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Taiwan should embrace web3 to see real-life applications
Taiwan should embrace the developments in the web3 industry and allow big and small companies to bring real-life applications into fruition, according to experts who spoke at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) led forum recently.
Titled, Cross-Border: Big Data in The Cookieless Future, the guest speakers were Bruce Bateman, Chairman of Innovation and Startup Ecosystem at LITEON, and Melody Ho, Marketing Director of Glia Cloud.
“I think Taiwan [should not] be scared and say I could do this now… every field that there is today is going to need machine learning… is going to need some kind of blockchain,” Bateman said.
As an example, he noted that blockchain would be very useful as consumers are demanding information about the components of their computers, Taiwan being one of the largest suppliers of PCs and laptops in the world.
“When we buy components to build computers, we want to know if those chips [are] real, and do they come from the right place,” Bateman said.
On the other hand, Ho noted that while there were government-led initiatives on building applications that were related to web3, there should also be more participation from the private sector, to enact true decentralization, the core feature of web3.
“I see a few challenges that we are going to face and maybe on the hardware side, the government can help as a centralized organization…create an environment that's comfortable for this new market to grow,” Ho said.
“It will still take third parties like the organization, the corporations, the startups, to really bring these applications into our daily lives,” Ho noted.
Web3 definition is still being refined
The speakers agree that web3 has yet to be exactly defined. For instance, on whether blockchain and metaverse are already the web3, the same thing with NFTs or non-fungible tokens.
“Web3 is a new approach to how we want to live, so if we think about our lives, the future, web 3 is associated with NFT [and] Blockchain, but it's really associated more with the metaverse,” Bateman said.
“Metaverse is the ability to move between a virtual world and a physical world and being able to do what I do in the physical world in the virtual world. I may be able to do more in a virtual world,” he noted.
Data ownership and new approach in marketing
Bateman said web 3 would provide users with a contextual world in the absence of cookies. The so-called “cookieless future” is a shift in the digital space as browsers plan to phase out third party cookies that have been used by marketers to accurately identify and serve their customers.
“What you're going to get in web3 is much more information, about ‘I will own the data,’ I will know who I am, and I will then give to people what I want to give…but it's going to be a seamless world.”
In the context of data ownership, Ho said web3 has some challenges for marketers. “The good [aspect] is that there are certain algorithms you can trace, so if you're going to market on certain platforms, you're going to learn what is the norm on those platforms and how to get traffic on the platform,” she said.
“The bad part is you want to market on different platforms [and] you got to learn how to market on different platforms and the algorithms change from time to time, so it is also something we should always adapt to,” she noted.
NFTs show proof of product
Bateman said that creators would benefit the most from NFTs as it allows for selling of creations without the need for middlemen who mostly control the transactions.
“I think that's going to come down to the creator level and that's what decentralization is all about,” Bateman said.
NFTs have been getting negative perceptions, as a real product as scams proliferate the market. For example, OpenSea, the largest marketplace for NFTs, has plagiarized NFTs while the platform’s Discord channel was hacked to steal NFTs.
Bateman said one way to gauge whether to believe in NFTs and a product/innovation in general is “if you don't have people trying to rip you off you don't have a product.”
“I am quite positive with NFTs because … at the end of the day it's still going to circle back to the artwork itself, so as a new distribution channel for artworks, I actually see great opportunities for young artists,” Ho said.
The recent event was held at the Taiwan Tech Arena as part of an ongoing push by ITRI, a Taiwan government agency, to facilitate discussions on topics that help Taiwan’s startup ecosystem. The event was moderated by the author of this article, Paolo Joseph Lising, founder of startupinTaiwan, a site that provides information and insights for foreigners who wish to start their companies in Taiwan.
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