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HBR Insights Web3, Crypto, and Blockchain Collection (3 Books)

Contents

Web3: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

Crypto: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

Blockchain: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review Press

Boston, Massachusetts

eISBN: 978-1-64782-723-6
 Insights You Need from

WEB3

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054-112070_ch01_3P.indd 2 08/12/22 11:45 PM
 Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind?

Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the top-
ics that are shaping your company’s future with the Insights You
Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR’s smartest
thinking on fast-moving issues—blockchain, cybersecurity,
AI, and more—each book provides the foundation introduc-
tion and practical case studies your organization needs to
compete today and collects the best research, interviews, and
analysis to get it ready for tomorrow.
You can’t afford to ignore how these issues will transform
the landscape of business and society. The Insights You Need
series will help you grasp these critical ideas—and prepare
you and your company for the future.

Books in the series include:

Agile Global Recession
Artificial Intelligence Hybrid Workplace
Blockchain Monopolies and Tech
Climate Change Giants

Coronavirus: Leadership Racial Justice

and Recovery Strategic Analytics
Customer Data and Privacy The Year in Tech, 2021
Cybersecurity The Year in Tech, 2022
Crypto The Year in Tech, 2023
The Future of Work Web3

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054-112070_ch01_3P.indd 4 08/12/22 11:45 PM
 Insights You Need from

WEB3

Harvard Business Review Press

Boston, Massachusetts

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 HBR Press Quantity Sales Discounts
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The web addresses referenced in this book were live and correct at the time of the
book’s publication but may be subject to change.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Harvard Business Review Press, issuing body.
Title: Web3.
Other titles: Insights you need from Harvard Business Review.
Description: Boston, Massachusetts : Harvard Business Review Press, [2023] |
Series: Insights you need from Harvard Business Review | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022039362 (print) | LCCN 2022039363 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781647824976 (paperback) | ISBN 9781647824983 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: World Wide Web—Technological innovations. | Business—Data
processing. | Blockchains (Databases)—Industrial applications. | Cryptocurrencies. |
Web applications.
Classification: LCC TK5105.888 .W36746 2023 (print) | LCC TK5105.888 (ebook) |
DDC 004.67/8—dc23/eng/20221103
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022039362
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022039363
ISBN: 978-1-64782-497-6
eISBN: 978-1-64782-498-3
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American
National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in
Libraries and Archives Z39.48-1992.

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 Contents

Introduction
What Is Web3? 1
Your guide to (what could be) the future of the internet.
by Thomas Stackpole

1. Web3 Will Run on Cryptocurrency 29

Before we hurtle forward, consider how we got here.
An interview with Jeff John Roberts by Ramsey Khabbaz

2. Why Blockchain’s Ethical Stakes Are So High 45

How developers and users can mitigate potential
harm in Web3.
by Reid Blackman

3. What a DAO Can—and Can’t—Do 61

An introduction to decentralized autonomous
organizations.
by Jonathan Ruane and Andrew McAfee

4. Why Build in Web3 75

It has the potential to unlock a more valuable
internet for everyone.
by Jad Esber and Scott Duke Kominers

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 Contents

5. How Brands Are Experimenting with Web3 85

What early adopters are getting right.
by Ana Andjelic

6. Cautionary Tales from Cryptoland 95

As the technology goes mainstream, its potential
to do harm will grow, and fast.
An interview with Molly White by Tom Stackpole

7. Web3 Is Our Chance to Make a Better Internet 109

A theory of justice for a new era.
by Li Jin and Katie Parrott

About the Contributors 127

Index 131

viii

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 Introduction

WHAT IS WEB3?
by Thomas Stackpole

Do you remember the first time you heard about Bit-

coin? Maybe it was a faint buzz about a new technology
that would change everything. Perhaps you felt a tingle of
FOMO as the folks who got in early suddenly amassed a
small fortune—even if it wasn’t clear what the “money”
could legitimately be spent on. Maybe you just wondered
whether your company should be working on a crypto
strategy in case it did take off in your industry, even if you
didn’t really care one way or the other about it.
Most likely, soon after Bitcoin came to your attention—
whenever that may have happened—there was a crash.
Every year or two, Bitcoin’s value has tanked. Each time it
does, skeptics rush to dismiss it as dead, railing that it was

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 Introduction

always a scam for nerds and crooks and was nothing more
than a fringe curiosity pushed by techno-libertarians and
people who hate banks. Bitcoin never had a future along-
side real tech companies, they’d contend, and then they’d
forget about it and move on with their lives.
And, of course, it would come back.
Bitcoin now seems to be everywhere. Amid all the de-
mands on our attention, many of us didn’t notice cryp-
tocurrencies slowly seeping into the mainstream. Until
suddenly Larry David was pitching them during the
Super Bowl; stars like Paris Hilton, Tom Brady, and Jamie
Foxx were hawking them in ads; and a frankly terrifying
Wall Street–inspired robot bull celebrating cryptocur-
rency was unveiled in Miami. What was first a curiosity
and then a speculative niche has become big business—
although that hasn’t stopped it from crashing yet again.
Crypto, however, is just the tip of the spear. The under-
lying technology, blockchain, is what’s called a “distrib-
uted ledger”—a database hosted by a network of computers
instead of a single server—that offers users an immutable
and transparent way to store information. Blockchain
is now being deployed to new ends: for instance, to cre-
ate “digital deed” ownership records of unique digital
objects—or non-fungible tokens. NFTs exploded in 2021
and 2022, conjuring a $41 billion market seemingly out
of thin air. Beeple, for example, caused a sensation when

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 Introduction

an NFT of his artwork sold for $69 million at Christie’s.

