallets and decentralized finance and decentralized tokens opens up again the ability to have financial freedom to not everyone, irregard know any borders or any obstacles that are your way Again, this permissionless environment. So for many, financial freedom is going to be the biggest benefit to coming on the blockchain there.

Speaker 2: 16:55

Why Instant transactions? You know, making transactions faster. If you can pay for something faster, well, you can receive something faster, can't you? Well, you can receive something faster, can't you? It kind of works both ways, right, if you are in, small business has many meetings, but if you're like a super small business, a business of one, you're not really able to take advantage of some of the corporate suites and stuff like that are out there. So still, you're able to benefit just from base functionality of cryptocurrency as a small business owner, from that two-way street. If you're paying someone in crypto and you're wanting to receive a good, they have no excuse not to deliver that good instantly and most often than not, if you're buying anything on chain, it's being delivered via smart contract. So we're talking about instant transactions. But same thing if you're wanting to receive payment for doing something, right, being able to accept cryptocurrency as a small merchant, as a mom and pop, somebody who braids hair, somebody who's just selling something at a garage sale If you're able to get your money instantly in your wallet, so without any charge, and that's the other thing too, if you go through it, if you, if you know, you know, if you're a business owner that runs a lot of transactions too, and we'll see, kind of how this plays out.

Speaker 2: 18:12

Because consumer protection, that's obviously needed. I think there should be a system where people, if they are defrauded or if they don't get something for their uh, for what they pay for, they should have a way to to dispute that. But the chargeback system in general, when it comes to like MasterCard and Visa, it's a headache. It's something that if you're a small business, it can ruin your month If you have a big chargeback that comes through and you don't have the money really to cover it, and so again, how that kind of works itself out and creates a balance, we'll see. But now at least, like the general benefit that you can like really kind of count on right in a straight up one-on-one transaction, is that you're protected essentially from chargebacks. You get my point. So instant transactions, being able to get your money instantly, no fees, no delays, not disappearing out of your wallet the next day All of that good stuff is really big benefits that are easily communicable to other people and then again, being able to own your own data, your identity and digital assets. It feels good.

Speaker 2: 19:16

So first let's expand on digital assets. Digital assets means a lot. It doesn't just mean NFTs. It doesn't even just mean domains and TLDs. There are a lot of things that are going to be brought on chain, including your business itself. Even currently today, you can create LLCs, full corporations with wallets, with tokens, with all kinds of things attached to them, completely on chain, and owning these things in your wallet, where you feel secure with your keys, is a big benefit for security and also for keeping these things private and out of the hands of other people. Things in your wallet where you feel secure with your keys, is a big benefit for security and also for keeping these things private and out of the hands of other people.

Speaker 2: 19:52

Again, as we have more adoption and as there's more on ramps and more UI that makes this easy for most people to understand and interact with, you're going to see a lot more of it. It will click. It's not hard to click. And the last reason is again, again, universal access, equal access for anyone. Anyone with an Internet connection can access blockchain. I don't know if there are countries that can like, intercept Internet and do all that, but for the most part, I'm at least confidently saying that I think every human being can somehow, some way get access to blockchain or a connection to the Internet and, with that being said, every single human being has equal access to the blockchain. And that is probably something that I don't know of anything or any technological revolution where that's ever been the case.

Speaker 2: 20:45

There's always been some sort of barrier, whether it be the equipment to either to even get on, so, like back in the day, right to get on the original internet, you had to have a computer right and computers were thousands of dollars and this was in what the 90s we're not every I mean thousands of dollars was a lot of money back then, so it was inaccessible. You're accessing the computer at libraries. You're accessing the computer, probably at your work, if they were funded. You accessing the computer at libraries. You're accessing the computer, probably at your work, if they were funded. You're accessing your computer at school. A lot of people originally didn't have it in their home and some people still don't now, depending on. I mean, computers are, again, depending on where you're at. A lot of people still don't have access to it now, but if you got a cell phone, you can get on the blockchain. You can create an entire business on chain, receive, send cryptocurrency.

