Published 16 November 2025

Abstract

This comprehensive report provides an interleaved, multi-year analysis of Web3 enterprise strategy, technical architecture, and market adoption. Originally published in 2022, the executive-level set captured the industry at its inflection point, with high expectations for decentralization, digital ownership, and collaborative business models—yet hampered by scalability, security, poor usability, and regulatory uncertainty. The 2025 update reframes these themes, integrating fresh data and comparative insight across every major section. It demonstrates how Web3’s vision has shifted from broad-based experiments to targeted enterprise implementation, where pragmatic transformation, compliance-by-design, and operational infrastructure now define competitive advantage.

Major highlights include the maturation of modular blockchains, zero-knowledge rollups that achieve enterprise-grade performance and privacy, and tokenization of real-world assets as the most compelling business use case. The analysis tracks rapid growth in stablecoin volume, RWA markets, and adoption by traditional financial institutions, alongside regulatory clarity and standards for decentralized credentials and interoperability. AI and Web3 convergence is explored, revealing new paradigms in smart contracts, DAO governance, and predictive analytics. The deep-dive appendix contextualizes these findings, detailing solved technical challenges, persistent risks, and the shift from speculative business models to operational deployments across finance, supply chain, identity, and creator economies.

This report is essential for business and technology leaders who seek to understand the true evolution of Web3: how and why it advanced, what remains challenging, and what practical strategies will drive digital transformation and market leadership through 2025—moving beyond hype to harness the full potential of decentralized technologies in a rapidly changing landscape.

Authors:

Gary Zimmerman CMO, Principal Consulting Analyst [email protected]

 

Preface / Editor’s Note (2025 Edition)

This republication of the Web3 Executive Level Set, originally published May 2022, integrates new data and perspective from 2023–2025. Readers will benefit from a contextualized view of how enterprise strategy, market adoption, and technical realities have evolved, and what that means for the next stage of digital transformation. Each major section now includes a ‘2025 Update’ callout and comparative insight where necessary.

Overview

Our May 2022 Web3 Executive Level Set report captured an industry at a critical inflection point—full of promise but hampered by fundamental technical limitations, poor user experience, and regulatory uncertainty. Three and a half years later, the Web3 landscape has undergone dramatic transformation. While the grand vision of a fully decentralized internet remains aspirational, the business drivers and technical architecture have matured substantially, moving from ideological experimentation to pragmatic enterprise adoption.

1. The Business Need: How Strategy Has Evolved

2022 Baseline:

• Enterprises were investigating Web3 for opportunities to transform customer interactions, operations, and business models, focusing on user control, data ownership, and open/participatory digital ecosystems.
• The report called for experimentation, pilot projects, and an orientation toward digital trust, agency, privacy, and new revenue models (e.g., NFTs, digital twins, DAOs, data marketplaces).
• Key drivers were democratization, open platforms, and shifting away from “walled gardens” (centralized control of user data and digital assets).

What’s Changed (2025):

• Strategy is more focused and pragmatic. Enterprises now target areas where Web3 uniquely solves pain points (e.g., reducing reconciliation overhead, disintermediation, and audit complexity) instead of attempting broad decentralization.
• Tokenized business models are no longer just speculative. Loyalty programs and customer engagement (e.g., Starbucks Odyssey) use tokenization to convert users into economic stakeholders, boosting retention and program value.
• Value capture has shifted: Brands leverage digital collectibles and NFTs for new, high-margin revenue streams, as seen with Nike and others.
• Direct creator economies are mainstream—brands and platforms pass more value to creators and users (versus traditional high-fee platforms), encouraging innovation and broader engagement.
• Compliance-by-design: Growing regulatory clarity makes it mandatory to build compliance, digital asset controls, and auditability into business models from inception.
• Enterprise adoption has accelerated: Over 315 major brands launched Web3 projects 2022-2023, with increasing numbers of large-scale pilots resulting in real business impact.
• Talent and leadership: There’s a heightened focus on building cross-functional “translators” who can drive Web3 adoption internally, evidencing a shift from technical-only teams to cross-disciplinary business-technology leadership.

2. The Technical Architecture: What Has Advanced

2022 Baseline:

• The architecture vision revolved around blockchain platforms (e.g., Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot), decentralized storage (e.g., Filecoin, IPFS), digital wallets (crypto/self-sovereign), DAOs, and early DeFi and NFT experimentation.
• Key challenges cited: Interoperability, scalability, education, security, and lack of enterprise-ready UI/UX.
• Security, privacy, and regulatory considerations were emerging, but standards and tooling were immature.

What’s Changed (2025):

• Architecture has become highly modular: Monolithic chains are giving way to modular stack approaches, separating consensus, execution, and data availability (e.g., layer 2s, appchains, zkRollups).
• Scalability is largely solved: Sharding, sidechains, and advanced L2 solutions now support high-throughput, low-latency applications. This was a major pain point in 2022 and is now approaching parity with Web2 in some domains.
• Multi-chain by design: Apps are built to run across multiple chains for redundancy, scale, and optimized liquidity (e.g., LayerZero, Axelar, cross-chain SDKs).
• AI and zero-knowledge tech are integrated: Smart contract assistants, on-chain AI agents, and privacy-preserving identity/attestation frameworks (ZK credentials, zkML) are now part of the stack—the boundary between Web3 and intelligent automation is blurring.
• Usability is improving: Better wallets, social/auth integrations, and smoother onboarding reduce friction for mainstream enterprise and end-user adoption.
• Enterprise-grade compliance frameworks: “Compliance by default” toolkits and privacy modules address audit, regulatory, and risk needs—no longer an afterthought.
• Digital identity is sophisticated: Verifiable Credentials, decentralized identifiers, and privacy-preserving authentication (e.g., zkLogin, soulbound tokens) offer granular, portable, and secure enterprise identity models.
• Ecosystems have matured: Interoperability is now practical, with more open standards and plug-and-play integrations across DeFi, data feeds, and enterprise systems.

Summary Table

Dimension	2022 (Report Baseline)	2025 (Current)
Business Need	Focus on experiments/pilots, agency, and open ecosystems; democratization vision	Pragmatic, targeted transformation; tokenized loyalty; compliance-by-design; creator economy mainstream
Risk/Compliance	Nascent focus, lack of standards	Regulatory frameworks, compliance toolkits, auditability first
Technical Architecture	Monolithic blockchains, basic DeFi/NFTs, poor UX, immature tools	Modular, scalable, multi-chain, zkTech, AI integration, enterprise-grade identity and privacy
Adoption Model	Experimentation, “wait and see”	Scaling real pilots, mainstream board focus, internal talent building
Key Challenges	Interoperability, UI/UX, skills gap, security	Smooth onboarding, lowered friction, cross-chain and cross-function interoperability, privacy-centric

 

Takeaway:

Since 2022, the Web3 enterprise landscape has moved from visionary exploration to targeted implementation—with architectural and strategic advances focused on real business value, compliance, modularity, and seamless integration. Most of the technical and adoption hurdles anticipated in 2022 have seen substantial progress, with enterprise strategies now built on measurable business impact, risk management, and mainstream-ready infrastructure.

Executive Summary

Digital transformation is both a huge business opportunity and one of the main societal shifts of our time. It is expected to reach a global market size of $1.25 trillion by 2026. The Web is probably the most important enabler of digital transformation. Today, we’re using what is called Web2, an environment which made interactive apps, user-generated content, and free-to-use access popular. Web2 business models are typically based on using network effects to achieve market dominance, and monetizing user data through advertising. Web2 companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon dominate their respective segments and will for the foreseeable future. Longer term, we see a movement away from this structure.

As more consumers are digitally native, they want to reclaim agency and keep ownership of their digital creations. Emerging technologies such as blockchain, AI, and digital reality enable new types of solutions. Businesses invest in digital twins and need to cope with virtual work and the Great Resignation as employees are harder to retain and engage. Trust is eroding as consumers challenge enterprises to meet their expectations for safety, privacy, security, reliability, and data ethics. And regulators are increasingly focused on user agency (data control) and reigning in big tech (market power).

The major themes of this shift are the Metaverse and Web3 movements. They are two sides of the same coin, creating a new front- and backend of the Web. Where Metaverse uses new tech like digital reality and AI to create new ways of blended digital/real world interaction, Web3 is using blockchain and tokenization to build a more authentic data layer into the Internet that allows for ownership of digital goods.

The Metaverse movement might be the driver, but Web3 is an enabler to overcome Web2 limitations. We’ll describe what’s next in the context of consumers, businesses and the overall Web3 vision.

Consumers are locked into walled gardens (silos) which is good for the owners of the walled gardens but has many disadvantages such not being able to move digital assets between platforms. Personal data can also be at a risk of being misused by companies and governments as shown in the Cambridge Analytica and PRISM/Snowden scandals. And consumers can be excluded from these services without means to appeal.

Businesses are similarly impacted. Platform providers can limit competitors access to markets. They collect tolls from others’ value creation and unilaterally set the rules. And they can use their power to takeover of others’ businesses. The Apple Appstore and Amazon marketplace offer plenty of inspiration for examples.

Web3’s vision is to basically one of democratizing the Web. For consumers, this would be a move from walled gardens to interoperability, from at-risk privacy to data ownership/control, and from de-platforming risk to censorship resistance. For businesses, it would be a move from closed to open markets, from value extraction to value ownership, and from market domination to competition and collaboration.

