What are the current projects in Web5?

Disclaimer: I am the co-founder of EFFEKTIO and presenting the app in this issue.

Still, further important pioneering work is being done. I would like to point out and appreciate.

Last week I gave a little introduction to Web5. It was about TBD and the founders of the new movement. People like Jack Dorsey and Mike Brock have led the way, but within a short time many more are going to follow.

For this issue I researched what other projects there are in the Web5 space. I'm pretty sure that other projects are already running in the Web5 area which I haven’t come across yet. Please let me know if you know of any other projects.

BlueSky Social

This is the new project of Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. Users can apply for beta testing and the app is expected to be launched soon. 

BlueSky could challenge social media platforms like Instagram or Twitter. Users are going to have complete control over their data though. It’s promised that no government or company is going to be able to control any content or meta data of BlueSky. This is revolutionary compared to social media apps these days.

With the BlueSky app users are also supposed to be able to move from one account to another in any social network and in addition without leaving data of any kind. This might finally end the trade with user data. BlueSky could be a first step towards disrupting the multi-billion dollar economy around user data.

BlueSky is based on the AT protocol, a decentralized protocol for social media. ATP stands for Authenticated Transport Protocol. This protocol is a decentralized network that works independently of governments and companies. BlueSky promises to give back control over the algorithms to the users.

Zion App

A second Web5 app we should take a look at is called Zion. Zion is also working on a new kind of social media and targets creators and their communities. 

The app is primarily a community app reminiscent of Facebook Groups. Creators post and contribute content and users as their audience pay for those postings in return. The Lightning Network enables direct and immediate payment from one user to another across the Bitcoin blockchain.

Zion is obviously trying to break the link of social media companies which act as intermediaries between content creators and users. Zion wants to create an app that allows full ownership of content and digital identity. The Web5 structure of the app guarantees data protection and at the same time no possibility of targeted advertising for third parties. The privacy and ownership of one's data is guaranteed by the protocol, not by any company.

EFFEKTIO 

EFFEKTIO is the one mobile-first, decentralized community organizing app — Think Whatsapp plus to-do lists (and other more structured apps). 

It combines two innovative ideas into one platform: casual organizing apps and privacy-first data types. Yet its most important feature is the intuitive user interface and user-centered product development making EFFEKTIO as casual and easy to use as WhatsApp for anyone from 9 to 99 years old. The entire platform and its apps assist the community building and project management process without designated people needed. 

EFFEKTIO establishes a new kind of app: The Casual Organizing App. Under “casual organizing” we summarize all organizing activities outside of paid work, like the sports or hobby club, the union or neighborhood assembly, the activist group, volunteer foundation or NGO. 

For this target market EFFEKTIO provides communication and management tools. These tools will range from chat and a social forum for more structured discussions, video and image sharing to a dedicated announcement format with comment sections and likes in a feed or as “stories” to to-do lists for basic project management, polls and voting, event management and meeting coordination, co-budgeting, vaults for sharing secrets and passwords and more - openly and transparently specified and implemented for everyone to copy or build an implementation by themselves. For the first time we put together all of these tools in just one single app. 

EFFEKTIO is built on the Matrix Protocol and thanks to that all data, including messages, are end-to-end encrypted by default. There is no single database available aggregating the state of the client ahead of time.

EFFEKTIO will be absolutely decentralized. No central server will store any kind of data. By now Matrix is a federation network that allows it to be deployed behind country-blocked firewalls but not yet in totally offline or DNS-less scenarios. However the Matrix Foundation highly focuses on that development. EFFEKTIO has also a keen interest in getting that ready and well integrated into its own platform.

Finally there are also two hardware websites that I want to share with you. I discovered them thanks to a tip from Polycarp. Apart from the concrete offers, they reveal another aspect of Web5. Hardware also plays a role when it comes to identity ownership and privacy. This is especially true as long as we are on Web2. Common apps are optimized in such a way that they permanently collect data about the user and "radio it home". The offered products of Start9 and Nabi Technology give back control over your data to you. I definitely recommend taking a look at these websites.

🔗 Links of the week

// What Google tells us about us and the year 2022.

// The rise and fall of AlphaBay, the largest online drug and crime bazaar in history.

// About online collaboration and organization, collective ownership and cultural production.

That's it for this time. Feel free to leave feedback or additions. Or suggest topics that interest you. 

I will get back to you in the new year, have awesome holidays until then and stay decentralized! :) 

Daniel