Even more esoteric cousins, such as DAOs, or “decentral-
ized autonomous organizations,” operate like headless
corporations: They raise and spend money, but all deci-
sions are voted on by members and executed by encoded
rules. One DAO recently raised $47 million in an attempt
to buy a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution. Advocates of
DeFi (or “decentralized finance,” which aims to remake
the global financial system) are lobbying Congress and
pitching a future without banks.
Th totality of these efforts is called “Web3.” The moni-
ker is a convenient shorthand for the project of rewiring
how the web works, using blockchain to change how
information is stored, shared, and owned. In theory, a
blockchain-based web could shatter the monopolies on
who controls information, who makes money, and even
how networks and corporations work. Advocates argue
that Web3 will create new economies, new classes of
products, and new services online; that it will return de-
mocracy to the web; that it is going to define the next era
of the internet—that it is inevitable.
Or is it? While it’s undeniable that energy, money, and
talent are surging into Web3 projects, remaking the web is
a major undertaking. For all its promise, blockchain faces
significant technical, environmental, ethical, and regulatory
hurdles between here and hegemony. A growing chorus of

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 Introduction

skeptics warns that Web3 is rotten with speculation, theft,

and privacy problems, and that the pull of centralization
and the proliferation of new intermediaries is already
undermining the utopian pitch for a decentralized web.
Meanwhile, businesses and leaders are trying to make
sense of the potential—and pitfalls—of a rapidly changing
landscape that could pay serious dividends to organizations
that get it right. Many companies are testing the Web3
waters, and while some have enjoyed major successes, sev-
eral high-profile firms are finding that they (or their
customers) don’t like the temperature. Most people, of
course, don’t even really know what Web3 is: In a casual poll
of Harvard Business Review readers on LinkedIn in 2022,
almost 70% said they didn’t know what the term meant.
Welcome to the confusing, contested, exciting, utopian,
scam-ridden, disastrous, democratizing, (maybe) decen-
tralized world of Web3. Here’s what you need to know.

From Web1 to Web3

To put Web3 into context, let me offer a quick refresher.

In the beginning, there was the internet: the physical
infrastructure of wires and servers that lets computers, and
the people in front of them, talk to each other. The U.S.
government’s Arpanet sent its first message in 1969, but

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 Introduction

the web as we know it today didn’t emerge until 1991,

when HTML and URLs made it possible for users to nav-
igate between static pages. Consider this the read-only
web, or Web1.
In the early 2000s, things started to change. For one, the
internet was becoming more interactive; it was an era of user-
generated content, or the read/write web. Social media was
a key feature of Web2 (or Web 2.0, as you may know it), and
Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr came to define the experience
of being online. YouTube, Wikipedia, and Google, along with
the ability to comment on content, expanded our ability to
watch, learn, search, and communicate.
The Web2 era has also been one of centralization.
Network effects and economies of scale have led to clear
winners, and those companies (many of which I men-
tioned above) have produced mind-boggling wealth for
themselves and their shareholders by scraping users’ data
and selling targeted ads against it. This has allowed ser-
vices to be offered for “free,” though users initially didn’t
understand the implications of that bargain. Web2 also
created new ways for regular people to make money, such
as through the sharing economy and the sometimes-
lucrative job of being an influencer.
There’s plenty to critique in the current system: The
companies with concentrated or near-monopoly power
have often failed to wield it responsibly, consumers who

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 Introduction

now realize that they are the product are becoming in-
creasingly uncomfortable with ceding control of their
personal data, and it’s possible that the targeted-ad econ-
omy is a fragile bubble that does little to actually boost
advertisers. As the web has grown up, centralized, and
gone corporate, many have started to wonder whether
there’s a better future out there.
Which brings us to Web3. Advocates of this vision
are pitching it as a roots-deep update that will correct the
problems and perverse incentives of Web2. Worried about
privacy? Encrypted wallets protect your online identity.
About censorship? A decentralized database stores every-
thing immutably and transparently, preventing moderators
from swooping in to delete offending content. Centraliza-
tion? You get a real vote on decisions made by the networks
you spend time on. More than that, you get a stake that’s
worth something—you’re not a product, you’re an owner.
This is the vision of the read/write/own web.

OK, but What Is Web3?

The seeds of what would become Web3 were planted

in 1991, when scientists W. Scott Stornetta and Stuart
Haber launched the first blockchain—a project to time-
stamp digital documents. But the idea didn’t really take

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 Introduction

root until 2009, when Bitcoin was launched in the wake of

the financial crisis (and at least partially in response to it)
by the pseudonymous inventor Satoshi Nakamoto. It and
its undergirding blockchain technology work like this:
Ownership of the cryptocurrency is tracked on a shared
public ledger, and when one user wants to make a trans-
fer, “miners” process the transaction by solving a complex
math problem, adding a new “block” of data to the chain,
and earning newly created Bitcoin for their efforts. While
the Bitcoin chain is used just for currency, newer block-
chains offer other options. Ethereum, which launched
in 2015, is both a cryptocurrency and a platform that can
be used to build other cryptocurrencies and blockchain
projects. Gavin Wood, one of its cofounders, described
Ethereum as “one computer for the entire planet,” with
computing power distributed across the globe and con-
trolled nowhere. Now, after more than a decade, propo-
nents of a blockchain-based web are proclaiming that a
new era—Web3—has dawned.
Put very simply, Web3 is an extension of cryptocur-
rency, using blockchain in new ways to new ends. A
blockchain can store the number of tokens in a wallet,
the terms of a self-executing contract, or the code for a
decentralized app (dApp). Not all blockchains work the
same way, but in general, coins are used as incentives for
miners to process transactions. On proof-of-work chains

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 Introduction

Glossary of Web3 Terms

Web3. A new version of the web, built on blockchains, that
would (in theory) be decentralized, democratic, and peer-
to-peer. Cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and DAOs are all part of
the Web3 and enable a read/write/own internet.

Blockchain. A “distributed ledger”—that is, a database

hosted by a network of computers instead of a single
server—that offers users an immutable and transparent
way to store information. It’s the backbone for Web3 tech-
nologies like cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

Cryptocurrency. A form of currency that doesn’t rely on a

central bank, government, or other intermediaries. Tech-
nically, it’s a software that runs on blockchains. There are
currently thousands of cryptocurrencies, but the most
common include bitcoin and ether.

like Bitcoin, solving the complex math problems necessary

to process transactions is energy-intensive by design. On a
“proof of stake” chain, which is newer but increasingly com-
mon, processing transactions simply requires that the
verifiers with a stake in the chain agree that a transaction
is legit—a process that’s significantly more efficient. In

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 Introduction

NFT (non-fungible token). An NFT is a digital deed represent-

ing ownership over a unique digital object. These objects
commonly include artwork or digital versions of collect-
ibles such as the illustrated avatars of the Bored Ape Yacht
Club or Time magazine covers. They are authenticated on
a blockchain.