If you want to imagine Web3’s vision, just imagine you (as an individual) could sign in anywhere without having to create a user account with any service. Imagine you could control who can access any of your personal data, and how they can use it. And imagine you could earn ownership of a platform that succeeds because of your content. Web3 is a model that seeks to turn this imagination into reality.

2025 Update

See integrated findings for updates as of 2025.

Enterprise Opportunities

Enterprises should think about how Web3 might create new opportunities to transform customer interactions, operations, and enabling new business models. Likewise, you can think about opportunities from participating in Web3 infrastructure, building Web3-enabled products, and using Web3 business models.

New types of customer interactions can be created by building Web3-enabled products. Personal data could be integrated into a product while preserving privacy and thereby increasing users’ willingness to share. Products could be created that are governed by users, giving them a say in product decisions, or even making them co-owners of the product. And token models such as fan tokens might be used to incentivize brand engagement.

Opportunities to transform operations can be found using Web3 infrastructure and platforms. Businesses could use distributed cloud services in their tech stack where their benefits outweigh the costs (massive, distributed computing.) You can collaborate with Web3 cooperatives, include Decentralized Finance (Defi) services in treasury processes, and shop on data marketplaces for analytics projects, and take advantage of authentic data to trim costs and streamline value chains.

New business opportunities can be found across the spectrum. You might monetize unused compute/storage resources in distributed cloud service networks. You could build and sell digital goods like what high fashion companies are already doing. And you could sell data on data marketplaces without comprising your intellectual property or violating data regulations.

2025 Update

See integrated findings for updates as of 2025.

How Web3 is Evolving

There are components on three layers of Web3 that are currently being built: Web3 infrastructure, applications, and platforms.

Web3 infrastructure components use principles of peer-to-peer networks with integrated monetary incentives to realize transaction / programmability layers and decentralized cloud services.

Web3 applications combine creating standards with inherent user empowerment to realize self-sovereign identity and decentralized governance solutions.

Web3 platforms build on platform business models, but with collaborative ownership to realize self-sovereign marketplaces, global cooperatives / consortia, and build ecosystems.

Figure 1: Framework for Web3 infrastructure and applications (Source: Outlier Ventures)

Infrastructure components for the transaction, programmability, and network layers are maturing. Smart contract enabled blockchain platforms such as Ethereum, Solana, and Polkadot provide the technical foundation.

Decentralized cloud services leverage the spare resources of networked computers for compute and storage functions. Storage solutions such as IPFS and Filecoin are already being used and computing platforms like Ethernity Cloud or Akash that are just getting started.

Self-sovereign identity apps exist in form of Crypto-digital wallets such as Metamask, and Crypto.com, Self-Sovereign Identity wallets such as Trinsic or Connect.Me and Crypto Name services such as ENS (Yourname.eth) allow to select easy to use wallet names like email addresses.

Personal data management solutions such as Solid from Inrupt are being developed to allow users to control their identity, data, and how it is shared with websites. Data is stored in “Personal Online Data Stores” (Pods). Websites and apps can interact with Pods and access data they need for certain tasks when granted permission.

Decentralized governance toolkits such as Aragon allow you to set up and manage the software constitution of digital cooperatives in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).

Incorporating self-sovereign marketplaces and Web3 cooperatives, whole ecosystems are emerging. DeFi comprises peer-to-peer financial services market ($200 + billion) for savings, lending, exchanges, trading, and derivatives. Nonfungible Tokens (NFT) help creators capture value ($41 billion) through platforms like Rarible and OpenSea.

What’s Next

Web3 is still immature but has the potential to bring about a massive transformation in the business world by eliminating the need for go-betweens and making transactions more efficient/trustworthy between businesses, customers, suppliers, or employees. It is not likely to fully replace Web2 and certainly the dominant players on the web today are not motivated to see Web3 flourish, so finding the right use cases and business models that integrate with today’s Internet is a way forward. Focus on identity, transparency, and interoperability as you develop capabilities. Get started now by evolving your current architecture to support what’s coming and experimenting with Web3. In doing so, you’ll ensure that your business stays ahead of its competitors by adopting these latest technologies before it’s too late to maximize profits and gain a competitive edge in the market.

2025 Update

See integrated findings for updates as of 2025.

Web3 Opportunity

The Internet and the technologies that it has spawned are behind the current digital revolution that is progressively changing our lives and the whole economy. In 2006, of the ten largest firms in the world in market capitalization eight were in the energy and financial sector. By 2016, five of the largest ten firms (including the biggest three, Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft) were in the information technology sector and only one energy and financial sector company remained in the top ten. This change reflects the impact of the innovations that new platforms, machine learning, or the sharing economy are leading to in most markets.

Gavin Wood, who was one of the inventors of Ethereum and coined the term Web3 in 2014, puts it this way.

“The big companies behind the services we use every day really have absolute power over what they do in providing the service, so we trust these large companies with our data and with meeting our expectations of fairness for the service they provide. For example, when I talk to my brother over the phone, I don’t expect there to be anyone else listening. It’s not like the phone company has given me some absolute guarantee of privacy but nonetheless my expectations are that no one would be listening. And if I’m exchanging currency, I expect that I’m paying a fair exchange rate, not something manipulated to the service provider’s advantage. The problem is that in Web2, where more and more of our interactions, purchases, and finances are done, the expectations around privacy and fairness are increasingly not met.

So Web3 is about delivering on these expectations that we already have by ensuring that the technology actually helps enforce our expectations rather than having to trust some company to do that. Web3 is about reducing the amount of trust that we need to give to use the services that we rely on every day whether it’s trading, communication, and increasingly other things we do on the Internet.

Web3 is an alternative vision of the web where the services that we use are not hosted by a single service provider company but rather they’re purely algorithmic things that are hosted by everybody so it’s peer to peer. It’s the idea being that all participants contribute a small slice of the ultimate service and that no one really has any advantage over anyone else.

It uses cryptography to help guarantee privacy, and blockchain introduces accountability and verifiability to reduce the impact of needing to trust or reduce the amount of trust itself.”

Wood’s vision to a democratize the Web where everyone transparently shares the ownership and value is altruistic. To move beyond the altruism and hype, this report attempts to describe how this evolution might change business and economics, and how enterprises might prepare for those changes.

Interest is exploding

Web3 is a new space, full of excitement, ideas, and experiments. It’s like the technology version of the California Gold Rush, where thousands of people flocked to the territory in search of riches. And there’s a lot of money moving into and within the space, some real, some imaginary.

The imaginary money (cryptocurrency) is a concept evolved from the gaming community. In a game, you earned coins for completing tasks and then you could use those coins to buy tools or powers that increased your ability to compete. In Web3, every startup (project) defines, what is in essence, their own currency that is used to support the development and operation of the project – and quantify the value the project generates for owners and users. And just like in the gaming world, you can earn the coins by doing something for the project, or you can buy them with fiat currency to jumpstart the effort.

Figure 2- Number of cryptocurrencies worldwide from 2013 to February 2022– Statistica 2022

The cryptocurrency boom morphed from a way to participate in projects and communities of interest into an exploding investment instrument as these stats show.

• $14 trillion was traded in 2021, according to The Block Research.
• There are 283 million crypto users worldwide.
• And 39% of people who do not own crypto described themselves as “somewhat or very” knowledgeable about crypto.

It’s not just the individual investor that’s chasing the gold, Venture Capitalists are all in on Web3

• VCs deployed $30 billion+ globally in 2021 into crypto startups
• There are 65+ crypto unicorns ($ billion valuations), with over 40 of them created in 2021. There were close to 50 crypto startups that raised over $100 million in 2021
• Total crypto market cap exceeds $3 trillion

“History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes” – Mark Twain

But for those of us that were around back in 2000, it looks a lot like the Dot.Com bubble. Irrational valuations, lots of projects getting funding by issuing tokens (ITOs instead of IPOs) based on whitepapers, not market traction, Superbowl ads generating public excitement, and unfortunately, individual investors piling money into the space for fear of missing out (FOMO) and hoping for a big payoff. Unfortunately, as of this writing, it looks like the shakeout has begun.

The features of Web3 that are most likely to succeed are those that are attractive to those with the capital to invest; accordingly, projects that are not attractive to capital will fail. Therefore, digital currencies and asset ownership are likely to make it into the mainstream the fastest, while ideal of democratization of the Web via blockchain networks is likely to take the longest (if at all) to make it into the mainstream.

It is hard to imagine a world in which governments contribute capital to developing a distributed money alternative that they are unable to regulate. Equally unlikely is thinking Google would easily relinquish control of the personal data that powers its advertising-based business model.

NFTs and cryptocurrencies will most likely mature and be managed by important players in the corporate and government realm, and we can expect to see more traditional ownership contracts turning into digital versions. Artists will be able to sell their work more easily on the Internet, and fundraising for new digital projects will be easier as well.

While a transparent and decentralized Internet based in blockchain is probably a dream, the security, verifiability, and accountability provided by cryptography and blockchain can replace “trust with truth” in many B2C and B2B relationships. This becomes increasingly important as networks of physical (people, things) and digital (automation, AI) entities become indistinguishable and integral to value creation.

“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” – Amara’s Law

While the Web3 revolution is still finding its way, the incentive models and technological underpinnings are something worth investments in learning and experimentation.

