Web 3.0, the third generation of the internet, promises a decentralized, free, and open interchange of digital information. Web3, which encompasses sophisticated technologies such as cryptocurrencies, blockchains, NFTs, and the metaverse, has been the most often discussed topic among investors and businesses. CEOs and executives from various industries are anticipating and debating how Web3 will impact their everyday business operations and the opportunities it will provide. More than 3.8 billion USD has been invested in firms this year in the Web3 industry, which includes a range of augmented reality capabilities.
Web 3.0 employs machine learning, Artificial intelligence, and blockchain to enable real-world human communication. To simplify, consider video games: web1 is similar to the snake game in which the snake moves and consumes food, web2 is similar to the Sims or Wii, and web 3.0 is similar to Animal Crossing, Call of Duty, or The Last of Us. Web 3.0 can provide users with even more usefulness.
Web 1.0 (1990–2004)
Web 1.0 began in 1989, when British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the protocols that would become the World Wide Web while working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Berners-Lee, ever the idealist (as are many IT pioneers), desired to build an open, decentralized platform for knowledge sharing. The first version of this, known as Web 1.0, occurred between 1990 and 2003 or 2004. Web 1.0 was the period of read-only, sparsely designed websites with little user involvement.
Web 2.0 (2004-now)
Web 2.0, noted for its read and write capabilities, emerged around 2004 around the same time as social media platforms such as Facebook and MySpace. These firms began offering material to consumers while also empowering them to produce their content (user-generated content). It was also a time when people interacted more on the mentioned social sites and forums. Unfortunately, one disadvantage was the monopoly that many of these platforms began to have as a result of the huge volume of traffic they got. Facebook and others took advantage of this with the “advertising-driven income model.” One consequence of this was that, while users may generate unique, appealing material, they could not control it and could not profit from it.
Web3.O (2014-)
It is the era of read-write-and-own coined by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood not long after Ethereum was established in 2014. It is often styled as Web3, rather than Web 3.0. Web3 uses blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to give people power back in the form of ownership, harkening back to the late 1980s and early 1990s and Berners-open, Lee’s decentralized technical ideal, but with the added benefit of being permissionless and trustless. In this new digital era, more web3 firms are beginning to develop.
Why are Web3.O firms expanding so quickly?
One reason we may be seeing an increase in Web3-centric organizations is that Web2 legacy companies are transitioning to the new reality to capitalize on a wonderful opportunity. The number of Web3 engineers who are being taught, as well as entrepreneurs who are giving their intellectual resources to open-source crypto and Web3 initiatives, building out platforms such as Ethereum, is growing.
Startups, co-founded by entrepreneurs and engineers fully educated in Web3 protocols, are another cause for the emergence of Web3 enterprises focusing on the new web3 technological paradigm. The Metaverse Insider will now go through 25 of the most significant Web3 firms, quickly discussing the technology, the web3 companies’ critical products and/or services, and the applications for those services and products. But that’s not all for firms affecting the web3 paradigm: what would a Web3 company be without knowing anything about the founders, and funding and value are always key factors to consider when calculating the prospects of success of Web3 companies.
What are the advantages of Web3O firms for businesses?
Web3 firms, unlike their predecessors in the Web 2.0 era, allow businesses complete control and ownership, eliminating the middleman or intermediary and increasing the efficiency of services. They also foster trust and transparency, which results in a more efficient ecology conducive to the creation and nurturing of ideas.
What is the future of Web3 firms?
Web3 and open-source software, founded on blockchain technology, will transform the way Entrepreneurs and commercial organizations do business while also shaping how users engage with goods. On the entertainment front, Web3 firms are forming more of a community, a place where the user/player has a say in how, when, where, and why they participate. This has been made feasible by decentralized networks, which have weakened the power of the major social media players to dictate the game’s rules. And the move to this mode is expected to accelerate as more businesses make the entire transformation to Web3 firms.
The majority of businesses want to employ Web 3.0 technology to provide the most exact and satisfying results for the end user. Without further ado, let us have a look at Web3 startups.
1.Terra
Terra is a decentralized financial infrastructure created in Seoul, North Korea, in 2018. It allows users to make payments using a cryptocurrency that has a stable price and can be used for both payment and other uses. It provides a decentralized currency that derives its value from Terra network transaction charges and is a good foundation for decentralized financial apps. Users can make bitcoin payments on e-commerce platforms that accept the token.
2. Chaingrep
Chaingrep was founded in 2022 by Rosco Kalis as a search engine for digital assets and on-chain transactions. It’s similar to a modern-day block explorer. Blockchain transparency is only useful if the platforms that host it make it straightforward to interpret the data, which will become increasingly important as more non-technical individuals begin to use web3 platforms. Despite Ethereum’s tremendous growth, block explorers remain difficult to use and have not changed in years.