Speaker 2: 21:34

The system is, for the most part, fair to everyone. Dapps work for everyone, it doesn't matter where you're at. So that is again. Web3 will and does now make life easier, fairer, faster and cheaper, and that's something I think everyone can appreciate.

Speaker 2: 21:47

So how do you prepare people for this Web3 future, right? How do you communicate this to people? Well, again, going back to just the simple thing that we continuously harp on, what you're doing right now is you're getting, for me, education, and what you give to other people is education, and that's where this all starts. Understanding Web3 basics, crypto wallets, digital identity puts both us and anyone that we speak to miles ahead. Telling somebody or onboarding someone and letting them know hey, even if you don't get it now, you'll get it at some point.

Speaker 2: 22:21

This is sometimes again and, as I said, the last, I think the last tech talk giving somebody a domain for free, onboarding them. That way, you know, that may be the service that you do to get people prepared for what we know, what's going to come Other educational services out there. Again, we created a certification course, the Fundamentals of Web 3.0 Industrial ID. It's about to be live in a couple weeks at learnweb3.xyz, also learnweb3.app, and I'm not trying to shill it, I'm just saying these type of and there's more structured resources out there. But more structured resources like that, formal resources to help prepare students, job seekers, employers, anybody for the future that's inevitable in Web3. These are the things that we need more and more of, because, again, when people start seeing these benefits and when people start applying these benefits and as more large corporations start quote kind of in an essence, forcing it on people to an extent, they'll be better prepared for it, better to take advantage of it and I would assume, just like in typical Amazon or Walmart fashion, again, they're going to do a lot of work for us and we're extremely lucky. That's why I'm always bullish when they come up with these announcements. I see Walmart incentivizing some way people to experiment with this new thing called Web3 and their stable coin maybe getting cash back if you pay in their coin, or something like that. So, again, pay attention to what's going on out there. Use this in your tool book when you're pitching to people and let them know, like this isn't.

Speaker 2: 23:54

We're not talking about a future, about make-believe. We're talking about things that are happening. We're talking about these. Stable coins are being created. This is happening. This ecosystem is being adopted by major players. It makes sense in more ways than one.

Speaker 2: 24:11

Again, it's not just about fun monkey pictures and wagging me and trading tokens and getting dumped on. There is real technology and real benefit here, and there are billions and trillions of dollars out there that can be saved or optimized by saving money through blockchain and the speed that blockchain offers. So, kind of wrapping it up, does the world really need Web3? Absolutely, again, because Web3 represents fairness, speed, freedom and innovation. The recent moves again by these big players prove this shift is already underway. The world isn't just ready for Web 3.0, it's already embracing it. Early education and adoption matter. I encourage you to continue to check out and study educational resources, claim your digital identity and get ready, because, again, web 3.0 is here and it's changing everything.

Speaker 2: 25:04

I want to thank you guys all for tuning in live to this Tech Talk. Again. These are recorded live here and then these are also posted in the next couple of changing everything. I want to thank you guys all for tuning in live to this Tech Talk. Again, these are recorded live here and then these are also posted in the next couple of days to our podcast. If you guys are interested in listening to any of our past episodes of our Tech Talk, you can easily reach us at techtalkhost.

Speaker 2: 25:22

Again, we do this typically on every Friday each week to dive into a new topic focused around digital identity and web through domain names. Did it today, on Thursday, because I actually have a super busy weekend. This weekend I'm going to a tech startup boot camp, so going to be introducing again, going to be taking in some alpha and going to be giving some alpha as well. This is another great tactic for anybody also that's building in the space. If you have any local events near you, any entrepreneur, startup, tech events, it's a way to get your feet wet with introducing this.

Speaker 2: 25:57

Trust me, people are hearing about this and they're curious, but they're hearing it in just glimpses. They're seeing it little pieces of the news, a little tweet here. The first person to really break this down to them might be you. And again, once they hear all this, they may just realize that they in fact do need Web3. Yeah, thank you guys for tuning in. Talk to you guys next Friday on the regular schedule. Focus on your mission and not your condition. Thank you for attending this Tech Talk. Talk to you guys next week.