With the support of policies, how can Web3 replicate the glory of the Internet?

The 1990s was the most glorious and fastest-growing era for the American Internet.

This is due to the strong pull of three driving forces, namely the emergence of the World Wide Web and browsers, the strategic policy guidance of the Clinton administration, and the crazy support of venture capital. With the continuous and powerful boost of these three-stage rockets, the most imaginative legendary journey in the history of human technological development has been written so far.

If the World Wide Web, browsers, and the crazy support of venture capital are just the inevitable results of technological progress and cannot be changed by human will, then the strategic policy guidance of the Clinton administration is that the government, through the formulation of policies, goes with the flow and escorts the technological development trend. All three are indispensable.

So how did the Clinton administration's policies boost the development of the Internet industry? Recently, U.S. state governments are passing policies that are in line with the development of Web3. For example, the city of Austin, Texas, will introduce policies to support the development of blockchain and Web3 technologies. What is the current status of Web3 policies? Can the glory of the Internet be reproduced with the help of policies?

The Internet's glorious moment boosted by policies

In 1999, the book "Funding Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research" compiled by the National Research Council of the United States divided the development of the Internet into four stages: the early stage (1960-1970), the ARPANET expansion stage (1970-1980), the NSFNET stage (1980-1990), and the rise of the Web (1990-present).

The U.S. government has been involved in each of the four stages of the Internet’s development. Especially after the 1990s, government policy support has played an important role in the development of the U.S. Internet industry.

On December 1, 1991, the High Performance Computing and Communications Act drafted by Senator Al Gore was passed by the U.S. Congress. This act is the famous Gore Act in history. The Act allocated $600 million to promote the development of the Internet in the United States. On November 3, 1992, Bill Clinton was elected President of the United States and Al Gore became Vice President. Gore's dream for the Internet obviously impressed the young Clinton. In September 1993, the Clinton administration of the United States issued the "National Information Infrastructure Action Plan" to support the development of the information industry, promote the popularization of the Internet, and lay the foundation for the development of the digital economy in the United States. The president and the vice president jointly called for the acceleration of the construction of the national information highway.

In January 1994, Vice President Al Gore wrote the preface for the Internet Guidelines of that year, becoming the first US Vice President in history to hold an interactive press conference via the national Internet. Driven by the policy, North America, Europe and East Asia all ushered in a climax in network construction, and 1994 was called the "International Internet Year".

With strong policy support, the Internet world ushered in a golden period of development. In 1994, Netscape, the most iconic product of the Internet commercialization wave, was born. In the same year, Microsoft created a web browser for Windows 95. It was also in this year that two graduate students from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, Jerry Yang and David Filo, founded Yahoo!. In March 1995, the company was established, and the world's first portal started. Netscape's IPO on August 9, 1995 marked the beginning of the Internet commercialization boom...

Since then, a large number of Internet companies such as Yahoo were born and grew rapidly, which opened up the prosperity of the Internet economy, successfully boosted US economic growth, and laid the foundation for the prosperity of the US technology industry in the next 20 years.

Although the US Internet suffered heavy losses in the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000, the Bush administration, with its support for the Internet and other new economies, issued a number of bills in succession, implemented tax cuts and strengthened support for corporate R&D, and the basic institutional environment for the Internet remained good. After the bursting of the tech bubble, a number of excellent Internet companies such as Facebook and Twitter were born, and companies such as Google and Oracle also developed rapidly during this period.

In 2018, the Trump administration issued national strategic plans such as the National Cyber ​​Strategy, which clearly defined the strategic goal of maintaining the United States' influence in the development of the science and technology ecosystem and cyberspace.

It can be seen that even though the Internet is an inevitable product of the development of computer science, it still needs strong policy support from government departments before large-scale application. It can be inferred that the development of Web3 will also follow this rule. However, the decentralized and financial attributes of blockchain itself will inevitably bring about problems such as difficult supervision and high risks.

But this does not mean that the government departments have "given up treatment". On the contrary, the government departments are constantly exploring the path of supervision and regulation.

Regulatory Exploration in the Web3 World

In October 2021, several executives from top venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) traveled to Washington, D.C. to explain to leaders on Capitol Hill and the White House why they should regulate the next generation of the internet (Web3).

a16z believes that it urges policymakers to develop a national strategy for these technologies, determine appropriate regulatory provisions based on the risks of different types of products, and consider cross-agency collaboration rather than just regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

a16z's lobbying targets include senior government officials in the White House, executive agencies, regulatory agencies, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. And let senior government decision makers understand the true meaning of Web3 - a group of technologies including blockchain, encryption protocols, digital assets, decentralized finance, and social platforms.

Tomicah Tillemann, global policy director at a16z, believes there may come a time when it makes sense to create a new agency to govern this type of up-and-coming technology.

Tillemann said, "There is probably no area more important than the quality of digital infrastructure in determining a country's long-term success in the 21st century." He also believes that "the United States is not only losing this competition, but it is also unclear whether many of our policymakers realize that the competition is taking place."

On December 8, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee held a five-hour hearing titled "Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation in the United States." This was the most active, constructive, and bipartisan crypto-finance hearing in the history of the United States.

At the hearing, a16z policy director Tomicah Tilleman said: "This is the first time that members of Congress have used the platform of a full committee hearing to emphasize that Web 3 is the future of the Internet. This is a historic turning point in the national discussion about decentralized technology. You also see committee members acknowledging that Web3 platforms have the potential to solve many of the problems they care about, including remittances and financial inclusion. So far, the tone of all participants has been reasonable and constructive. So far, so good."

In addition, there has been progress in policy making around Web3.

On March 12 this year, Austin, Texas, USA will introduce relevant policies to support the development of blockchain and Web3 technologies. The mayor of Austin, Texas has instructed the city manager to help create a favorable government and community environment to support the creation of new technologies such as blockchain and Web3.

Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, Texas, has proposed two new initiatives to fully embrace blockchain technology and crypto payments for the benefit of city development. Mayor Adler tweeted that Austin is happy to support businesses and innovations that turn the promise of Web3, cryptocurrency, and blockchain technology into reality.

On February 16, a regulatory document submitted by the New York Stock Exchange to the US Patent and Trademark Office this month was made public. It hopes to establish a "cryptocurrency and NFT exchange" and compete with Web3 companies such as OpenSea.

Although all these so-called regulatory actions cannot be compared with the policy support and financial support from the US presidential level on the eve of the Internet explosion in the early 1990s, this just shows that the development of Web3 is in its infancy.

At least, at this stage, we have clearly defined what Web3 is.

As early as 2006, when people asked Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, what Web3 was, he said, "People keep asking what Web3 is. I think when SVG is used extensively on the basis of Web2 - everything is rippled, folded and looks like it has no edges - and a whole semantic web covers a lot of data, you can access this incredible data resource."

At the same time, when people asked Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, he elaborated on the simple formula for defining Web terms:

“Web1 is a dial-up Internet connection with an average bandwidth of 50K, Web2 is an average bandwidth of 1M, then Web3 should be a 10M bandwidth, a fully imaged network, that’s what it feels like.”

Now it seems that Web3 is by no means a faster Web2, nor a network with larger data capacity, but a value Internet based on a brand-new architecture. Finally, can Web3 replicate the glory of the Internet with the help of policies? We will have to wait and see.