Web3 Basics

Web3 represents a melding of emerging technologies into an ecosystem of interfaces, software apps, tokens, protocols, and networks that are

• decentralized and built atop of a layer of blockchains
• enabling greater value and seamless experiences
• with individual user transparency, control, and power over those experiences.

It’s useful to think about these evolutions as taking place on two fronts: the Metaverse as a re-platforming of interfaces and digital experiences, and Web3 as reinventing how authentic data moves through that ecosystem. We’ll start with the Metaverse.

2025 Update

See integrated findings for updates as of 2025.

The Metaverse

You’ve probably heard the word “metaverse” over the last year, evoking a science fiction future of a persistent and shared virtual reality space. The truth is, right now a lot of early metaverses are being built with many different ideas for how to get it right. Some are for enterprises, some for consumers. Each has different platforms, partners, and technologies at its core. Eventually this spectrum of ideas will coalesce into a more broadly unified experience, but the range of business areas that it will impact will only grow.

Just as the Internet evolved beyond simple websites to underpin most of today’s businesses, it would be wrong to think the experience of the metaverse will be constrained to digital space.

The metaverse as an evolving and expanding continuum on multiple dimensions:

• Comprises multiple technologies including extended reality, blockchain, artificial intelligence, digital twins, and smart objects – including cars and factories, and edge computing.
• Encompasses a digital reality – the range of experiences, from purely virtual to a blend of virtual and physical.
• Describes the spectrum of emerging consumer experiences and the business applications and models across the enterprise that will be reimagined and transformed.

Figure 3 – The Fidelity Stack Metaverse in Decentraland

In the Metaverse, the interface layer moves us from screen experiences to immersive virtual worlds using mixed reality, augmented reality, and virtual reality. But it’s not just about 3D displays for human interaction, it’s also about digital twins modeling digital to physical.

2025 Update

See integrated findings for updates as of 2025.

Digital twins

A great example is how BMW has standardized on a new technology unveiled by Nvidia, the Omniverse, to simulate every aspect of its manufacturing operations, in an effort to push the envelope on smart manufacturing.

Figure 4 – A BMW Digital Twin

BMW has done this down to work order instructions for factory workers from 31 factories in its production network, reducing production planning time by 30%, the company said.

The Metaverse, blending of real and digital, deserves its own report and TechVision will be producing a report on this evolving technology in the future.

While the Metaverse is redefining interactions and creating immersive experiences, Web3 is the engine that makes it all possible. Web3 provides the processing power, authentic data, and incentives required to maintain seamless Metaverse value – world-wide – 24/7/365.

Web3; Built upon Blockchain Protocols

As all of us already know, a protocol, in computer science, is a set of rules or procedures that govern the transfer of data between two or more electronic devices. This protocol helps in establishing how, for computers to exchange information, the information must be structured and how each party will send and receive it.

Some examples of familiar Internet protocols are TCP/IP, HTTPS, and DNS.

Blockchains have protocols that are used to maintain state as well. Blockchains work on pre-defined rules which are agreed upon by all the participating nodes (the peers) in the network. These rules include:

1. The methods for governing and validating transactions,
2. an algorithm that defines the mechanism for all participating nodes to interact with each other, and,
3. how the blockchain interacts with the outside world.

These rules that govern a blockchain network are referred to as the blockchain protocol. It is essentially the common communication rules that the network plays by.

These rules are constructed so that any node can validate a transaction, every node can independently verify that transaction, properly order the transaction into block, and for each block, that the state of the ledger was valid before the block and remains valid after the block is recorded.

The underlying technology components that make this possible are cryptographic hash function, digital signature, p2p network communication, private-and-public key encryption, zero-knowledge proofing, and a consensus algorithm.

“You come to the realization that the blockchain is really a general mechanism for running programs, storing data, and verifiably carrying out transactions. It’s a superset of everything that exists in computing. We’ll eventually come to look at it as a computer that’s distributed and runs a billion times faster than the computer we have on our desktops, because it’s the combination of everyone’s computer.” – Tim Sweeney (2017)

The Virtual Machine

Virtual machines essentially create a level of abstraction between the executing code and the executing machine. It provides the “sandbox” to let the executing code safely run inside the virtual machine, preventing contaminating the main blockchain if anything goes wrong. This layer is needed to make sure applications are separated from each other and separated from their host. Virtual machines and containers were critical in the growth of cloud services and they play an important role in Web3. They maintain the state of the ledger.

It Began as a Distributed Ledger

If you are familiar with Bitcoin, you will sense how straightforward it is. It pioneered the foundations of blockchain (encryption, hashing, PKI, immutability, single ledger state, algorithmic consensus, and transparency) While it has proven to be good at what it does, it is also limited to being a decentralized distributed ledger that serially captures the assignment of ownership of a token from minting to the present. The kind of state machine represented by blockchains such as Bitcoin and its forks (e.g., Litecoin, Dogecoin) is rather basic and tailored to one specific kind of operation. That is, representing ownership of cryptocurrency and transferring them between parties.

And evolved into a Distributed State Machine

Ethereum attempts something larger in scope. It is not just a distributed ledger, but something much more sophisticated. Ethereum and other “smart” chains allow transactions to store or retrieve arbitrary pieces of data (beyond accounts and tokens) and perform general calculations (beyond a simple transfer) on them. The machine state consists of not only transaction outputs or account values, but also contains all the content that users have added, and stored code to be executed when required. This expanded definition of state allows the blockchain to be used for many things beyond the transfer of cryptocurrency. The main Ethereum website describes this expanded definition as a “distributed state machine”. Ethereum does not only hold data on accounts or balances but holds an entire machine state. Its machine state varies with every block, as the machine transitions with every set of programs it runs according to certain fixed rules. What determines these specific rule-based state changes? It’s the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

Smart Contracts

When trying to understand “the Ethereum Virtual Machine”, you need a good grasp of smart contracts. In their simplest definition, smart contracts are agreements between parties that are written in lines of code. They are self-executing; meaning, they do not need trusted party supervision to get done. They allow parties to transact with each other in a trusted manner anonymously, from all over the world, without any authority to validate their shared transactions. The execution of such transactions does not depend on any legal system or enforcement mechanism either. Smart contracts are made possible because of the way the Ethereum network is designed. They also access the Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM. Smart contracts, as reflected on the blockchain, are automatic, deterministic, immutable, and transparent.

The value of smart contracts is auto-sufficiency. They can perform transactions, collect funds, and store and distribute resources without intermediaries. Smart-contract code can perform any necessary functions automatically. In addition, fraud is nearly impossible.

With the increasing popularity of smart contracts, more and more industries are adopting this protocol. Use cases can be found in industries including banking, insurance, and IoT.

Smart contracts can be simple or complex and have two, three, or even more parties. Based on their application, smart contracts can be divided into four large groups.

Smart “legal” contracts

To see the benefits of smart legal contracts, let’s compare a hypothetical smart contract to its equivalent in the traditional space.

Let’s say we want to write the following contract.

If Alice sends X “A” tokens and Bob sends the same number of “B” tokens, the tokens will be exchanged (Alice will receive Bob’s “B” tokens and Bob will receive Alice’s “A” tokens). To complicate things, Alice and Bob don’t know (trust) each other.

In the real world, since there’s no trust between Alice and Bob, the prudent thing to do would be to create an escrow contract with a third party that they both trust. The third-party would collect the correct number of A tokens from Alice, wait for the correct number of B tokens from Bob and send Alice and Bob their respective, swapped tokens after all the tokens are collected and verified. This approach already shows a few problems that Alice and Bob may be facing.

Trust. There is no guarantee that the third party won’t keep (or lose or spend) the tokens after receiving them from Alice and Bob. We must rely on the reputation of the intermediary to “reasonably” execute the transaction and insurance (yet another contract) to cover any risk.

A smart contract would work in a fully automated and deterministic way making sure that both of the parties receive funds instantly when they meet the initial criteria of depositing the tokens.

Cost. Traditional contracts are expensive because the intermediary must make their profit, and there is a risk of additional “hidden” costs for things like arbitration and enforcement should things go bad.

A smart contract runs as soon as the conditions are met, and the only cost is the ledger recording cost. Because it’s deterministic, it works, or it doesn’t – no hidden costs are incurred.

Nonreusable. In the real world, a contract covering a transaction between parties is unique, nonreusable. For another swap transaction, Alice and Bob would have to sign a separate contract and pay the respective fees to the intermediary.

The same smart contract that executes the swapping of Alice and Bob’s tokens could be used by anyone who wants to swap tokens.

Fraud. This is yet another hidden cost this time for the intermediary itself. The intermediary would have to make sure that both Alice’s and Bob’s tokens are legitimate before executing a swap. Fraud is very common in traditional finance and most companies have huge teams working on fraud prevention.

With smart contracts, the authenticity of tokens and Alice’s and Bob’s ownership is proven directly on the blockchain, and their digital signatures prove they both agree to the swap.

We are early in the cycle of smart contracts. The current legal framework in different countries and contexts lack sufficient support for smart contracts on the blockchain making their legal status is unclear. However, once the principles are known, smart contracts can simplify processes and enforce legal and regulatory requirements for transactions in the financial and real estate markets, government services, international trade etc.

Application logic contracts (ALCs)

If you’ve heard about the Internet of things (IoT) in conjunction with the blockchain, chances are that the content talked about Application Logic Contracts (ALC). Such smart contracts contain application specific code that work in conjunction with other smart contracts and programs on the blockchain. They aid in communicating with and validating communication between devices (within the domain of IoT). ALCs are a pivotal piece of every multi-function smart contract and tend to work under a managing program (dApp).

Applying a blockchain model in an IoT network could solve a host of real-world digital business issues, including:

• Analytical model tracking: Allow the system to record metadata and results about logic executed at the edge of the network for the purposes of regulatory compliance and create an immutable history of why certain “decisions” were made during IoT processing.
• Secure software updates: The ability to publish software updates as a pointer on the blockchain, along with a cryptographic hash of the update which can be validated by blockchain-connected IoT devices during the process.
• Data and value exchange: provide a simple infrastructure for two devices to directly transfer a piece of property such as money or data between one another with a secured and reliable time-stamped contractual handshake.

Smart contracts are an amazing asset in IoT networks allowing for a high degree of coordination and authority. Particularly when it comes to managing transactions and interactions, smart contracts ensure proper cohesion. IoT is always built on the idea of being able to take the right amount of action at the right time. Put another way: suppose you want your house to be able to order a new light bulb when one burns out. You wouldn’t want your house indiscriminately ordering crates of lightbulbs. Smart contracts are a great way to protect against this.

We’ll be writing more research on Smart Contracts in the future, including updates on our previous reports.

Decentralized Applications (dApps)

dApps are the part of the software that interacts with the blockchain and regulates the state of all network members. Smart contracts demonstrate the core logic of a decentralized app. The user interface of dApps is identical to any other typical website or mobile application. A decentralized application’s front end is built to represent what users will see, and its back end is built for all business logic.

The business logic of dApps is depicted by one or more smart contracts communicating with the underlying technology of blockchain.

dAapps, by definition, are regular/web/mobile applications built on top of a peer-to-peer (p2p) network with the following characteristics

• Completely Open Source – to gain the trust of potential users and increase transparency
• No Central Point of Failure – Application data cryptographically stored across all the nodes.
• Cryptographic Tokens (app currency)- the dApps must use cryptographic tokens for application usage and incentivization.
• Decentralized Consensus – to support a trustless environment; and a mechanism to achieve consensus.

DAO

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) take smart contracts to the next level. Decisions get made from the bottom-up, governed by a community organized around a specific set of rules enforced on a blockchain.

DAOs are Internet-native organizations collectively owned and managed by their members. They have built-in treasuries that are only accessible with the approval of their members. Decisions are made via proposals the group votes on during a specified period.

A DAO works without hierarchical management and can have a large number of purposes. Freelancer networks where contracts pool their funds to pay for software subscriptions, charitable organizations where members approve donations and venture capital firms owned by a group are all possible with these organizations.

DAOs operate using smart contracts. These smart contracts establish the DAO’s rules. Those with a stake in a DAO then get voting rights and may influence how the organization operates by deciding on or creating new governance proposals. This model prevents DAOs from being spammed with proposals: A proposal will only pass once the majority of stakeholders approve it. How that majority is determined varies from DAO to DAO and is specified in the smart contracts.

2025 Update

See integrated findings for updates as of 2025.

The principal-agent dilemma

The main advantage of DAOs is that they offer a solution to the principal agent dilemma. This dilemma is a conflict in priorities between a person or group (the principal) and those making decisions and acting on their behalf (the agent). Problems can occur in some situations, with a common one being in the relationship between stakeholders and a CEO. The agent (the CEO) may work in a way that’s not in line with the priorities and goals determined by the principal (the stakeholders) and instead act in their own self-interest. Another typical example of the principal-agent dilemma occurs when the agent takes excessive risk because the principal bears the burden. For example, a trader can use extreme leverage to chase a performance bonus, knowing the organization will cover any downside. DAOs solve the principal-agent dilemma through community governance. people aren’t forced to join a DAO and only do so after understanding the rules that govern it and invest some initial value (tokens) to become a stakeholder. They don’t need to trust any agent acting on their behalf and instead work as part of a group whose incentives are aligned. Token holders’ interests align as the nature of a DAO incentivizes them not to be malicious. Since they have a stake in the network, they will want to see it succeed. Acting against it would be acting against their self-interests.

Blockchain protocols, smart contracts, dApps, and DAOs are the decentralized computing resources that work together to deliver back-end computational capabilities, as well as security, authenticity, and privacy in the data layer of Web3.

Web3 is Data Centric

Web3 changes the way we treat data – creating an undercurrent of provenance, veracity, and value, that brings authenticity to creative spaces like the metaverse and business ecosystems alike.

In Web2 the servers and the applications had to capture state and any data necessary to support the application’s functionality. Because of the limitations of the underlying protocols, we have allowed applications exclusive control over the data they manipulate. At first blush this seemed necessary and desirable. The validation, integrity management, security and even the meaning of most of the data is tied up in the application code. It is the prevailing application-centric mindset that gives applications priority and control over data. This model is constraining the evolution of the digital enterprise because advanced AI, extended ecosystems (value chains), discrete digital assets require authenticity and interoperability that reach beyond the application boundaries.

The remedy is to flip this on its head. The Data-Centric Architecture treats data as a valuable and versatile asset instead of an expensive afterthought. Data-centricity significantly simplifies security, integration, portability, and analysis while delivering faster insights across the entire data value chain.

By baking core characteristics like security, interoperability, and portability directly into the data-tier, data-centricity dissolves the need to pay for proprietary middleware or maintain webs of custom APIs. Data-Centricity also allows enterprises to integrate disparate data sources with virtually no overhead and deliver data to its stakeholders with context and speed.

These are the key principles of the data centric manifesto:

1. Data is a key asset of any organization (community).
2. Data is self-describing and does not rely on an application for interpretation and meaning.
3. Data is expressed in open, non-proprietary formats.
4. Access to and security of the data is a responsibility of the data layer, and not managed by applications.
5. Applications are allowed to visit the data, perform their magic, and express the results of their process back into the data layer for all to share.

The data foundation of Web3 is built on blockchains and empowers anyone to exchange digital assets with each other in an authentic, seamless, and borderless way, while simultaneously enabling the content creators and contributors of a network to capture more value for themselves. The important thing is that the definition of value has become more fluid. These tokenized digital assets can come in many forms, such as cryptocurrencies and cryptotokens or even a digital ownership in an enterprise (stock or stake) or an NFT of an Ape or Punk.

With Blockchain, you avoid the confusion of having multiple versions of a ledger and gone are the days of inventing version-naming nomenclature on the fly (v1, v2, v3). Instead, you have one ledger shared across multiple computers, and every update is reviewed and approved by multiple parties. One ledger, one truth, zero confusion.

Blockchains are updated in real time. You can take any data entry and trace it back to its origin. You know who created it and when, understand the chain of custody, and that it’s been vetted. This leaves little doubt as to the legitimacy of any entry. It’s the kind of provenance coveted by data scientists and marketers, and it may inspire consumer confidence, especially considering all the scandal around data misuse. Bottom line – any data properly captured in the blockchain is authentic… with proven provenance, veracity, and value.

TechVision Research has published several reports covering blockchain and decentralized ledger technology over the last few years. They cover everything from blockchain basics to consensus models, to smart contracts, and more. To go deeper into any of these topics you should check them out.

Since the terms of a smart contract agreement are written directly into the code, smart contracts can securely transfer funds or data between parties to an agreement without requiring mutual trust. The involvement of regulators and intermediaries is also unnecessary.

For this to work, however, a smart contract must be 100 percent secure and contain zero bugs in its code. On the plus side, these contracts are implemented within blockchains and therefore possess characteristics of blockchains:

• Distributed – Like regular transactions on a blockchain, smart contracts are validated (or blocked) by everyone in the network.
• Immutable – By design, smart contracts are supposed to be impossible to change or tamper with after release.

While Web3 is a major shift in thinking, there is value in looking at the path that led us to Web3.

 

Web1, Web2, Web3: What Are the Differences?

Figure 5 – Web comparisons

Web1 basically served as the Internet of the 1990s and early 2000s. At that time, the Internet was a read-only directory of static HTML pages. User-to-user interaction was limited.

The era of Web2, also known as the read-write web, began around 2004, accelerated in 2007, and remains the most relevant generation of the Internet in 2022. It is comprised of social media sites, blogs, and online communities that allow end-users to interact and collaborate with each other at any time and in real-time.

Web3, compared to Web2, is more difficult to define. In large part, this is because the era of Web3 is still in its infancy. Ethereum, the leading blockchain network of Web3, only launched in 2015. In 2022, many of the technologies that go into making the Web3 experience practical for end-users are still being developed or improved. Nonetheless, a few key attributes are commonly regarded as belonging to this new era of the Internet. For instance, Web3 aims to provide a more user-centric experience in an unmediated read-write web. Technology enables individuals to control data privacy and data ownership by default. Web3 also introduces the decentralized Internet, where rent-seeking third parties have less control over user interaction and value transfers. In essence, Web3 technologies provide the foundation for P2P (peer-to-peer) communication, payments, services, and marketplaces. What follows is an overview of the separate technologies and efforts being developed in Web2 that will ultimately integrate into what we’ll call Web3.

