More Than Just A Tech Revolution

When most people talk about Web 3.0, they talk about decentralisation, tokenomics, and blockchain architecture. But for me, that’s the surface. What fascinates me about Web 3.0 isn’t the tech itself — it’s what that tech allows us to rethink.

At its core, Web 3.0 isn’t just a shift in digital infrastructure. It’s a civilisational fork in the road. A chance to challenge the quiet empire of Western digital assumptions and ask: who gets to define the rules of trust, value, and identity in the digital age? I had the great honour of meeting Tim Berners-Lee at a conference and he mentioned that the original vision of the internet was much more aligned with web2 than web3

The old internet — Web 2.0 — was platform-centric. Power was centralised. Identity was fragmented. Users became products, not participants. The architecture was extractive, and the cultural premise behind it was this: behave like us, speak our language, adopt our norms, and we’ll let you play.

Web3 in some ways upends that.

To me, web3 is an opportunity to reimagine digital systems in a way that aligns with the plurality of the real world — not a flattened, sanitised version of it. It’s not just about blockchain. It’s about dignity. It’s about building systems where identity isn’t something you have to rent from a platform, but something you own. Where value isn’t dictated by central intermediaries, but by communities. Where compliance doesn’t mean erasure of difference, but recognition of it.

In many of the places I am fascinated by and work in — Africa, South Asia, Latin America — systems of value, proof, and reputation don’t look like they do in the West. But they are no less valid. The problem is, the current infrastructure can’t see them and in turn see risk.

Web3 if done right, offers an alternative. It allows for local trust systems to be encoded into global networks. It allows for sovereign identity. It allows for financial logic to evolve beyond the passport-heavy, colonial frameworks that still govern who gets access to global liquidity.

But — and this is critical — none of that happens automatically. Decentralisation on its own doesn’t solve anything. In fact, it can make things worse if we simply replicate old power structures using new tools. Decentralised tech built with centralised assumptions is just a more expensive version of the same problem.

This is why I often describe Web 3.0 as a cultural revolution first, and a technical one second. It only becomes transformative if we are deliberate about who we include in its design. About what assumptions we challenge. About whose voices we prioritise.

I don’t believe in neutrality. All systems reflect the values of their architects. And if we’re serious about building an internet — and a financial system — that serves the world, we need to start with values that aren’t imported. We need to start with empathy, pluralism, and humility.

This matters because the stakes are real. The digital rails we build now will become the backbone of trust, identity, and capital for the next century. If we build them to only recognise one type of legitimacy, one style of governance, one cultural framework — we will entrench inequality on a scale far greater than any previous regime.

But if we get it right — if we build Web 3.0 not just as a toolset, but as a cultural reimagining — then we unlock something much more profound than just faster transactions or asset ownership. We unlock a new era of possibility. One where people from all parts of the world participate on their own terms, in their own languages, with their own dignity intact.