DAO (decentralized autonomous organization). A DAO is a head-

less corporation that raises and spends money. All deci-
sions are voted on by members and executed by encoded
rules on a blockchain. They are often formed by congre-
gations of strangers who are geographically dispersed but
share a common goal.

both cases, transaction data is public, though users’ wal-

lets are identified only by a cryptographically generated
address. Blockchains are “write only,” which means you
can add data to them but can’t delete it.
Web3 and cryptocurrencies run on what are called
“permissionless” blockchains, which have no centralized

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 Introduction

control and don’t require users to trust—or even know

anything about—other users to do business with them.
This is mostly what people are talking about when they
say “blockchain.” “Web3 is the internet owned by the
builders and users, orchestrated with tokens,” says Chris
Dixon, a partner at the venture capital firm a16z and one
of Web3’s foremost advocates and investors, borrowing
the definition from Web3 adviser Packy McCormick.
This is a big deal because it changes a foundational dy-
namic of today’s web, in which companies squeeze users
for every bit of data they can. Tokens and shared owner-
ship, Dixon says, fix “the core problem of centralized net-
works, where the value is accumulated by one company,
and the company ends up fighting its own users and
partners.”
In 2014, Ethereum’s Wood wrote a foundational blog
post in which he sketched out his view of the new era. Web3
is a “reimagination of the sorts of things we already use
the web for, but with a fundamentally diff erent model
for the interactions between parties,” he said. “Information
that we assume to be public, we publish. Information that
we assume to be agreed, we place on a consensus-ledger.
Information that we assume to be private, we keep secret
and never reveal.” In this vision, all communication is
encrypted, and identities are hidden. “In short, we en-
gineer the system to mathematically enforce our prior

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 Introduction

assumptions, since no government or organization can

reasonably be trusted.”
The idea has evolved since then, and new use cases have
started popping up. The Web3 streaming service Sound.
xyz promises a better deal for artists. Blockchain-based
games, like the Pokémon-esque Axie Infinity, let users
earn money as they play. So-called stablecoins, whose
value is pegged to the dollar, the euro, or some other
external reference, have been pitched as upgrades to the
global financial system (though not all of them remained
stable, or even solvent, through the May 2022 crash). And
crypto has gained traction as a solution for cross-border
payments, especially for users in volatile environments.
“Blockchain is a new type of computer,” Dixon tells
me. Just as it took years to understand the extent to
which PCs and smartphones transformed the way we
use technology, blockchain has been in a long incubation
phase. Now, he says, “I think we might be in the golden
period of Web3, where all the entrepreneurs are entering.”
Although the eye-popping price tags, like the Beeple sale,
have garnered much of the attention, there’s more to the
story. “The vast majority of what I’m seeing is smaller-
dollar things that are much more around communities,”
he notes, like Sound.xyz. Whereas scale has been a key
measure of a Web2 company, engagement is a better in-
dicator of what might succeed in Web3.

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 Introduction

Dixon is betting big on this future. He and a16z (a ven-

ture capital firm) started putting money into the space
in 2013 and invested $2.2 billion in Web3 companies in
2021 and said he was looking to double that the follow-
ing year.1 The number of active developers working on
Web3 code nearly doubled in 2021, to roughly 18,000—
not huge, considering global numbers, but notable, none-
theless. Perhaps most significantly, Web3 projects have
become part of the zeitgeist, and the buzz is undeniable.
But as high-profile, self-immolating startups like
Th ranos and WeWork remind us, buzz isn’t everything.
So what happens next? And what should you watch out for?

What Web3 Might Mean for Companies

Web3 will have a few key differences from Web2: Users

won’t need separate log-ins for every site they visit but
instead will use a centralized identity (probably their
crypto wallet) that carries their information. They’ll have
more control over the sites they visit, as they earn or buy
tokens that allow them to vote on decisions or unlock
functionality.
It’s still unclear whether the product lives up to the
pitch. Predictions as to what Web3 might look like at scale
are just guesses, but some projects have grown pretty big.

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 Introduction

The Bored Ape Yacht Club, NBA Top Shot, and the cryp-
togaming giant Dapper Labs have built successful NFT
communities. Clearinghouses such as Coinbase (for buy-
ing, selling, and storing cryptocurrency) and OpenSea
(the largest digital marketplace for crypto collectibles
and NFTs) have created Web3 on-ramps for people with
little to no technical know-how.
While companies such as Microsoft, Overstock, and
PayPal have accepted cryptocurrencies for years, NFTs
are the primary way brands are now experimenting with
Web3. Practically speaking, an NFT is some mix of a
deed, a certificate of authenticity, and a membership card.
It can confer “ownership” of digital art (typically, owner-
ship is recorded on the blockchain and a link points to an
image somewhere) or rights or access to a group. NFTs
can operate on a smaller scale than coins because they
create their own ecosystems and require nothing more
than a community of people who find value in the project.
For example, baseball cards are valuable only to certain
collectors, but that group really believes in their value.
Most successful forays by traditional companies into
Web3 have been ones that create communities or plug
in to existing ones. Consider the NBA: Top Shot was
one of the first NFT projects from a legacy brand, and it
offered fans the opportunity to buy and trade clips, called
“moments” (a LeBron James dunk, for instance), that