By abstracting many of the capabilities of current block explorers, such as Etherscan, and eliminating all the superfluous noise, the experience of receiving on-chain information may be much enhanced. As a result, ChainGrep designed an Etherscan for humans.
3. Huddle01
In 2020, Ayush Ranjan launched the video calling network Huddle01. Their approach intends to minimize network latency in video conferencing by using a decentralized video calling architecture. The company aspires to be the first to bring real-time communications to Web3. It believes that everyone should have their own digital space to express themselves freely.
4. KrypC
KrypC is a blockchain software company based in Bangalore that was founded in 2016. The company has offices in the US, the Netherlands, and India. The web3 company holds many patents in payment systems, digital currencies, mobile wallets, and security. They give organizations and entrepreneurial innovators simplified and ready-to-use software packages so that they may deploy and manage creative solutions with the least amount of time, money, and risk. KrypC has launched KrypCore, a prototype version of their technology that would remove the constraints that impede businesses from embracing blockchain and allow them to construct their blockchains. The company’s technological platforms are Ethereum, Multichain, and Hyperledger.
5. Pillow Funding
Pillow is a decentralized finance investing platform that allows consumers to maximize their bitcoin revenue while incurring the least amount of hassle. Pillow’s research team examines 500+ methods across ten distinct chains to discover the best security strategy for maximizing earnings. Users may invest in Pillow in a single step, rather than bending over backward and switching from an exchange to a custodial wallet to bridge the correct chains and identify the proper assets.
6. GuardianLink
GuardianLink, a no-code NFT (Non-Fungible Token) platform, allows artists, corporations, personalities, and inventors from all over the world to create their dropships for their NFTs. This startup enables high-end enterprises and artists to construct their own no-code customized NFTs by utilizing built-in templates and easy contract administration. Their core services are the Legitimacy Protocol, No Code NFT Platform, Cross-Blockchain Royalty Rights, and Cross-Marketplace. GuradianLink has gone above and beyond to assure the security and authenticity of NFTs as well as the maker’s personal information to prevent data theft.
7. Biconomy
Biconomy is a developer platform that allows blockchain developers to increase the transactional and onboarding capabilities of their Web3 apps. By minimizing blockchain problems, the plug-and-play technique allows Web3 interactions between Decentralized apps and end-users to be fluid and seamless. Apps that employ Biconomy’s extraordinarily simple but beautiful design will experience a substantial improvement in user retention and acquisition by enabling free interactions with public blockchains via Meta Transactions. Biconomy proposes a cross-chain transaction method that can function across several blockchains to enable the integration of a decentralized payment service into services.
8. Polygon
Polygon, an Ethereum scaling platform, is well recognized for letting programmers develop scalable DApps with cheap transaction costs while maintaining security. Polygon employs a customized proof-of-stake consortium blockchain to ensure consistency on each block. The Polygon platform may boost a blockchain project’s scalability, sovereignty, and flexibility while keeping the Ethereum blockchain’s interoperability, security, and structural benefits. MATIC is used for network administration, transaction fees on payment networks, and securitization. Participants in the network can use the proof-of-stake technique to stake their MATIC in exchange for the opportunity to authenticate Polygon network transactions. Then, as payment, efficient miners in the Polygon Chain network receive MATIC.
9. Network Crucible
Networks and systems nowadays are primarily compartmentalized. You’ll need a lot of usernames and passwords, and data theft is a big problem. With the rapid advancement of virtual and augmented reality, hyperrealism, and world-building technologies, better management systems and network compatibility for users are required. Crucible Network creates tools for game developers and provides gamers with a portable identity. Crucible Network aims to bring together the best blockchain and tokenization game developers with mid-tier, indie, and AAA game developers to create a sandbox.
10. Covalent
Covalent provides a consistent API to make billions of Web 3 data points accessible. Covalent provides developers with a unified API for extracting exact, granular blockchain transaction data from many blockchains without writing any code. Developers may utilize Covalent to construct multi-chain apps such as investor dashboard tools, crypto wallets, and NFT galleries by combining data from over 27 distinct blockchains.
11. OpenSea
Devin Finzer and Alex Atallahis established OpenSea, the first and largest peer-to-peer marketplace for NFTs, in 2017. Collectibles, gaming products, domain names, digital art, and many more items backed by a blockchain are examples of NFT applications. OpenSea is an open, inclusive Web3 platform where people can learn about NFTs and interact with others to buy and trade NFTs. YCombinator, Founders Fund, Coinbase Ventures, 1Confirmation, and Blockchain Capital have invested in the OpenSea team, which comes from Stanford, Pinterest, and Google. OpenSea was valued at $13.3 billion in January 2022, after raising $427 million in outside capital since its inception.