A glimpse into a Web3 future: Fintech

In thinking about Fintech today consider this example: “John deposited his paycheck by snapping a photo on his smartphone and uploading it to his bank’s mobile app. He checked Mint to gauge his monthly entertainment budget. At dinner, John and his buddy split the tab using Venmo. Later, he tapped his phone at the bar to pay for a drink with Apple Pay. When it was time to head home, John hopped in an Uber, where he paid for the ride with a stored credit card—or even in Bitcoin.” Even if you don’t realize it, fintech is likely a big part of your personal and professional day-to-day.

The term “fintech company” describes any business that uses technology to modify, enhance, or automate financial services for businesses or consumers. Some examples include mobile banking, peer-to-peer payment services (e.g., Venmo, CashApp), automated portfolio managers (e.g., Wealthfront, Betterment), or trading platforms such as Robinhood. It can also apply to the development and trading of cryptocurrencies (e.g., Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ether). Fintech is powered by the following underlying developments.

• Open banking – Leading banks are transforming their organizations into digital platforms that foster ecosystems of disaggregated, highly specialized services that are sourced and consumed by a variety of environments such as the cloud, on-premises, and software-as-a-service. APIs provide a vehicle to tap into the vast goldmine of data locked up in legacy, on-premises systems as well as the services provided by newer, cloud-based technologies. They can help banks transform into digital banking platforms that drive innovation and new business opportunities outside traditional organizational boundaries through partnerships with fintechs.
• Peer to Peer Payments – P2P transactions that can be used for anything from splitting a dinner bill between friends to paying the landlord rent. These payments allow the transfer of funds between two parties using stored value, their individual banking accounts, or credit cards through an online or mobile app.
• Token-based exchange – A digital wallet is a device or system for storing digitized versions of payment cards. Examples of digital wallets include Apple Pay and Google Pay.
• Digital wallets provide cardholders with a secure and convenient way to store and use their payment cards without needing to carry physical cards. As payment by digital wallet becomes more widely accepted by merchants, the benefit to cardholders of using a digital wallet increases.
• Card tokenization is the process of protecting sensitive data by replacing it with secure, surrogate data, called a token. To insert a payment card into a digital wallet, the card’s sensitive data (i.e., the PAN, CVV2, and expiration date) must be replaced with a token that serves as a reference to the card. When a digital wallet uses a card for a payment, it only provides the token, without exposing any of the original card details.
• Real time payments – The 24/7/365 payments environment means you can send and receive payments any time of day and any day of the week. RTPs are transforming the payment landscape for use cases served inefficiently with existing payment infrastructures, but more importantly providing the infrastructure for brand new use cases and business models that could not have been imagined without RTP.
• AI/ML – AI in FinTech is used for a wide array of purposes: lending decision making, customer support, fraud detection, credit risk assessment, insurance, wealth management, and much more. Modern FinTech companies adopt AI for enhanced efficiency, improvised precision levels, and high-speed query resolution.

AI in FinTech drives innovation, leading to personalized, fast, and secure services with higher customer satisfaction and global reach. Each of these developments (AI-based smart decisions, real-time peer-to-peer exchange of value though tokens and open access to data) are laying the groundwork for an Internet of Value, a key to Web3.

Web3 Barriers to Adoption and Next Steps

At its core, Web3 has the proven potential of disrupting the Internet as we know it. But quite a lot of it is only in theory right now. Execution is going to play a key role in solving some fundamental problems with Web3. Here are a few areas to watch.

2025 Update

See integrated findings for updates as of 2025.

Development

Web3 is built on Blockchain technology. Currently there are multiple blockchains that are trying to address different problems. Some of them have a unique selling proposition of being decentralized, while some market themselves as fast and cheap. Because of this, these Blockchains have different architecture and underlying tech. To put this in perspective, you can write smart contracts for Ethereum in a language called ‘Solidity.’ For a similar development in Polkadot, one needs to learn ‘Rust.’ For Tezos, it is ‘Michelson.’ You get the idea.

Blockchain technology is still very young. So, there are not many people who know how to code. On the top of it, there is a niche carved out by each blockchain in terms of development language, further aggravating the situation.

Until more people jump on to this space, there is going to be some gap between expectations of the masses and products shipped. By the way, this also means that these developers are going to be high in demand and rewarded handsomely for their work.

The blockchain industry has experienced an explosion of nonfungible tokens and DeFi projects over the past year causing problems in the labor market. According to the latest statistics, demand for blockchain talent has increased by over 300% as both established firms and startups scramble for top-tier talent.

The situation has been brought on by competing enterprises that are offering highly competitive remuneration packages to both attract and retain their staff. Subsequently, some companies in the crypto sector are consistently paying over a million dollars per year to workers in some job categories. This is according to statistics published by Team Blind[1].

Interoperability

While Web 3 is all about owning your assets in your wallet, rather than leaving them at the mercy of a centralized platform, there is a slight problem at hand. Imagine you are entering the Metaverse (let’s call it Metaverse A). You own a fancy pair of shoes, shades, and a watch in Metaverse A, as NFTs. You are a highly respected individual and you can maintain your social clout because of these NFTs.

Now imagine your friends start hanging out on a different Metaverse (say Metaverse B). Ideally, since you own these assets, you could take them to the Metaverse B, and nothing would have changed. You shouldn’t have to buy these expensive assets in every different Metaverse, right? But it is easier said than done.

This is, in fact, one of the core problems that the Blockchain industry is trying to solve. It is called interoperability or the ability of one Blockchain to talk to another.

Currently, due to lack of interoperability, assets on one Blockchain cannot be used on the other. Therefore, owning your assets is not so fun anymore. Some Blockchains are trying to solve these problems using something called a ‘Bridge.’ These bridges enable movement of assets from one Blockchain to another. However, these bridges are often slow, expensive, and unreliable.

This makes them highly inaccessible to masses. Another solution to this problem is trying to create an ecosystem of Blockchains that are specifically meant for this purpose. Some Blockchains working on this specific use case are Polkadot, Cosmos, and Injective.

Scalability

Scalability is a very complicated problem in Blockchain technology, and a big hindrance in Web3 adoption. This problem surfaced for the first time back in 2016 when a game called ‘Crypto Kitties’ went viral. The game involved breeding some kittens, raising them, and exchanging them with peers. All of this was happening on the Blockchain. But one day the game became so popular that the Ethereum network was choked. Gas fees (transaction fees) hit the roof and it became too expensive to play the game.

This sparked the conversation around problems in Web3 leading to scalability issues. In fact, the Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin came up with a “blockchain trilemma.” The blockchain trilemma says that out of security, decentralization, and scalability, you can only pick two.

To solve this, many blockchains evolved as L2 or layer 2 solutions for Ethereum. Broadly speaking, this means that all the intermediary transactions happen on these L2 Blockchains while the final transaction is submitted to Ethereum. This helps in offloading the main Blockchain (Ethereum), keeping things in control. But this comes at a cost. While Polygon is scalable and secure, it is not as decentralized as Ethereum.

Similarly, many other blockchains have evolved that tout themselves as ETH killers. Examples of these blockchains are Solana, Avalanche, Terra, Binance, Smart Chain etc. However, each of these blockchains give up one or the other aspect to achieve scale.

UI/UX

When you (or your parents for that matter) started using Facebook for the first time, did you need any kind of handholding? You figured it out right?

Now compare this with Web3 counterparts. You might have to check out a video or a tutorial to set up your MetaMask wallet because onboarding looks like this.

1. Download the software in your browser or as an app.
2. Register using phone number, email, and password, confirmed by 2 factor authentication.
3. Write down your 12-word seed phrase
4. Reenter your seed phrase in the correct order to confirm you have it
5. Go through KYC screening (take a picture of both sides of your license, pose for facial recognition)
6. Wait for confirmation that you are approved.

 

To have different types of cryptocurrencies (both Bitcoin and Dogecoin, for example) you often must use more than one wallet. By the way, each wallet has a similar onboarding experience.

Metaverse applications may also require you to sign in using a specific crypto wallet. Besides actually having a crypto wallet, many dApps require that you fund the wallet, either in the form of cryptocurrency or US dollars.

To compound the issue, buying anything requires not only the purchase price, but the costs to create a record of the transaction. Those costs, (gas in Ethereum) are the incentives required to maintain and secure the blockchain.

Paying someone isn’t easy either. Tokens are transferred between blockchain addresses. An example of a typical crypto wallet address is:

0x368add25ebsy8a94cd2ad0427g9ce73k92a73831

An average person cannot remember such an address, so to use it, they keep it somewhere in digital form where it’s easy to copy and paste – or – they have to create a QR code so that people can pay them without having to copy/paste or manually enter the address. And good luck trying to figure out whether the person behind the address you sent a bitcoin to is the right one.

The point we are trying to drive home is that user experience comes at a much later stage of the development life cycle. Currently, the focus of Web3 is to build working products which maintain the theme of data authenticity. There is little focus on how users interact with them.

Education

Another missing piece of the Web3 puzzle is education. There is a lot of ground to cover in this space. Web3 is not just a technological innovation, it is a movement – an ideology of sorts. There are very rare people who understand this and approach Web3 teaching from this lens. The rights and obligations of the individual and the enterprise are upended, business models shift from consumption to participation, where nothing is free anymore, but you are compensated for providing a valuable resource (attention or content). Finally, the notion of immutability, once something is confirmed it can’t be reversed, deleted, nor forgotten and that creates anxiety. Everyone relearning how to interact with the web will take time. While there are multiple sources available to learn Web3, there are very few which are well structured and impart genuine knowledge that can add value to your crypto journey, including keeping yourself and your assets safe.

