Satoshi Nakamoto (a pseudonymous person or persons) created Bitcoin. Then came Ethereum, and then came other protocols like Solana, Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot, Avalanche, Terra, Cardano, and many others, along with a proliferation of other technologies that make up web3. But the paradigm shift starts well before that with the development of public-key cryptography.
Table of contents
Introduction to cryptocurrency
What problem does Bitcoin solve?
Nakamoto University’s Introduction to Cryptocurrency offers an intellectually engaging recap of the journey towards Bitcoin. You’ll learn about:
The Bullish Case for Bitcoin, written in 2018 by former Google engineer Vijay Boyapati, is a great introduction to Bitcoin in a historical and economic context. To understand web3, you first need to understand that it's an economic innovation as much as a technical one.
But keep in mind that “Bitcoin is not the blockchain.” We’ll let Seth Godin take it from here as he explains tokens and why the blockchain matters.
Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, looked at Bitcoin and wondered: “what if blockchains could do more than just record transactions? What if the blockchain was powered by a Turing-complete computer?” This idea gave rise to blockchain-enabled digital smart contracts.
Others like Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko came along and wondered whether a different protocol architecture might result in a more scalable, faster blockchain infrastructure.
What web3 will become as it grows and matures is still to be determined (in fact, this is a great reason to come build it - so you can have a voice in how to shape it). At a high level, it’s a better internet where users retain control of their data, economic rails are system-native, and your access to internet utilities can’t be restricted by anyone. As a tangible example, imagine a world in which your social media profile isn’t owned by a platform. Imagine if instead you retain control over your data assets, choose whether to monetize them or not with benefits accruing to you instead of a third-party, and you can port your data to any application if you want to switch without lock-in. That’s web3.
This video by Figment frames the Web from web 1 to web3: