Foundation of Web3: Fundamental Building Blocks, Architectural
Principles, Design Space
Abstract
The Web3 vision takes blockchain disintermediation to a next level by
making it ubiquitous, encompassing not only payments and financial
services but also digital identities, data and business models.
Recently, Web3 has gained massive attention by major analysts such as
Gartner, Forrester, Forbes Technology Council and the Harvard Business
Review. Albeit the current enthusiasm about Web3, we are lost in a state
of confusion about what Web3 actually is - or could be. The purpose of
this paper is to mitigate the gap between the perceived usefulness of
Web3 and its potential implementation. We take a descriptive design
science approach. We provide informed arguments for a potential
foundation of Web3 in terms of fundamental components, architectural
principles and a Web3 design space. We demonstrate the usefulness of the
provided Web3 foundation by describing Alphabill, a platform that allows
for universal asset tokenization and transfer as a global medium of
exchange. The findings of this research enable policy makers, decision
makers and information systems architects alike to make informed
decisions about Web3 and its potential implementation as follows: (i)
The Web3 can be characterized as the integration of digital rights
exchange into the (application layer) internet protocols. (ii) The Web3
has the potential to revolutionize today’s information systems’s
landscape by turning today’s information systems into deeply
standardized views on a huge, single underlying information structure.
The killer application of a well-founded Web3 is the Web3 itself –
being the currently missing backbone (value-added middleware) for all of
today’s and future enterprise applications and business-to-business
communication. (iii) The scenario-based evaluation of the provided Web3
foundation reveals the described Alphabill platform as a Web3 enabling
technology.