12. Tron Dao
TRON DAO is a Singapore-based firm committed to furthering the internet’s decentralization using blockchain technology and decentralized apps (dApps). The TRON network, founded in 2017 by H.E. Justin Sun, has continued to provide excellent results since MainNet debuted in 2018. BitTorrent, a pioneer in decentralized services with almost 100 million monthly active users, was also integrated into the ecosystem in 2018. TRON’s network has grown rapidly in recent years, with over 69 million users on the blockchain and over 2.7 billion transactions. Furthermore, TRON has the world’s highest-circulating quantity of stablecoins, surpassing USDT on Ethereum in April 2021. In December 2021, the TRON network reached full decentralization and became a community-governed DAO.
13. BitGo
BitGo is a startup located in Palo Alto, California that was formed in 2013 by Ben Davenport, Michael Belshe, and Will O’Brien. It provides institutional investors and crypto platforms with liquidity, custody, and security in addition to digital assets and financial services. The debut of BitGo Prime, the first and only completely integrated, full-stack solution with custody, trading, and lending, in 2020, marked a new milestone for the firm. The firm now coordinates activity across wallets, exchanges, and service providers with the launch of BitGo Portfolio and BitGo Tax.
It created BitGo Trust Company in 2018, the first qualified custodian designed specifically for keeping digital assets. BitGo handles more than 20% of all Bitcoin transactions globally and supports over 250 currencies and tokens. BitGo’s customer base includes the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges as well as authorized custodial organizations in Switzerland and Germany. In May 2021, Galaxy Digital paid $1.2 billion for BitGo. BitGo had raised a total of $69.5 million in fundraising across seven rounds before the purchase, with investors including Goldman Sachs, Craft Ventures, Digital Currency, DRW, Galaxy Digital Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, and Valor Equity Partners.
14. NFTY Laboratories
NFTY Labs, headquartered in Miami, Florida, was founded to develop community-based solutions to support the recently discovered growth inside token ecosystems. NFTY Labs was formed to facilitate cross-chain NFT standards and practices while developing newer standards and technology for NFTs. NFTY Labs will assist lead the tech produced for these new NFT ecosystems to assure their success as NFTs continue to reshape the landscape inside the upcoming digital economy. NFYT Labs was founded in 2020 by four co-founders: James Lawrence, Ty Blackard, Kevin Caffery, and Johnathan Ballinger.
15. Spatial
Anand Agarwala and Jinha Lee founded Spatial in 2016 with funding from iNovia Capital, White Star Capital, Expa (founded by Garrett Camp), Kakao Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Leaders Fund, Samsung NEXT, and angels including Mark Pincus (Founder of Zynga), Andy Hertzfeld (Co-Inventor of the Macintosh), and Mike Krieger (Co-Founder of Instagram). Spatial, comprised of a passionate team of 3D Design and AR/VR experts based in New York and San Francisco, is committed to assisting creators and brands in creating their own spaces in the Metaverse to share culture by empowering its users to leverage their beautiful spaces to share eye-popping content, build a close-knit community, and drive meaningful sales of their creative works and products. It also enables its users to design beautiful and functional 3D places, which they may mint as NFTs and sell/rent to others wishing to stage mind-blowing events. Spatial has raised $47.3 million in investment across five rounds so far.
16. Coin List
Coinlist’s purpose is to accelerate the evolution of blockchain technology by identifying and assisting the top developing blockchain initiatives. CoinList supports the whole lifecycle of crypto investment, from token sales through token distribution, trading, lending, and crypto-specific services like staking and access to decentralized-finance opportunities. Customers of CoinList include validators, miners, founders, CEOs, crypto funds, bitcoin pioneers, and a wide range of crypto enthusiasts. CoinList was formed in 2017 by the six-person founding team of Andrew Bromberg, Brian Tubergen, Graham Jenkin, Joshua Slayton, Kendrick Nguyen, and Paul Menchov and has raised a total of $549 million in investment over seventeen reported rounds.
Conclusion
The Semantic Web, as envisioned by Berners-Lee in 2001, has evolved dramatically with the introduction of Web 3.0. The next stage of the internet’s growth is currently envisioned as a decentralized ecosystem built on blockchain technology. It would represent a departure from the centralized mega-platforms and corporations that presently dominate the ecosystem.
The twenty-five Web3 firms on the list are part of the future, one in which views toward how business is done will change dramatically, both in terms of the product/service and how the consumer interacts with the product/service. As more legacy organizations adopt a Web3 mindset and the number of Web3 startups increases, a pattern will emerge in which the old world, that of Web 2.0, will gradually fade away, to be replaced by the new order – the twenty-five Web3 companies described in this essay are among the first.
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