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 Introduction

function like trading cards. It took off because it created

a new kind of community space for fans, many of whom
may have already been collecting basketball cards. Other
front-runner brands, such as Nike, Adidas, and Under
Armour, similarly added a digital layer to their existing
collector communities. All three companies offer NFTs
that can be used in the virtual world—for example, al-
lowing the owner to gear up an avatar—or that confer
rights to products or exclusive streetwear drops in the
real world. Adidas sold $23 million worth of NFTs in
less than a day and instantly created a resale market on
OpenSea, just like what you might see after a limited
drop of new shoes. Similarly, Time magazine launched
an NFT project to build an online community that lever-
ages the publication’s deep history.
Bored Ape Yacht Club is the biggest success story of
an NFT project going mainstream. Combining hype and
exclusivity, BAYC offers access to real-life parties and to
online spaces, along with usage rights to the ape’s image—
further reinforcing the brand. An ape NFT puts the owner
in an exclusive club, both figuratively and literally.
One lesson from these efforts is that on-ramps matter,
but less so the more committed the community is. Get-
ting a crypto wallet isn’t hard, but it is an added step.
So Top Shot doesn’t require a one—users can just plug
in their credit card—which helped it acquire interested

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 Introduction

users new to NFTs. The BAYC was a niche interest, but

when it took off, it became a catalyst for people to create
wallets and drove interest in OpenSea.
Some companies have had rockier experiences with
NFT projects and crypto features. For example, when
Jason Citron, the CEO of Discord, a voice, video, and
text communication service, teased a feature that could
connect the app to crypto wallets, Discord users muti-
nied, leading him to clarify that the company had “no
current plans” to launch the tie-in. The underwear brand
MeUndies and the U.K. branch of the World Wildlife
Fund both quickly pulled the plug on NFT projects after
a fierce backlash by customers furious about their sizable
carbon footprint. Even the success stories have hit bumps
in the road. Nike is currently fighting to have unauthor-
ized NFTs “destroyed,” and OpenSea is full of knockoffs
and imitators. Given that blockchain is immutable, this
is raising novel legal questions, and it isn’t clear how
companies will handle the issue. Further, there’s recent
evidence that the market for NFTs is stalling entirely.
Companies that are considering stepping into this
space should remember: Web3 is polarizing, and there
are no guarantees. Amid many points of disagreement,
the chief divide is between people who believe in what
Web3 could be and critics who decry the many problems
dogging it right now.

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 Introduction

The Case Against Web3

The early days of a technology are a heady time. The pos-
sibilities are endless, and there’s a focus on what it can
do—or will do, according to optimists. I’m old enough to
remember when the unfettered discourse enabled by
Twitter and Facebook was supposed to sow democracy
the world over. As Web3’s aura of inevitability (and profit-
ability) wins converts, it’s important to consider what could
go wrong and recognize what’s already going wrong.

It’s rife with speculation

Skeptics argue that for all the rhetoric about democ-

ratization, ownership opportunities, and mass wealth
building, Web3 is nothing more than a giant specula-
tive economy that will mostly make some already-rich
people even richer. It’s easy to see why this argument
makes sense. The top 0.01% of bitcoin holders own 27%
of the supply. Wash trading, or selling assets to your-
self, and market manipulation have been reported in
both crypto and NFT markets, artificially pumping up
value and allowing owners to earn coins through sham
trades. In an interview on the podcast The Dig, reporters

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 Introduction

Edward Ongweso Jr. and Jacob Silverman characterized

the whole system as an elaborate upward transfer of
wealth.2 Writing in the Atlantic, investor Rex Woodbury
called Web3 “the financialization of everything” (and not
in a good way).3 On a more granular level, Molly White,
a software engineer, created Web3 Is Going Just Great,
where she tracks the many hacks, scams, and implosions
in the Web3 world, underscoring the pitfalls of the un-
regulated, Wild West territory (read an interview with
White in chapter 6 of this book).
The unpredictable, speculative nature of the markets
may be a feature, not a bug. According to technologist
David Rosenthal, speculation on cryptocurrencies is the
engine that drives Web3—that it can’t work without it.
“[A] permissionless blockchain requires a cryptocurrency
to function, and this cryptocurrency requires speculation
to function,” he said in a talk at Stanford in early 2022.4
Basically, he’s describing a pyramid scheme: Blockchains
need to give people something in exchange for volun-
teering computing power, and cryptocurrencies fill that
role—but the system works only if other people are will-
ing to buy them believing that they’ll be worth more in
the future. Stephen Diehl, a technologist and vocal critic
of Web3, floridly dismissed blockchain as “a one-trick pony
whose only application is creating censorship-resistant
crypto investment schemes, an invention whose negative

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 Introduction

externalities and capacity for harm vastly outweigh any

possible uses.”5

The tech isn’t practical (and it’s expensive)

Questions abound as to whether Web3—or blockchain,

really—makes sense as the technology that will define
the web’s next era. “Whether or not you agree with
the philosophy/economics behind cryptocurrencies, they
are—simply put—a software architecture disaster in the
making,” says Grady Booch, chief scientist for software
engineering at IBM Research. All technology comes with
trade-offs, Booch explained in a Twitter Spaces conversa-
tion, and the cost of a “trustless” system is that it’s highly
inefficient, capable of processing only a few transactions
per minute—tiny amounts of data compared with a cen-
tralized system like, say, Amazon Web Services. Decentral-
ization makes technology more complicated and further
out of reach for basic users, rather than simpler and more
accessible.
While it’s possible to fix this by adding new layers that
can speed things up, doing so makes the whole system
more centralized, which defeats the purpose. Moxie Mar-
linspike, founder of the encrypted messaging app Signal,
put it this way: “Once a distributed ecosystem centralizes

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 Introduction

around a platform for convenience, it becomes the worst

of both worlds: centralized control, but still distributed
enough to become mired in time.” 6
For now, the inefficiency of blockchain comes at a cost,
quite literally. Transaction costs on Bitcoin and Ethe-
reum (which calls them gas fees) can run anywhere from
a few bucks to hundreds of dollars. Storing one megabyte
of data on a blockchain distributed ledger can cost thou-
sands, or even tens of thousands, of dollars—yes, you
read that correctly. That’s why the NFT you bought prob-
ably isn’t actually on a blockchain. The code on the chain
indicating your ownership includes an address, pointing
to where the image is stored. Which can and has caused
problems, including your pricy purchase disappearing if
the server it actually lives on goes down.