Security

Step by step, companies have closed the gap of Web2 security. Web standards have been agreed upon, browsers have aligned with standards, payment methods have been standardized, and anxiety levels have started dropping. SSL security has become the norm, and 2-factor authentication has become a recommended way to preserve access.

Web3 still doesn’t have those secure standards. You rely on your wallets to protect your private keys and connect to blockchains through centralized companies (e.g. Infura). Many of those wallets come as browser extensions, bringing with them inherent security challenges.

But even beyond its wallet and access, blockchain is a jungle: unvetted and unaudited smart contracts, unknown project operators ready to “rug pull” your tokens, and plenty of other pitfalls making Web3 dApps seem like the wild west. Cryptocurrency-based crime hit a new all-time high in 2021, with illicit addresses receiving $14 billion over the course of the year, up from $7.8 billion in 2020. All the scams reported in Web2 are still there in Web3, except they’re pseudonymous and immutable.

Privacy

Blockchain is an open ledger which is visible for everyone in the community to view. It is an essential aspect in many cases, but it becomes a liability if used in a sensitive environment. Blockchain technology still must go a long way to be adopted on a broad scale. The ledger needs to be remodeled in a way that allows restricted access and is accessible only to people who are authorized to view it. As mentioned in our deep-dive technology report, Fluree is imbedding IAM capabilities into the enterprise blockchain data layer through their version of smart contracts, and this approach merits watching. Inrupt and Decentralized Identity wallets are interesting concepts for individual agency.

Regulation

The one thing that the blockchain industry lacks is a set of regulatory oversight making it a volatile environment and an easy target for market manipulation. Generally, the objectives of regulation in every jurisdiction are to protect the consumer, prevent illicit financing, protect the integrity of the financial market, and promote innovation; and many jurisdictions are trying to achieve these objectives using their own approaches. These territorial differences create uncertainties and increased compliance burden for businesses operating in the sector. This is exacerbated by the absence of common standards and terminologies.

For instance, US federal laws place limits on your personal liability for unauthorized credit card charges. If your card (credential) is lost or stolen, your liability is limited for any charges incurred after reporting the loss. In the cryptoworld, if your wallet is compromised and your tokens are transferred, there is no recourse, no recovery even if you know the address that they went to – it’s immutable.

Why Enterprises Should Embrace Web3

While it’s still too early to know the exact Web3 tech stack, we do know that it will bring about revolutionary backend changes and we can make assumptions about its structure. Unlike its predecessors, the Web3 data stack has resilient decentralized network(s), assured by imbedded rules built on open-source code, and governed by peer-to-peer technology. That means that knowledge is authentic, portable, and interoperable.

Web3 is creating opportunities for incumbent and emerging businesses to reimagine operational models and products/assets that are open, collaborative, and collective. The same could also be true for governments. The difference with Web3 and previous incarnations of Internet protocols models is that platforms are decentralized, open and ubiquitous, connected by trustless networks, and powered by encrypted, accountable distributed ledgers.

NFTs, in some cases, are allowing communities to purchase digital assets that boast real world value, beyond the hype. NFTs, tokens, and other crypto-based assets could also be distributed as part of innovative loyalty programs where customers become stakeholders.

Or imagine offering physical and digital products as NFTs, authenticated, and minted on a blockchain during every sale or resale. Homes, cars, luxury goods, can now all be tied to distributed systems of record that guarantee authenticity, linked to a historical value chain, providing individual ownership without layers of third parties facilitating each transaction.

The value proposition changes from one of consumption to that of ownership. For consumers, this becomes not only a matter of spending, but also investing in brands.

For example, in February of this year, Anheuser-Busch offered more than 12,000 Bud Light Next-themed nonfungible tokens — essentially tradable digital artwork — for $399 each to customers of drinking age.

Figure 6 – Courtesy OpenSea

Announced in a Super Bowl ad, Anheuser-Busch said its N3XT collection had sold out in less than an hour and brought in $4.5 million in revenue. While most people bought the tokens for speculation, others kept them for the benefits. The NFTs offer guaranteed value in the form of “exclusive benefits” that, presumably, will sound attractive to Bud Light fans. These include “voting rights” on future brand initiatives, passes to exclusive events, and swag, among other things, according to Bud Light. Some of these perks are still in the planning process, according to Corey Brown, senior digital director at Bud Light. What is clear at this point, Brown said, is that Bud Light’s NFTs are meant “to take consumers along the journey of Bud Light Next.” It’s too early to see how this marketing effort will work out, but it demonstrates a company experimenting with transforming transactional consumers into active brand participants.

With Web3, everything—art, banking, insurance, healthcare, government services, etc.—can be reimagined as value-added goods and services that are owned by a shared group rather than a traditional company structure. Such is the promise with Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). DAOs provide opportunities for companies to create spaces where customers and employees are stakeholders. Imagine a product line where customers and employees have a say in the development of the rules and policies, prices and even earn dividends, by exercising their rights on the blockchain.

2025 Update

See integrated findings for updates as of 2025.

Improving user journeys

The blockchain technology that underpins Web3 can also be used to provide users with simpler and more user-friendly onboarding processes. A good example of how this works is using your Facebook login for access to many other websites. Blockchain uses the same approach, but with the important difference that unlike Facebook and many tech giants, it doesn’t harvest users’ information. This is because under blockchain every end user controls their own data. Ultimately, the benefit to you as a business is that consumers will have a simple way to sign into the website, and enterprises won’t have to worry about storing any data at your end. In doing so, you’re removing any data security issues.

Beyond onboarding, Web3’s tech stack will aid in the creation of efficient and effective customer journeys. The use of artificial intelligence will enable certain elements of the process to be automated, meaning that businesses will be able to allocate resources more efficiently to the parts that require human involvement.

Building customer trust

There’s been a recent report published by KPMG about customers’ growing unease about company data collection practices. Among the business leaders surveyed, 62% felt that their companies should do more about data privacy. A third of them said that consumers should be more concerned about how their data is used by their company, while 29% admitted that their company has sometimes used unethical means to collect private data.

This shows how important it is for businesses to focus on consumer privacy, and what better way to restore trust and place yourself ahead of the competition, then by using the blockchain technology utilized in Web3? To mitigate the fact that items on the blockchain are visible, you can use a private (internal) data-centric blockchain such as Fluree to capture and manage access to customer data. It improves security but doesn’t prove how those data are used. The customer must trust that you have their best interests in mind.

Another approach is an emerging Decentralized Identity path called Pairwise Pseudonymous DIDs, in essence unique connections between peers. In this pattern, an Edge Protocol “document” defines the terms of the relationship (a contract), and each peer maintains a Microledger of the state of the relationship that’s provable and tamper resistant. Microledgers aren’t massive, they last as long as the peers agree they should, they don’t store any significant amounts of information, but they are an orderly sequence of hashes that show how the state the relationship has evolved, and you end up knowing with confidence that both of you have the same thing, and you haven’t drifted or misinterpreted one another. Public identities (for discovery) and the data necessary to verify credentials are still on the public chain, but the details and history of the relationship between the peers is not. This improves security and adds permissible use to further strengthen trust.

Improved knowledge of your customers

Web3 offers a new approach to engaging with customers and collecting valuable information about their behavior. Instead of relying on stored data, and ad-supported marketing models, companies can use a decentralized model to align economics across all users (refer to the Bud Next example above). The Web3 approach supports user-generated digital content and user interaction which will also likely make consumers more open. Businesses will be able to tap into these voluntarily published preferences and adapt their product-market fit accordingly.

Innovating through NFTs and the metaverse

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) both in their traditional and fractional form have taken the world by storm, but businesses are just beginning to explore their uses.

NFTs are already being used by some savvy businesses as a new method of digital marketing. They’re using NFTs which are associated with a virtual product to help boost the sales of that product. The video game industry is a good example of this, as it’s rapidly growing in global popularity and is a prime space for reaching new audiences. Luxury brands allow consumers to buy virtual versions of products that appear in games (within the metaverse) before their real-life counterparts (the physical objects) are available in the market. This is a fantastic way to create buzz and get people to sign up to the wait lists of products and it’s just one example of how Web3 will bring the digital world and the physical world closer.

Saving your company money

Web3 is all about authentic data. Being able to understand the state of things in real-time can drive significant savings into business processes, including finance, manufacturing, logistics, IT, advertising, compliance, and more because the overhead of handling, recording, reconciling, deduping, verifying, and securing digital assets is significantly reduced.

Where do we go from here?

Identity is where intruders strike first

For years fraudsters have claimed to be deposed princes with fortunes to share, or sweepstakes hosts desperately trying to reach you. You’ve gotten used to recognizing these scams and avoid them routinely. Today, phishing, emails and text messages have evolved to look genuine (we locked your Google account for suspicious activity…click here to restore) but are still designed to steal identities and assets.

Play this forward, and picture what phishing could look like in the metaverse. It won’t be a fake email from your bank. It could be an avatar of a teller in a virtual bank lobby asking for your information. It could be a deep fake of your CEO inviting you to a meeting in a malicious virtual conference room.

