There is a lot of hype around the idea of ​​a decentralized version of the internet that would give more power to ordinary users. This is what it would take to make it happen.

For Chris Stokel-Walker

On a gloomy Thursday morning in Newcastle, UK, I am sitting with my laptop open playing a game. But I’m not, I admit, having a lot of fun. Aside from the occasional pixelated imagery of a space hero, it’s mostly a text-based multiple-choice offering, with prompts encouraging me to imagine I’m on the planet Veles and asking where I’d like to mine next. The experience isn’t improved by the fact that I had to spend 20 minutes linking a cryptocurrency wallet to the game to get that far.

Why am I putting myself through this? Because, believe it or not, this game is supposed to be the future of the internet, or at least part of it. It’s one of the highest-rated distributed applications in the world, a manifestation of what some see as a shiny new phase of the online realm called web3.

While my adventures in Veles are hilariously gruesome, there is a serious side to my foray into the wilds of web3. There is a chorus of voices calling for a new iteration of the Internet. And it’s not hard to see why: The tech giants that currently control our online world are wracked by scandals, losing money, and seem ill-equipped to solve the problems of online hate and misinformation. So what is web3, how does it work and can it really deliver a better digital future?

The idea of ​​a set of connected computers, the Internet, dates back many decades. But the world wide web, the shared set of websites that we can see online through those…