It enables harassment and abuse

The potential for disastrous unintended consequences is

very real. “While blockchain proponents speak about a
‘future of the web’ based around public ledgers, anonym-
ity, and immutability,” writes Molly White, “those of us
who have been harassed online look on in horror as obvi-
ous vectors for harassment and abuse are overlooked, if
not outright touted as features.”7 Although crypto wallets

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 Introduction

theoretically provide anonymity, the fact that transactions

are public means that they can be traced back to in-
dividuals. (The FBI is pretty good at doing this, which is
why crypto isn’t great for criminal enterprise.) “Imagine
if, when you Venmo-ed your Tinder date for your half
of the meal, they could now see every other transaction
you’d ever made,” including with other dates, your thera-
pist, and the corner store by your house. That informa-
tion in the hands of an abusive ex-partner or a stalker
could be life-threatening.
The immutability of the blockchain also means that
data can’t be taken down. There’s no way to erase any-
thing, whether it’s a regrettable post or revenge porn. Im-
mutability also could spell major problems for Web3 in
some places, such as Europe, where the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR) enshrines the right to
have personal data erased.

It’s currently terrible for the environment

Web3’s environmental impact is vast and deeply dam-

aging. It can be broken into two categories: energy use
and tech waste, both of which are products of mining.
Running a network that depends on supercomputers com-
peting to solve complex equations every time you want to

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 Introduction

save data on a blockchain takes a tremendous amount of

energy. It also generates e-waste: According to Rosenthal,
Bitcoin produces “an average of one whole MacBook Air
of e-waste per ‘economically meaningful’ transaction” as
miners cycle through quantities of short-lived computer
hardware. The research he bases this claim on, by Alex de
Vries and Christian Stoll, found that the annual e-waste
created by Bitcoin is comparable to the amount produced
by a country the size of the Netherlands.8
Whether and how these issues will be addressed is
hard to say, in part because it’s still unclear whether
Web3 will really catch on. Blockchain is a technology
in search of a real use, says technology writer Evgeny
Morozov. “The business model of most Web3 ventures is
self-referential in the extreme, feeding off people’s faith
in the inevitable transition from Web2 to Web3.” Tim
O’Reilly, who coined “Web 2.0” to describe the platform
web of the early 2000s, claims that we’re in an investment
boom reminiscent of the dot-com era before the bottom
fell out. “Web 2.0 was not a version number, it was the
second coming of the web after the dot-com bust,” he
says. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to call Web3
‘Web3’ until after the crypto bust. Because only then will
we get to see what’s stuck around.”9
If that’s true, then innovation is going to come at sig-
nificant cost. As Hilary Allen, an American University

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 Introduction

law professor who studies the 2008 financial crisis, points

out, the system now “mirrors and magnifies the fragili-
ties of shadow banking innovations that resulted in the
2008 financial crisis.” If the Web3 bubble bursts, it could
leave a lot of folks high and dry.

Early Days Are Here Again

So, where exactly is Web3 headed? Ethereum cofounder

Vitalik Buterin has expressed concerns about the direc-
tion his creation has taken but continues to be optimis-
tic. In a response to Marlinspike on the Ethereum Reddit
page, he conceded that the Signal founder presented “a
correct criticism of the current state of the ecosystem”
but maintained that the decentralized web is catching
up, and pretty quickly at that.10 The work being done
now—creating libraries of code—will soon make it easier
for other developers to start working on Web3 projects.
“I think the properly authenticated decentralized block-
chain world is coming and is much closer to being here
than many people think.”
For one, proof of work—the inefficient-by-design system
Bitcoin runs on—is falling out of vogue. Instead of min-
ing, which uses intensive amounts of energy, validation
increasingly comes from users buying in (owning a stake) to

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 Introduction

approve transactions. Ethereum’s September 2022 transi-

tion to proof of stake cut it’s energy usage by an estimated
99.95%, while making the platform faster and more ef-
ficient. Solana, a newer blockchain that uses proof of stake
and “proof of history,” a mechanism that relies on time
stamps, can process 65,000 transactions per second (com-
pared with Bitcoin’s current rate of about 7 per second.)
and uses about as much energy as two Google searches—
consumption it buys carbon offsets for.
Some companies are adopting a hybrid approach to
blockchain, which offers the benefits without the con-
straints. “There are a lot of really interesting new archi-
tectures, which put certain things on the blockchain but
not others,” he tells me. A social network, for instance,
could record your followers and who you follow on the
blockchain, but not your posts, giving you the option to
delete them.
Hybrid models can also help companies address
GDPR and other regulations. “To comply with the right
to erasure,” explain Cindy Compert, Maurizio Luinetti,
and Bertrand Portier in an IBM white paper, “personal
data should be kept private from the blockchain in an
‘off-chain’ data store, with only its evidence (crypto-
graphic hash) exposed to the chain.”11 That way, personal
data can be deleted in keeping with GDPR without af-
fecting the chain.

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 Introduction

For better or worse, regulation is coming—slowly—

and it will define the next chapter of Web3. China has
banned cryptocurrencies outright, along with Algeria,
Bangladesh, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and
Tunisia. Europe is considering environmental regula-
tions that would curb or ban proof-of-work blockchains.
In the United States, the Biden administration issued an
executive order in early 2022 directing the federal govern-
ment to look into regulating cryptocurrencies.
With so much of Web3 still being hashed out, it re-
mains a high-risk, high-reward bet. Certain companies
and sectors have more incentive than others to try their
luck, particularly those that got burned by being left out
in earlier eras of the web. It’s not a coincidence that
a media company like Time Media Group is interested
in the opportunities of Web3 after Web2 decimated its
business model. Other organizations—like Nike and the
NBA, which already have experience with limited drops
and commoditizing moments—may have simply found
that their business models are an easy fit. Other busi-
nesses won’t have as clear a path.
The soaring claims around Web3—that it will take
over the internet, upend the financial system, redistrib-
ute wealth, and make the web democratic again—should
be taken with a grain of salt. We’ve heard all this before,
and we’ve seen how earlier episodes of Web3 euphoria

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 Introduction

fizzled. But that doesn’t mean it should be written off en-

tirely. Maybe it booms, maybe it busts, but we’ll be living
with some form of it either way. What version—and how
your company responds—could determine the future of
the digital economy and what life online looks like for the
next internet epoch. For now, that future is still up for
grabs. Nothing, after all, is inevitable.

