Web3.0 and India: The Chingari Pivot

I come from two Indias. One where a mass sell–off is initiated owing to the panic created by upcoming regulation bill. A bill, that allegedly proposes banning all private cryptocurrencies. Other where world’s greatest developers are leading the #wagmi movement at a global centerstage with their work. In today’s blogpost, we are going to talk about the latter. How India is pioneering the web3.0 innovation and what does future hold for us. But before that, first things first –>

What is Web 3.0?

Well, this topic is so close to my heart that I covered it in detail a few days ago. If you’re interested, you can give it a read here. For the uninitiated, let me summarize it. When internet was born back in early 90s, it was full of static web pages. There was a one way flow of the information where you could go and read something and that was it.

A decade later, in 2000s, there was a shift in the course of internet with the evolution of big tech. Companies like Google, Facebook, Yahoo came up with platforms where you could interact with the internet. A two way communication was established through your likes, comments, tweets etc. Even this blogpost is a product of web2.0. It is feasible for me or anyone in the world to create a website on WordPress and let you consume the information with a possibility of commenting, liking it.

About 15 years later, we are at the brink of another paradigm shift. You see, web2.0 is amazingly built. But it has some inherent issues which are stated below.

Issues with Web2.0:

• Privacy: Where big tech controls all your data and even monetizes it by selling it to brands.

• Monetization: As a consumer you have no options to monetize your time spent on the internet while viewing countless ads. As a creator, the options are limited as there are entry barriers, conditions to monetizing your work.

• Centralization: All your data is stored at a central location run by companies like Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft etc. So if this were to get breached somehow, your entire persona would go for a toss. Not to forget that these companies have and will increasingly become more powerful as they gather more data about you. Think of it like this: Facebook knows more about my likes, dislikes, relationship status, food preferences than Indian Government itself. Yes, that’s when you have your SSN or Aadhar card with the government authorities.

Enter Web 3.0:

Web 3.0 tries to take care of the aforementioned issues, at scale. With blockchain as it’s backbone, web3.0 aims to provide us with a decentralized version of internet that doesn’t rely on snooping. In my opinion, it wouldn’t be wrong to call web 3.0 a business model disruption. Let’s take that up with an example.

Creators of Mozilla and Java script ventured into web3.0 by creating a browser called Brave. Unlike big tech like Google and Facebook, Brave doesn’t track you all over the internet to gather data about your preferences. As a matter of fact, if you are viewing this on Brave browser, you will get no ads. However, I can still get paid because I signed up for the creator program.

As a user of Brave browser, you have full control of how many ads you want to see from 10 per hour down to ZERO.

So here’s the secret sauce. Unlike Google and Facebook which invade your privacy in the name of targeted advertisement, Brave approaches this by tracking user attention and engagement in real time. They track what tabs are you working on and how you are interacting with each of them. This data is not sent back to some centralized server.

This enables Brave to learn what kind of ads need to be shown basis your consumption of particular type of content. For example, if you are like me, you’d get crypto specific ads all the time. All of this is yet again powered by a crypto called Basic Attention Token.

Brands use BAT to pay creators to run ads for their brand and a part of it is given the the actual user because he paid attention to the ad. In a nutshell, you just changed the entire ad ecosystem.

India and Web 3.0

But this time, things were a quite different.

We weren’t just a bunch of HODLERs but also BUIDLERs. For some perspective let’s first dive deeper into how creator economy is doing in India:

Creator Economy:

As per YouTube, it has seen over 60% year-on-year increase in the number of channels which earn more than Rs. one lakh in revenue, as of June 2021. Besides rise in revenue, many of these creators have witnessed an increase in subscriber base. More than 140 channels have crossed 10 million subscribers in India, while more than 4,000 channels have over one million subscribers, as of June 2021.

It is evident that when you give one of the world’s cheapest internet to one of the world’s largest populations, people are bound to play along. With lockdown induced viewership, content consumption has jumped manifold. It is evident with the current trend that India will emerge as the biggest player in educational and personal development related content on the internet.

Therefore, if native companies stick to basic models of revenue generation based on ads, it will be extremely difficult for them to survive. Why? Because as discussed above, these ads rely on scavenging the user information to show them the relevant stuff.

Which is why you would now see YT pivoting to models like super chat, subscription for content creators. However, a bigger piece of user is still being ignored here.

Chingari: India’s First Mainstream Web 3.0 Transition

When Tiktok was banned in India, it paved the way for multiple similar applications. However, none of them could make it as big as Tiktok. Why? Because Tiktok, by design was meant to be addictive. There was a set of psychiatrists and neurobiologists in the development team of the product that worked on how to make the platform addictive.

This is outright unethical. How is this different from someone duping you into taking drugs?

However, one platform rose the occasion and decided to put an end to all of this forever. Chingari, led by Sumit Ghosh, became first existing social media platform to pivot from web 2.0 to web 3.0.

Revenue Models:

Starting December 5th, if you are on Chingari, there’ll be no ads. How do they generate revenue then you ask? Well, there are multiple streams instead of just one:

A. All creators would be incentivized to make videos in the form of $GARI token. So you are helping the people who run the platform, generate wealth. More work they do, more wealth they generate.

B. Each of the short video can be minted into an NFT and users could now buy it. Finally, a user has skin in the game. They can participate in the entire ecosystem instead of just liking/commenting on the video.

C. Users could also send $GARI tokens to their favorite small creators to get better equipment etc. In effect, betting on their future. In return, they could get a share of the creator’s revenue in the future.

D. On the top of all transactions, $GARI charges a facilitation fee which becomes there source of revenue.

If this model succeeds, we could see a lot more shifts. Why? Because every player of the ecosystem has skin in the game. If the platform booms, I won’t be surprised if $GARI is HODL’d by general public which isn’t even there on the platform.

Conclusion:

The crypto industry could add $184 billion dollars of economic value to India by 2030, says a report published by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) in India. With the right policies, India is extremely well positioned to allow the revolution in information technology to improve India’s citizens’ quality of life, creating jobs and reinvigorate the economy.

We have already seen Indian exchanges like CoinDCX achieving the coveted Unicorn status. And I think we are just getting started here.

I am rooting for this revolution. Are you game?

Got questions? Want to take it to the next level? Reach out to me using your preferred platform from the links below

Until next time..

Btw, if you are a seasoned trader or just testing the waters with derivatives, here’s an exchange specifically meant for that. Head over to MCS using this link. Still not convinced? Join the vibrant community that is talking about MCS on Telegram, here.

This blog post is part of the blog challenge ‘Blogaberry Dazzle’ hosted by Cindy D’Silva and Noor Anand Chawla in collaboration with Mojo Box – A great way to sample brands before buying them.