No doubt we’ve all heard of Web3 and Metaverse, it’s not only talked about in professional circles, even the yellow press reports about it. But what makes the tabloids work is that they only report negative events and they like to dilute them. Web3 offers us many new experiences and possibilities, from NFTs to virtual experiences, learning and education and the connection of reality and virtual spaces.

What is Web3?

Image: https://femaleonezero.com

“The ‘Web 3.0’ premise was coined by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood shortly after Ethereum launched in 2014. Gavin put into words a solution to a problem felt by many early cryptocurrency adopters: the Web required too much confidence. That is, most of the Web that people know and use today is based on trusting a handful of private companies to act in the best interest of the public.”

There is no clear definition of web3, but the following basic principles apply:

• Decentralized: the creator is the owner
• No rights: no one is excluded
• Native payment methods: instead of outdated infrastructures of banks and payment service providers
• You don’t need trust, it works with incentives.

On the web3, when someone creates or buys something and it becomes their property, they own it. If you buy an in-game item in a game on web2, you can use it in that game, and only for as long as that game exists. In web3 it belongs to you and you can use it in the whole web3. This property is made possible by NFTs and you can also sell or trade it again.

The term metaverse was first used in Neal Stephenson’s 1991 science fiction novel Snow Crash. In it, the author describes the metaverse as a kind of global virtual reality in which people walk around as avatars.

A basic definition of the metaverse “remains elusive, fanciful, and decades away” comes from venture capitalist Matthew Ball, who also published this essay in 2020.

Stefan Luber defines the Metaverse as “a vision of a shared online world. In it the virtual world, augmented reality and the physical world merge. For users, there are ample possibilities for interaction. They move with their digital identity in a common virtual space without internal borders”. So you can really see it as a virtual reality where you move with your digital identity.

To create a list of the most important web3 organizations in Switzerland, some evaluation criteria must be used. Organizations must be domiciled in Switzerland, be operational, have an active website, be active in the field of web3 and bring added value to everyone in web3.

Why Switzerland exactly? Because the laws here provide legal certainty to companies in the blockchain sector and a broad-based ecosystem has been created. “Regulation is a benefit, not a mistake” has already been partially implemented in Switzerland. Personally, I consider the organizations mentioned in web3 important, but this is not a ranking.

Ethereal Foundation

The Ethereum Foundation is a non-profit organization and provides support for the development of the Ethereum Blockchain and for applications in this ecosystem. Ethereum is the tier 1 blockchain that enables smart contracts and NFTs. The founder, Vitalik Buterin, is a household name for anyone involved in blockchain or crypto. He’s been in the news a lot lately because Ethereum has made the transformation from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, which requires much less energy.

metaverse talks

MetaverseTalks is a leading platform where NFT and Metaverse thought leaders and stakeholders come together to promote and spread ideas around the world. MetaverseTalks was founded by David Bundi and Cedric Ming to make the Metaverse understandable to everyone. All events can be found on the metaversetalks website. For their events they get people from the web3 environment to share their knowledge with others. A very special event in a small setting was MetaverseTalk at unpaired.gallery in Zug with David Bundi, Cedric Ming, Judith Seipold, Denes Robert Fantasny and Georg Lanzinger giving insight into the world of NFTs in a panel discussion and talk informal. .

Image: Georg Lanzinger

Kublé

Kuble develops 360° Web3 strategies where NFT, metaverse, community, gamification, governance and tokenomics and web2 can be important components. In terms of metaverses, they are agnostic. They conceptualize, model, and program in 3D, where possible, for centralized and decentralized metaverses. They create gamifications and wearables, integrate NFT into metaverse experiences, or implement non-metaverse NFT use cases.

Cosmos

Cosmos is an open source project that aims to build a decentralized network of independent blockchains that can interoperate with each other. The Cosmos project is based in Zug, Switzerland. The Proof-of-Stake blockchain has ATOM tokens, which can be tokenized and rewarded with ATOM. Developers Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman, the founders of Cosmos, first met in 2015 at the CryptoEconomicon conference in Silicon Valley and began developing Cosmos.

definition

Dfinity is a non-profit organization working on decentralized cloud computing platform development. The foundation is based in Zurich. It was founded in Palo Alto in 2016 by Dominic Williams.

Dfinity’s goal is to create a giant virtual computer consisting of a decentralized network of computers connected via blockchain. From this cloud, applications called “mega-applications” will be created in the future. One of them is LinkedUp, an open source alternative to LinkedIn.

say goodbye

There are many podcasts, but Defire is a Swiss English podcast that deals with web3 and regularly interviews interesting people, which is also very successful, I can recommend this one. About every 2 weeks a new podcast comes out, the topics are very diverse, current topics like SBF or NFT trading. He interviewed NFT experts like @Fulowa and covers topics like security or how to keep your Bitcoin safe with a hardware wallet.

Casper Laboratories

The Casper Blockchain is the first live proof-of-stake blockchain based on the Casper CBC specification. Casper is designed to accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology by companies and developers, and to adapt to the future needs of users. Based in Zug, it was founded in 2018 by Medha Parlikar and Mrinal Manohar. Casper has some of the best cases under its belt, Metacask, a premium whiskey digital marketplace, is powered by Casper.

As mentioned at the beginning, these are just a few of the many great web3 organizations in Switzerland. If you think of a particular organization that should be mentioned here, please contact me Georg Lanzinger.

Georg Lanzinger is a blockchain consultant for NFT, Track & Trace and Crypto. As a speaker at conferences and panels he shares his knowledge to help and connect novices and professionals. Georg is also the founder of yourvision.blog, a video blog that invites people to talk about their vision for web3 and sales.