TAKEAWAYS

Web3 is being touted as a new version of the web that

will be decentralized, democratic, and peer-to-peer. Po-
tential, opportunities, and grand visions for the future
abound, but companies should consider both the risks
and the rewards before diving in.

✓ The Web2 era, which began in the early 2000s,

was a time of centralization on the web. Giant tech
companies grew to wield near-monopoly power
with “free” services.

✓ Blockchain-based Web3 has been called a “read/

write/own” internet that can provide better identity
protection, avoid censorship, and grant users voting

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 Introduction

and ownership stakes in the communities they

participate in.

✓ Hallmarks of Web3 are likely to include the use

of cryptocurrencies, NFTs (non-fungible tokens),
DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations),
and DeFi (decentralized finance).

✓ Skeptics have pointed out that the blockchain-based

web has substantial technical, environmental,
ethical, privacy, accessibility, and regulatory
hurdles—including inaccessibility to basic users,
financial exclusion, enabling of harassment and
abuse, and negative environmental impact.

NOTES
1. Hannah Murphy, “Andreessen Horowitz Bet on Crypto
‘Golden Era’ with New $4.5bn Fund,” Financial Times, May 25,
2022, https://www.ft.com/content/47b05080-67ac-4468-b530
-76325d6aba35.
2. Edward Ongweso Jr. and Jacob Silverman, “Cryptocurrency,”
December 16, 2021, The Dig, podcast, https://thedigradio.com
/podcast/cryptocurrency-w-edward-ongweso-jr-jacob-silverman/.
3. Rex Woodbury, “What Happens When You’re the Investment,”
Atlantic, November 9, 2021.
4. David Rosenthal, “EE380 Talk,” DSHR’s Blog (blog), February 9,
2022, https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html.

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 Introduction

5. Stephen Diehl, “Web3 is Bullshit,” Stephen Diehl (blog),

December 4, 2021, https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/web3
-bullshit.html.
6. “My first impressions of web3,” Moxie Marlinspike (blog),
January 7, 2022, https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first
-impressions.html.
7. Molly White, “Abuse and harassment on the blockchain,” Molly
White (blog), January 22, 2022, https://blog.mollywhite.net/abuse
-and-harassment-on-the-blockchain/.
8. Alex de Vries and Christian Stoll, “Bitcoin’s growing e-waste
problem,” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 175 (2021).
9. Mark Sullivan, “Web pioneer Tim O’Reilly on Web3,” Fast
Company, February 3, 2022, https://www.fastcompany.com
/90716841/tim-oreilly-on-web3.
10. Andrew R. Chow, “Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Is Worried
About Crypto’s Future,” Time, March 18, 2022, https://time.com
/6158182/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile/.
11. Cindy Compert, Maurizio Luinetti, and Bertrand Portier,
“Blockchain and GDPR,” IBM white paper, March 2018, iapp.org.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org, May 10, 2022 (product #H070UE).

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054-112070_ch01_3P.indd 28 08/12/22 11:45 PM
 1

WEB3 WILL RUN ON

CRYPTOCURRENCY
An interview with Jeff John Roberts by Ramsey Khabbaz

W
hat could Web3, an internet ecosystem based on
blockchains, crypto wallets, NFTs, and DAOs
mean for business? As we hurtle forward, it’s
important to pause and consider how we got here. To help
HBR’s readers understand the origins of cryptocurren-
cies, think through their present problems, and situate
them in a Web3 context, I spoke with Jeff John Roberts,
a technology journalist and the author of Kings of Crypto:
One Startup’s Quest to Take Cryptocurrency out of Silicon
Valley and onto Wall Street. Roberts is also crypto editor
at Fortune. This interview has been edited.

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 Roberts and Khabbaz

HBR: Many people hear “crypto” and immediately

think Bitcoin—maybe Dogecoin or Ethereum—but
obviously the term encompasses much more than
that. Help me understand the basics of what crypto
is, broadly, and why it’s so important today.

JEFF JOHN ROBERTS: Crypto is kind of an amorphous term.

In essence, it’s software that runs blockchains. And block-
chains are just ledgers that record every transaction that
occurs. This means that they’re tamper-proof, distributed,
and immutable. That might sound like a lot of jargon, but
it’s really just the notion of running the same computer
program on multiple computers, verifying its accuracy
along the way.
Bitcoin is the first and most famous blockchain, and
it does all those things. It also comes with a currency
that can be spent. And that’s part of what the Bitcoin
blockchain ledger maintains: a tamper-proof record of
transactions—who’s paying whom.
Now, there are literally thousands of blockchains with
varying levels of quality and security. Bitcoin stands out
because it’s the first, has never been hacked, and has sort of
proved to the world the promise of blockchain technology.

Do we know exactly how many cryptocurrencies

there are? Or is that hard to pin down?

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 Web3 Will Run on Cryptocurrency

There are literally thousands of cryptocurrencies. Most of

them are kind of fly-by-night hustles that don’t have the
underlying technology to make them valuable. But since
cryptocurrencies attract so many speculators, if you cre-
ate one, someone out there will be willing to buy it.

What can you tell me about the origins of

cryptocurrencies?

They grew out of a movement called cypherpunks, which

originated in the 1980s. Cypherpunks were a collection of
privacy-obsessed cryptography fans and programmers in
the San Francisco Bay Area. Th se people experimented
with how to create a new form of money that didn’t rely
on a central bank, a government, or other intermediaries.
Their goal came to fruition with the Bitcoin white
paper in 2008, which put out this new proof of concept.1
It’s a fundamental theory of a private, decentralized form
of money that could not be hacked and did not require
trusted authorities to maintain.