This is why solving for identity in the metaverse is a top concern. Organizations need to know that adopting metaverse-enabled apps and experiences won’t upend their identity and access control. This means identity must manageable (not necessarily controlled) for enterprises in this new world.

Constructive steps include doing things like

• Adopt a flexible multi-factor authentication (MFA) and password-less authentication capacity that evolves as technologies change. Provable authenticated identity will be integral to access in this new world.
• Explore using Decentralized (Self Sovereign) Identity and Verifiable Credentials to secure and expand relationships as your company works through the peer-to-peer paradigm of Web3.
• Think about long term reputation building and brand engagement through tokens and public histories that go beyond simple likes and stars.

Transparency and interoperability will be key

There will be many providers of platforms and experiences in the metaverse, and true interoperability can make the gaps between them seamless and more secure — while enabling exciting new scenarios. Think of bringing the equivalent of your virtual presentation in your Zoom environment into a client’s virtual meeting room, even if it’s operating on Microsoft Teams.

Figure 7 – DeFi legos

Due to the extensive use of open source at all levels of the Web3 stack, platforms are composed, not built. You want a private blockchain, Polkadot makes it happen. You want to build a smart contract, OpenZeppelin is the place. Want to create a dApp? Dappbuilder does it. As mentioned earlier, interoperability is not there yet, but as creators fill in the gaps, the possibilities expand.

Transparency can help enable this every step of the way. New platforms usually run a tough gauntlet once they arrive in enterprises at scale — that is often when security researchers really begin probing code, features, and product claims.

Web3 stakeholders should anticipate security issues and be prepared to jump on any updates discovered within the software supply chain – and be prepared for the fallout (lost tokens, chain logic forks, etc.) There must be clear and standard communication around terms of service, security features like where and how encryption is used, vulnerability reporting and updates. Transparency helps accelerate adoption – it speeds the learning process for security.

Act Sooner Rather Than Later

Think back to everything it took for legacy businesses to catch up to digital natives. They had to hire new software developers, designers, and UX testers, explore cloud investments, and form new partnerships, and even then, they were only playing catch-up. For this next generation of the digital world, that isn’t yet the case. Enterprises still have a chance to get ahead of the market and be part of its creation. Business leaders should start building new strategies today, exploring the potential of new products and services and training their executives on the technologies that will soon be foundational to their business. As metaverse and Web3 technologies continue to mature, the companies that are prepared and willing to be the first to experiment with these new platforms and data structures will be the ones who define what the next generation of digital business looks like.

But success here isn’t purely strategic – it also hinges on putting your technical foundation into place. At a minimum,

• Cloud will be essential for resiliency and flexibility.
• Participation and experimenting in Web3 projects of interest and contributing to open source is required.
• Create your own service platforms (like open banking) by evolving your application portfolio with microservice architectures and API access to be easily usable by and shareable with others. The metaverses that emerge (whether enterprise or consumer-driven) will be defined by the services and platforms they encompass.
• Begin the evolution to data centricity by beefing up data management, governance, and protection practices.

2025 Update

See integrated findings for updates as of 2025.

 

Appendix: Integrated Findings

Here is detailed comparative analysis and architecture supplements as referenced throughout the report.

Fundamental Shifts in Business Strategy

From Speculation to Institutional Integration

The report’s 2022 context emphasized cryptocurrency speculation, with venture capital deploying $30+ billion into crypto startups amid warnings of a dot-com-style bubble. That prediction proved prescient—crypto winter did arrive. However, by 2025, the business case has fundamentally shifted from speculative investment to operational infrastructure.

Enterprise adoption metrics demonstrate this transformation:

• 87% of surveyed businesses now plan to invest in blockchain solutions within 12 months, up from speculative interest in 2022
• Stablecoin transaction volumes reached $4 trillion annually (83% year-over-year growth), with $316 billion market cap and $1.25 trillion monthly volume
• 50-58% enterprise adoption rates across major regions for stablecoin payments, with 86% of firms reporting infrastructure readiness
• Major corporations including Google, Uber, Apple, and Shopify actively exploring stablecoin integration for cross-border payments

The 2022 report positioned Web3 as a democratizing force against Big Tech platforms. While this narrative persists, 2025 reality shows traditional financial institutions leading adoption—Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, BlackRock, and major payment networks (Visa, Mastercard) are now building on Web3 rails.

Real-World Asset Tokenization: The Killer App

The 2022 report briefly mentioned NFTs for digital ownership but focused primarily on speculative JPEGs. By 2025, Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenization has emerged as Web3’s most compelling enterprise use case:

• RWA tokenization expanded from $5 billion (2022) to ~$24 billion (June 2025)—a 380% surge, second only to stablecoins
• BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) attracted over $500 million within months of launch
• Tokenized U.S. Treasuries now represent significant portion of the $33 billion total tokenized RWA market
• McKinsey projects tokenized asset markets could reach $2 trillion by 2030

Practical implementations include:

• Dubai’s Prypco Mint enabling property tokenization with AED 2,000 ($540) minimum investments, projecting AED 60 billion ($16 billion) or 7% of all real estate by 2033
• New York luxury hotel tokenization allowing fractional ownership for as little as $1,000
• Private credit, carbon credits, and structured products now routinely tokenized for institutional portfolios

Technical Architecture: From Theoretical to Production-Ready

Scalability Breakthrough: The Zero-Knowledge Revolution

The 2022 report identified the “blockchain trilemma” (security, decentralization, scalability) as a fundamental barrier, with the Ethereum network choking during the CryptoKitties surge. Layer 2 solutions like Lightning Network and Polygon were described as emerging but immature.

In 2025, zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups have fundamentally solved the scalability problem:

• zkSync Era: Achieves 15,000 transactions per second (TPS) versus Ethereum’s 30 TPS, with 5-second finality
• Polygon zkEVM: Reduces gas fees by 90% while maintaining Ethereum security
• Combined ZK rollup TVL: Over $3.5 billion with daily transactions exceeding 1 million
• Cost reduction: Institutional trades on ZK platforms incur 70% lower gas fees compared to 2023
• Performance: zkSync processes 71 TPS for complex DEX swaps with $0.00378 median transaction costs

The technical breakthrough came through Ethereum’s EIP-4844 upgrade, which reduced data posting costs by over 95%—from $194.53 for 2,490 transfers to just $0.000266. This made ZK rollups economically viable for enterprise applications.

Enterprise adoption is accelerating:

• Deutsche Bank and Sony leveraging ZK for confidential settlements and digital rights management
• Buenos Aires deployed ZK identity system serving 6 million citizens
• Healthcare, supply chain, and compliance applications showing 30-40% efficiency improvements

Interoperability: No Longer a Theoretical Problem

The 2022 report highlighted interoperability as a critical unsolved challenge, preventing assets from moving between blockchains and metaverse platforms.

2025 developments show substantial progress:

• W3C DID Specification provides technical foundation for decentralized identifiers across platforms
• Universal Resolver and blockchain-agnostic credential formats enable seamless identity verification
• Cross-chain protocols like DIDComm and standardized frameworks allow DIDs and verifiable credentials to work across different platforms
• Modular blockchain architectures and AppChains dominate, with separation of data availability, execution, and consensus layers

The shift from proprietary bridges (described as “slow, expensive, and unreliable” in 2022) to standards-based interoperability represents a fundamental architectural maturation.

Decentralized Identity: From Concept to Implementation

The 2022 report positioned Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) as an emerging concept with examples like Metamask wallets, Connect.Me, and Solid from Inrupt.

In 2025, decentralized identity has evolved into production-grade enterprise frameworks:

• W3C standards: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), Verifiable Credentials, and OpenID for Verifiable Credential Issuance (OpenID4VCI) now provide interoperable foundation
• Enterprise implementations: Leading Decentralized Identity Management Frameworks supporting healthcare, financial services, and government applications
• Biometric integration: Advanced multi-factor authentication, continuous authentication, and multi-modal biometrics combined with decentralized identity
• Privacy-preserving verification: Zero-knowledge proofs enable identity verification without revealing underlying data

Notable deployments include Google’s ZK identity system and government-scale implementations serving millions of citizens.

AI-Blockchain Convergence: The 2025 Paradigm Shift

Perhaps the most significant technical evolution not anticipated in the 2022 report is the integration of AI with Web3 infrastructure:

AI-enhanced Web3 capabilities now include:

• Smart contracts with adaptability: AI analyzes real-world data through oracles (like Chainlink) to enable dynamic contract execution
• AI-driven DAOs: Automated decision-making, proposal evaluation, risk prediction, and voting based on predefined criteria
• Personalized decentralized experiences: AI analyzing blockchain data tied to Web3 domains to deliver tailored services
• Automated security: AI-powered fraud detection, anomaly detection, and adaptive authentication
• Data-driven insights: AI analyzing transaction patterns, market trends, and user behaviors without compromising privacy

Projects like Ritual and Agent Layer now use AI agents that make autonomous decisions based on live blockchain data inputs. This convergence addresses the 2022 report’s vision of “data-centric architecture” but with intelligence layers the original report didn’t anticipate.

Market Segment Transformations

Stablecoins: The Web3 Success Story

The 2022 report discussed cryptocurrencies primarily through the lens of speculation and token-based incentive models. Stablecoins received limited attention.

