How Far We've Come
A quick note before diving in: This is officially 12 weeks of this newsletter. Thank you for being with me here 🙏. It’s an honor to slide into your inbox each week. This is my last one until next year so I’ll see you then.
Back to the good stuff.
So much happened in web3 this year, and yet the party just got started. Let’s take stock.
4.6 billion people use the internet today. This is the scope of opportunity for web3. In today’s internet, a handful of big tech companies govern everyone’s digital identity and property. Web3 is about decentralizing that governance using blockchains.
So how far have we come? To gauge the level of web3 adoption, we can look at the number of users of blockchain wallets. This is the onramp to web3.
Here are the most popular wallets on each of the major platforms:
In the most conservative estimate assuming these are distinct users, there would be an upperbound of ~13.5m users actively using web3. That is 0.29% of total internet users.
Web3 is still in the first inning.
And some big hitters are on deck about to get in the game. These hitters are catalysts to onboard billions of users, and quickly. They include:
Social media integrations
Major game company entrants
Major IP / storytellers entrants (e.g. Disney, Netflix)
Acceptance in mobile app stores (some apps out there but the rules are uncertain)
It’s shaping up that next year will be so much bigger and weirder.
Before I sign off, here’s just a few things that did happen this year that are particularly awesome: Beeple is top 3 most valuable artist in the world, “NFT” is word of the year, every major sports league is doing NFTs (e.g. NBA, NFL, Soccer, Cricket, MLB), corporations rushing into the space in creative ways (e.g. Nike, Adidas, Budweiser), and the total industry market cap is over $2 TRILLION!
Wishing you a great holiday season. Excited to continue the journey with you in 2022.
Brian