So, cryptocurrencies—and bitcoin being the first—

are the first application of this blockchain technology.

Yeah. And since it’s clear that it does work, it’s secure, and
it’s valuable, people are now building all sorts of other

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 Roberts and Khabbaz

things on top of it. You can think of it as a sort of operating

system. And now there are various applications of the tech-
nology. Creating currency and spending money is just one.

Who is the person or group behind that 2008 paper—

the Benjamin Franklin of the technology, so to speak?

The Benjamin Franklin of Bitcoin and blockchain would

be the anonymous author Satoshi [Nakamoto]. It’s al-
most impolite in the world of Bitcoin to speculate on
who Satoshi is—but I don’t really observe those niceties.
I think Satoshi is a mix of those early Bay Area program-
mers. Namely, a guy named Hal Finney, who died of ALS
several years ago, working closely with a guy named Nick
Szabo, a polymath programmer, lawyer, and libertarian.
And it’s pretty clear from the early records and listservs
that those two guys, if they’re not Satoshi, are indispens-
able to the success of the project.

So, Satoshi is somewhere between the Benjamin

Franklin and Banksy of Bitcoin.

Exactly. Great analogy.

Today, there are billions of dollars of crypto in

circulation. It’s a huge system. Who governs it?

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 Web3 Will Run on Cryptocurrency

When you talk to crypto people, the first thing they al-
ways tell you is “Decentralized, decentralized, there are
no leaders, there’s no bank, there’s no authority.” But
every project needs some sort of leaders, for lack of a bet-
ter word. And even in the case of Bitcoin, which is by far
the most decentralized blockchain, there’s still a clique of
insiders who are responsible for maintaining the code.
Bitcoin is software, and just like your Apple software
updates periodically, or your Chrome browser updates,
Bitcoin receives updates. Most of them are quite minor,
but they’ll expand the functionality of it and improve the
security of it. There is a core group of developers who are
the guardians of Bitcoin. But they don’t control it.
Other blockchains are much more centralized. Usu-
ally a handful of people control a lot of the money behind
it and have an outsized influence. So, decentralization is
a spectrum. Bitcoin is the most decentralized—but even
it’s got influential people who are the guardians of its
code. A lot of the newer blockchains are not decentral-
ized at all.

I’m interested in decentralization as it relates to

who’s able to own and profit from cryptocurrencies.
How can we reconcile the concentration of crypto
wealth at the moment, when that’s really the opposite
of the goal of this technology?

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 Roberts and Khabbaz

There’s a term in crypto, “whales,” which refers to people

who own an outsized amount of bitcoin or ether or some-
thing similar. By virtue of owning most of the money,
they can have an immense influence on the value of the
currency and other governance decisions.
Defenders of crypto would say that whales have a
big stake in making it work—it’s not in their interest to
“pump and dump” it, because then people would lose
trust in its value. Although that’s the nature of many new
blockchains: Spin it up, urge suckers to buy it, then get
out. That’s been endemic since the early days of crypto.
But the more successful currencies are becoming in-
creasingly decentralized—in the case of Bitcoin and
Ethereum especially—in terms of who actually owns the
allocations of coins tied to each blockchain.

Switching gears a bit, crypto seems like it will play a

huge role in the growth of Web3. Would you say that
Web3 is the ecosystem that crypto spawned? Or is it
the other way around?

Crypto came first. But what’s key to Web3 is having a

wallet. MetaMask and Coinbase Wallet (diff erent from
a Coinbase account on its centralized exchange) are two
of the most popular. Wallets allow you to carry your cryp-
tocurrency around. That’s the backbone of Web3. You need

