Web 3.0 is "one goal" - exploring possibilities without stating a specific end point ─ Exclusive interview with Audrey Tang

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◉Audrey Tang or Tang Feng

Civic Hacker

Since 2016, Tang has been the Digital Affairs Minister of Taiwan. She achieved the highest level of intelligence when she took the IQ test in the first grade of elementary school. Tang used her programming talent from an early age to become the CEO of a startup company at the age of 19. At the age of 24, she decided to live as a transgender person. She was involved in the development of Siri at Apple and participated in the development of Taiwan's new national education curriculum. As the Digital Affairs Minister, Tang developed a mask map app and an app that tracks the footsteps of infected people in response to the spread of the new coronavirus, and became known worldwide. In 2019, Tang was selected as one of Foreign Policy magazine's "Top 100 Global Thinkers."

What is your view on the current state and future of the Web 3.0 field, especially regarding crypto assets and blockchain?

Audrey Tang (hereinafter Tang): First of all, I want to say that for me, the word "Crypto" often used in the Web 3.0 field does not necessarily link to "cryptocurrency" but can be perceived as "crypto".

Applied cryptography, programmable cryptography, and general cryptography seem to have very strong potential. And in the connection between cryptography and currency, crypto assets (virtual currencies) are recognized as synonymous with "Web 3.0", but to me, "Web 3.0" is a worldview that uses cryptography to enable the acceptance of more democratic and pluralistic ideas. Currency is certainly an application example, but it is not the main application example that I think of.

In my book "Plurality.net", I consistently express Web 3.0 as one goal. In the book, I write about Web 3.0 technology, the Web 3.0 community, etc., but I do not explicitly state Web 3.0 as a specific destination. The reason is that by setting an end point for Web 3.0, I think it will make it harder to adapt to other possibilities, as it will bring us closer to a certain vision.

Going back to your question, it is true that people are beginning to understand that the application of cryptography has many applications other than currency. In Taiwan, when we established the Ministry of Digital Affairs in 2022, we published all website content on the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) and asked people around the world to pin the content. This allows us to remain accessible even in the event of a denial of service attack. We do not use Filecoin, so there is no cryptocurrency involved in this use of cryptography, but this is also an example of Web 3.0.

Another example is the use of Decentralized Identifier. This is a kind of applied cryptography where, for example, I can prove that I am over 18 years old, but I don't need to show my date of birth. But again, there is no cryptocurrency involved. In this way, I think the field is growing significantly towards the application of cryptography without cryptocurrency.

Of course, crypto assets are still one of the important and central applications that attract people to the Web 3.0 field, but they can also address many problems other than currency.

Also, people are beginning to recognize that crypto assets need to work with the existing financial system, and we are seeing that crypto assets are providing value in areas where the stability and convenience provided by existing fiat currencies is not enough. In the past few years, we have hardly heard any opinions that crypto assets will disappear. I think people are finally in a state of recognizing that it is starting to take hold.