By 2025, stablecoins have become Web3’s most mature and widely adopted application:

• $4+ trillion annual transaction volume (up 83% YoY)
• $316B market cap with $1.25T monthly settlement volume
• 53-58% enterprise adoption across regions, with infrastructure in place
• McKinsey projection: 5-10% of cross-border payments ($2.1-4.2 trillion) will use stablecoins by 2030
• Regulatory acceptance: 88% of North American firms view stablecoin regulations favorably (down from 80% viewing regulation as barrier in 2023)

The shift from viewing stablecoins as crypto-adjacent tools to recognizing them as “the backbone of global business finance” represents a fundamental reframing of Web3’s value proposition.

Metaverse: From Consumer Hype to Industrial Application

Our 2022 report presented the Metaverse as the “driver” with Web3 as the “enabler,” emphasizing consumer experiences, digital twins (BMW example), and virtual worlds.

The 2025 reality shows a dramatic recalibration:

Industrial Metaverse growth:

• Global market valued at $34.44 billion (2024), projected to reach $181.04 billion by 2030 (32% CAGR)
• 62% of companies increased industrial metaverse spending in 2024
• Enterprise adoption driving 60% of total XR industry revenue by 2030

However, the consumer metaverse vision has stalled:

• Analysts estimate metaverse economy at $155 billion by 2030, up from $40 billion in 2024—but note the grand vision is “on ice”
• Meta, Microsoft, and Tencent scaling back or shuttering consumer metaverse investments
• Focus shifted to “subtle, practical integrations of immersive technologies into real-world applications” rather than all-encompassing virtual worlds

The practical applications align with the 2022 BMW digital twin example—remote collaboration, virtual training, AR-assisted maintenance—but the consumer-facing “Ready Player One” scenarios have proven premature.

NFTs: From Memes to Utility

The 2022 report discussed NFTs primarily as digital collectibles and art, with examples like Bud Light’s speculative fan tokens.

2025 NFT applications have evolved toward practical utility:

• Supply chain management: NFTs tracking physical goods and documents, enabling end-to-end verification (e.g., Koinearth)
• Music industry: Tokenized tracks with programmable royalties ensuring ongoing artist revenue
• Real estate: Property ownership, virtual tours, and fractional ownership represented as NFTs
• Hybrid NFTs: Combining digital assets with physical items (digital artwork NFT includes physical print)
• Loyalty programs and memberships: Event ticketing with VIP access, exclusive content
• Tokenized real-world assets: Fashion, luxury goods authentication

Total NFT sales volume exceeded $65 billion, with Ethereum, Solana, and Bitcoin as top blockchains. The shift from speculation to utility addresses the 2022 report’s concern about sustainable business models.

DAOs: From Theory to Legal Frameworks

The 2022 report described DAOs as solving the “principal-agent dilemma” through community governance and token-based voting, but noted challenges around legal status and enforceability.

In 2025, DAO governance has matured significantly:

Legal and structural evolution:

• Harmony Framework (February 2025) provides jurisdiction-neutral, modular DAO legal architecture
• DAO 3.0 addresses critical challenges: legal identity, liability protection, governance enforceability, scalability
• Courts increasingly recognizing DAOs as unincorporated partnerships if improperly structured, driving demand for legal frameworks
• Hybrid governance models blending traditional and decentralized elements becoming standard

AI integration transforming DAO operations:

• AI-driven proposal evaluation and automated decision-making
• Predictive analytics for risk assessment and budget management
• Quadratic voting and delegated voting mechanisms for equitable governance

Enterprise adoption:

• DeFi governance representing major DAO use case
• Supply chain DAOs coordinating across partners
• Investment DAOs managing tokenized assets

Barriers: What’s Been Solved, What Remains

Addressed Challenges from 2022

Development complexity:

• While still requiring specialized skills, the 2022 report’s concern about $900K+ salaries has evolved into a 300% surge in Web3 job openings with more structured training programs
• 70% of Web3 job placements are remote, expanding talent pools
• Development frameworks and tools significantly more mature

UI/UX improvements:

• The 2022 report detailed painful onboarding (12-step wallet setup, seed phrases, KYC screening)
• 2025 solutions show progress toward “Web3 fading into the background” as technologies mature
• Mainstream UX patterns emerging, though still not seamless

Scalability (largely solved):

• ZK rollups achieving 15,000 TPS with 70% cost reduction addresses the core trilemma
• Enterprise-grade performance now available

Regulatory clarity (dramatically improved):

• EU’s MiCA framework provides comprehensive crypto regulation
• Stablecoin regulations viewed favorably by 88% of firms (down from being cited as barrier by 80% in 2023)
• Less than 1 in 5 firms now cite regulation as barrier

Interoperability (substantial progress):

• W3C standards, Universal Resolver, cross-chain protocols operational
• Standards-based rather than bridge-dependent architecture

Persistent and New Challenges

Crypto market volatility:

• The 2022 report’s crypto winter concerns proved accurate—subsequent winters in 2022 and 2024-2025
• Bitcoin volatility continues despite institutional adoption
• Four-year crypto cycles persist, correlated with M2 money supply

Privacy paradox:

• Blockchain transparency conflicts with privacy requirements (2022 concern remains)
• Zero-knowledge proofs address some concerns but add complexity
• GDPR compliance challenges persist for decentralized systems

Cross-border regulatory complexity:

• Despite progress, different jurisdictions impose conflicting rules
• Compliance costs creating barriers for small companies
• No viable international agreements for Web3 standards

New AI-related risks:

• Integration of AI with Web3 creates novel security concerns not anticipated in 2022
• Data privacy tensions between AI analysis needs and blockchain transparency
• Technical complexity of merging decentralized systems with AI frameworks

Metaverse reality check:

• Grand consumer metaverse vision “on ice” due to immature technologies, poor UX, limited utility
• Five-to-ten-year recalibration period for practical integration

Strategic Implications for Enterprises

The Shift from “If” to “How”

The 2022 report concluded with “Act Sooner Rather Than Later,” emphasizing experimentation and technical foundation building. The 2025 landscape shows enterprises have moved past experimentation to operational deployment:

Infrastructure readiness:

• 86% of firms report stablecoin infrastructure ready for adoption
• Focus shifting from pilots to execution and scale
• Deep ERP integration replacing “crypto-remote” models

Competitive pressure driving adoption:

• 37% of European firms cite competitive pressure as top adoption driver
• First-mover advantages in tokenized assets and stablecoin payments

Practical focus areas for 2025:

1. Stablecoin payment integration for cross-border transactions and treasury operations
2. Real-world asset tokenization for capital formation and liquidity
3. ZK-powered privacy and scalability for sensitive enterprise applications
4. AI-enhanced smart contracts for automated business logic
5. Decentralized identity frameworks for customer verification and access management

What Hasn’t Changed: The Core Vision

Despite substantial technical and market evolution, the 2022 report’s fundamental value propositions remain valid:

• Data authenticity and provenance: Still central to Web3’s value (enhanced by AI analysis)
• Reducing intermediaries: Stablecoins demonstrating 24/7 settlement without banking hours
• User ownership and control: Decentralized identity frameworks delivering on this promise
• Transparent, verifiable transactions: Zero-knowledge proofs enhancing rather than replacing this benefit

However, the mechanism has shifted: Rather than full decentralization replacing centralized platforms, Web3 is being integrated into existing systems through standards-based interoperability, regulatory-compliant frameworks, and enterprise-grade tools.

Conclusion: From Revolution to Evolution

The May 2022 report captured an industry at peak hype, correctly identifying both transformative potential and serious barriers. The intervening three and a half years have proven remarkably clarifying:

What succeeded: Enterprise-grade scaling solutions (ZK rollups), stablecoin adoption by traditional finance, RWA tokenization, decentralized identity standards, and regulatory frameworks.

What failed: Consumer metaverse grand vision, cryptocurrency as purely speculative investment vehicle, ideology-driven decentralization without practical use cases.

What emerged: AI-blockchain convergence, institutional crypto adoption, compliance-first Web3 infrastructure, practical B2B applications over consumer hype.

The 2025 Web3 landscape reflects “quiet progress toward practical adoption”—precisely the evolutionary path the 2022 report recommended when we wrote: “finding the right use cases and business models that integrate with today’s Internet is a way forward.” Enterprises following that advice are now positioned to capture value from mature Web3 infrastructure rather than experiment with unproven technologies.

The business need has crystallized from democratizing the web to solving high-friction enterprise problems: cross-border payments, asset liquidity, supply chain verification, and privacy-preserving identity. The technical architecture has evolved from theoretical to production-ready, with standards, frameworks, and performance metrics that meet enterprise requirements.

Web3 in 2025 isn’t the revolution promised in 2022—it’s something potentially more valuable: reliable infrastructure for the next generation of digital business.

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About the Author

Gary Zimmerman is an experienced executive known for helping companies deliver new offers and expand markets. Accomplishments include launching four companies, 20+ products, building high-performance organizations, and generating millions in sales.

His experience at Neustar, Respect Network, and Sovrin allows him to provide a broad perspective on a variety of subjects including self-sovereign identity, blockchain, enterprise data management, and the data brokerage industry.  His experience both enterprise and startup product development give him a unique perspective on innovation.

[1] Software engineers and technologists have reported job offers as high as $900,000 a year from the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase on Blind, as recently as Jan. 25, 2022.