The Internet, which has been around for more than 20 years, was once one of the most profitable industries. People have successively figured out core business models such as "traffic is king" and "content is king". From Web1.0 to Web2.0, there are different logics for making money. When people thought that they could "make a living with one trick" by grasping these core business models, they never expected that Web3.0, which claims to reconstruct the Internet, has emerged in recent years, and the recent emergence of AI almost turned the table upside down.

At present, we have to think about the most common question: the "old routine" of the past may no longer be so effective, so how can we make money in the future?

01

From Web1.0 to Web3.0, a brief history of Internet “gold rush”

Before the Internet appeared, there were many money-making logics in human history, such as the "information gap" business, the "water selling" business, etc. Later, the Internet changed the way people obtain and transmit information, and many new profit models were born.

Web 1.0, a large amount of valuable information was uploaded to the Internet for people to retrieve, which lowered the threshold of information gap to a certain extent. For example, Alibaba Yellow Pages at that time moved business opportunity information to the Internet. At that time, the number of "Internet users" was small, and the business conversion rate was very high. If there were people coming, there would be money. The most important thing for the "pioneering" Internet companies was to attract new users. The grassroots entrepreneurs at that time (some of whom are now bigwigs) made their first pot of gold by frantically piling information on the Internet to obtain traffic from search engines. At that time, "traffic is king" was truly the saying.

Web2.0, the Internet application ecosystem has exploded, each platform has a large number of users, and the competition has become fierce. Simply bringing in traffic may not necessarily lead to conversion. Gradually, people find it increasingly difficult to make money with only traffic, just like many people only send business cards without knowing whether the other party will throw them away, or ask to add WeChat without knowing that the other party will delete the friend later. The important thing is to retain users in order to make money in a "steady and long-term" way. At this time, many platforms have emerged to provide diversified content through UGC (user-generated content) to meet the needs of different users to increase stickiness, and then use the obtained user information big data to make profits through advertising and other methods.

All the big Internet companies have changed their mindset and transformed from producing their own content to self-media platforms, such as official accounts, Baijia accounts, Toutiao accounts, Sohu accounts... Even banks and Alipay have started to set up xx accounts. Self-media account owners only need to focus on providing high-quality content to obtain traffic recommended by the platform's algorithms and advertising revenue sharing, so there is a saying that "content is king".

By Web3.0, the Internet is already a mixed bag. After years of "bloodbath", people have begun to reject commercial information and advertisements on various platforms, and are wary of Internet oligarchs that make a living by using and selling user information. Now, even if users are retained, it is becoming increasingly difficult to gain trust and create transactions. So what if users on the platform become a community of interests that cannot be driven away, like "family"? Through equity tokens, everyone can become a "shareholder" of the platform, which not only changes the way of profit distribution but also becomes the real owner of data and assets, forming a win-win model for all parties. Value comes from consensus, which may be one of the profound understandings of everyone who enters the crypto world. Perhaps we can simply summarize this phenomenon as "consensus is king" for the time being.

At the beginning of this year, a sudden ChatGPT trend blew up, making people realize that AI is turning the tables, targeting the core profit models of the past, such as information asymmetry, traffic being king, and content being king. In fact, AI has been involved as early as the Web 1.0 era. For example, the increasingly intelligent search engines are allowing more and more ordinary people who were not originally professional to quickly obtain professional information from the Internet, gradually breaking down the barriers of "information asymmetry". At the same time, the emergence of AIGC has also posed a major threat to "content being king", and content producers are beginning to compete with AI for jobs...

in conclusion:

Web1.0 Traffic is king: Websites provide content and attract users

Web2.0 content is king: users provide content, platforms are responsible for traffic and share, retaining users

Web3.0 consensus is king: the platform belongs to the users, and the users participate in the co-construction and become a "family"

AI flips the table: start all over again?

02

Gold Rush in the AI ​​and Web3 Era

In the above, the evolution of profit models from Web1.0 to Web3.0 has a unique connection. So what kind of sparks might be created in the era of the simultaneous development of Web3.0 and AI? The so-called Internet thinking is not static. It changes quietly with technological innovation. We only need to grasp the main trend and follow up:

(1) Integration trend of AI and Web3

AI is undoubtedly a great help to human beings, but the damage it brings is also very difficult to deal with. In fact, Web3 has begun to provide solutions. The recently hotly discussed WorldCoin is a Web3 project created by Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, based on his deep insights into the potential problems brought by AI. As humans continue to explore AI in depth, it is inevitable that it will replace humans to complete a large number of jobs. A large number of low-income people who lose their jobs will most likely bring about social unrest (such as going out to buy things for free). Although WorldCoin is constantly controversial, the borderless UBI (unconditional basic income) in the form of Web3 is fair, open, and does not disclose privacy. It is currently the best solution. Regardless of the result, it is a forward-looking social experiment.

AI is not only not conducive to the increase of employment rate, but its superpowers will be fully utilized by giants. Oligarchs holding huge amounts of big data will have unprecedented "power" concentration, and ordinary people will have less and less power to resist. People's privacy and other rights will be more and more difficult to be guaranteed. This is why regulators in various countries are paying close attention to AI, data, privacy and other issues. At present, the solution to these problems still depends on Web3. Its power decentralization and privacy computing capabilities inherited from the bottom layer of Crypto directly hit the pain points of AI.

In addition, AI's demand for computing power is a huge problem, and Web3 brings "high-quality and low-cost" distributed computing power supply. $BTC $ETH