Web3 wave still 5-10 years away: Randi Zuckerberg

It would take users at least five years to move towards what Web3 has to offer and become more popular among people as the technology, and the funding for it, is still in its early days, Randi Zuckerberg, former director of market development at Facebook (now Meta) and the sister of Meta’s chief executive officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg said on Thursday.

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Web3 essentially aims to decentralise users’ data by giving them full control of it with the help of technology like blockchain. Broadly, Web3 works at the intersection of cryptocurrencies, blockchain and the metaverse.

Zuckerberg helped set up Facebook Live and was an early adopter of Web2, or the internet and social media as we know it today. While Zuckerberg said the Web3 opportunity was exciting, she added that it has been difficult to get funding for it presently. 

“It took social media and Web2 almost 5-10 years to go mainstream before the first product was launched. This is like a deja vu moment, we’re in a similar moment with Web3. We’re so early that the kind of capital that’s coming in, you really have to be thinking 5-10 or more years in the future because the adoption just isn’t there,” she said at the ongoing  investor summit in Bengaluru.

“The capital is there if you’re willing to look hard enough with investors that have a long-term vision, but it’s not going to be immediate gratification. It is like a house and you have to imagine what it would look like once it’s fully furnished…it’s hard not everyone has that vision.”

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A Web3 entrepreneur herself, Zuckerberg stressed the need for venture capitalists to be backing more women entrepreneurs early. She said less than 2% of the women founders get funded, that number barring women of colour, in the US. “We have to get women in the emerging fields because if women miss out yet again in the early stages of emerging fields like artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), we’re just going to be having the same conversation 10 years from now,” she said. Speaking on the future of NFTs, Zuckerberg said artists are increasingly gravitating towards Web3 because they can track how many times their work was traded and where it has ended up, giving them more control, as opposed to when they physically sell their art, which is untraceable after the initial transaction.