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
slaughtered in camp and the presents at the end of the journey are
exclusively his. A man guilty of preceding the Pagazi is liable to fine,
and an arrow is extracted from his quiver to substantiate his identity
at the end of the march. Pouring out of the kraal in a disorderly mob,
the porters stack their goods at some tree distant but a few hundred
yards, and allow the late and lazy and the invalids to join the main
body. Generally at this conjuncture the huts are fired by neglect or
mischievousness. The khambi, especially in winter, burns like tinder,
and the next caravan will find a heap of hot ashes and a few charred
sticks still standing. Yet by way of contrast, the Pagazi will often take
the trouble to denote by the usual signposts to those following them
that water is at hand; here and there a little facetiousness appears in
these directions, a mouth is cut in the tree trunk to admit a bit of
wood simulating a pipe, with other representations still more
waggish.
“After the preliminary halt, the caravan forming into the order of
march, winds like a monstrous land serpent over hill, dale, and plain.
The kirangozi is followed by an Indian file; those nearest to him are
heavily laden with ivory. When the weight of the tusk is inordinate it
is tied to a pole and is carried palanquin fashion by two men. The
ivory carriers are succeeded by the bearers of cloth and beads, each
man poising on either shoulder, and sometimes raising upon the
head for rest, packs that resemble huge bolsters, six feet long by two
in diameter, cradled in sticks which generally have a forked
projection for facility in stacking and reshouldering the load. The
sturdiest fellows are usually the lightest loaded in Eastern Africa; as
elsewhere, the weakest go to the wall. The maximum of burden may
be two farasilah, or seventy pounds avoirdupois. Behind the cloth
bearers straggles a long line of porters and slaves laden with the
lighter stuff—rhinoceros teeth, hides, salt, tobacco, brass wire, iron
hoes, boxes and bags, beds and tents, pots and water gourds, mats,
and private stores. With the Pagazi, but in separate parties, march
the armed slaves, who are never seen to quit their muskets; the
women and the little toddling children, who rarely fail to carry
something, be it only of a pound weight; and the asses neatly laden
with saddle-bags of giraffe and buffalo hide. A Mganga also
universally accompanies the caravan, not disdaining to act as a
common porter. The rear is brought up by the master, or the
masters, of the caravan, who often remain far behind for the
convenience of walking and to prevent desertion.
“All the caravan is habited in its worst attire; the East African
derides those who wear upon a journey the cloth which should be
reserved for display at home. If rain fall they will doff the single goat-
skin hung round their sooty limbs and, folding it up, place it between
the shoulders and the load. When grain is served out for a long
march, each porter bears his posho or rations fastened like a large
‘bustle’ to the small of his back. Upon this again he sometimes binds,
with its legs projecting outwards, the three-legged stool, which he
deems necessary to preserve him from the danger of sitting upon the
damp ground. As may be imagined, the barbarians have more
ornament than dress. Some wear a strip of zebra’s mane bound
round the head with the bristly parti-coloured hair standing out like a
saint’s gloria, others prefer a long bit of stiffened ox-tail rising like a
unicorn’s horn at least a foot above the forehead. Other ornaments
are the skins of monkeys and ocelots, roleaus and fillets of white,
blue, or scarlet cloth, and huge bunches of ostrich, crane, and jay’s
feathers crowning the heads like the tufts of certain fowls. Their arms
are decorated with massive ivory bracelets, heavy bangles of brass
and copper, and thin circlets of the same metal, beads in strings and
bands adorn their necks, and small iron bells strapped below the
knee or round the ancle by the more aristocratic. All carry some
weapon; the heaviest armed have a bow and a bark quiver full of
arrows, two or three long spears and assegais, and a little battle-axe,
borne on the shoulder.
“The normal recreations of a march are whistling, singing,
shouting, hooting, horning, drumming, imitating the cries of birds and
beasts, repeating words which are never used except on journeys.
There is gabble enough and abundant squabbling; in fact, perpetual
noise, which the ear, however, soon learns to distinguish for the
hubbub of a halt. The uproar redoubles near a village where the flag
is unfurled and where the line lags to display itself. All give vent to
loud shouts: ‘Hopa, hopa! go on, go on—Mgogolo! a stoppage—
food, food—don’t be tired—the kraal is here—home is near—hasten,
Kirangozi—oh! we see our mothers—we go to eat.’ On the road it is
considered prudent, as well as pleasurable, to be as loud as
possible, in order to impress upon plunderers an exaggerated idea of
the caravan’s strength; for equally good reasons silence is
recommended in the kraal. When threatened with attack, and no
ready escape suggests itself, the porters ground their loads and
prepare for action. It is only self-interest that makes them brave. I
have seen a small cow trotting up with tail erect break a line of 150
men carrying goods not their own. If a hapless hare or antelope
cross the path, every man casts his pack, brandishes his spear, and
starts in pursuit; the animal, never running straight, is soon killed and
torn limb from limb, each hunter devouring his morsel raw. When two
parties meet, that commanded by an Arab claims the road. If both
are Wanyamwezi, violent quarrels ensue; fatal weapons, which are
too ready at hand, are turned to more harmless purposes, the bow
and spear being used as whip and cudgel. These affrays are not
rancorous till blood is shed. Few tribes are less friendly for so trifling
an affair as a broken head; even a slight cut, or a shallow stab, is
little thought of; but if returned with interest great loss of life may
arise from the slenderest cause. When friendly caravans meet, the
two Kirangozis sidle up with a stage pace, a stride and a stand, and
with sidelong looks prance till arrived within distance, then suddenly
and simultaneously ducking, like boys ‘give a back,’ they come to
loggerheads and exchange a butt violently as fighting rams. Their
example is followed by all with a crush which might be mistaken for
the beginning of a faction; but it ends, if there be no bad blood, in
shouts of laughter. The weaker body, however, must yield
precedence and offer a small present as blackmail.”
After all, however, there is some reason in the African’s objection
to be hurried on a march, or to exert himself overmuch in the
interests of a traveller, whose private affairs are nothing to him and
whom, when discharged, he will in all probability never see again. He
does not particularly wish to see him, as he is perfectly comfortable
at home. According to the last quoted authority he rises with the
dawn from his couch of cow’s-hide. The hut is cool and comfortable
during the day; but the barred door, impeding ventilation at night,
causes it to be close and disagreeable. The hour before sunrise
being the coldest time, he usually kindles a fire and addresses
himself to his constant companion the pipe. When the sun becomes
sufficiently powerful, he removes the reed-screen from the entrance
and issues forth to bask in the morning beams. The villages are
populous, and the houses touching one another enable the
occupants, when squatting outside and fronting the central square,
to chat and chatter without moving. About 7 a.m., when the dew has
partially disappeared from the grass, the elder boys drive the flocks
and herds to pasture, with loud shouts and sounding applications of
the quarter staff. They return only when the sun is sinking behind the
western horizon. At 8 p.m. those who have provisions at home enter
the hut to refection with ugali or holcus-porridge, those who have not
join a friend. Pombe, when procurable, is drunk from the earliest
dawn.
After breaking his fast, the African repairs, pipe in hand, to the
Iwanza, the village public previously described. Here in the society of
his own sex he will spend the greater part of the day talking and
laughing, smoking, or torpid with sleep. Occasionally he sits down to
play. As with barbarians generally, gambling in him is a passion. The
normal game is our “heads and tails,” the implement, a flat stone, a
rough circle of tin, or the bottom of a broken pot. The more civilised
have learned the “bas” of the coast, a kind of “tables” with counters
and cups hollowed in a solid plank. Many of the Wanyamwezi have
been compelled by this indulgence to sell themselves into slavery
after playing through their property; they even stake their aged
mothers against the equivalent of an old lady in these lands,—a cow
or a pair of goats. As may be imagined, squabbles are perpetual,
they are almost always, however, settled amongst fellow-villagers
with bloodless weapons. Others, instead of gambling, seek some
employment which, working the hands and leaving the rest of the
body and the mind at ease, is ever a favourite with the Asiatic and
the African; they whittle wood, pierce and wire their pipe sticks—an
art in which all are adepts,—shave one another’s heads, pluck out
their beards, eyebrows, and eyelashes, and prepare and polish their
weapons.
 “At about one p.m., the African, unless otherwise employed,
returns to his hut to eat the most substantial and the last meal of the
day, which has been cooked by his women. Eminently gregarious,
however, he often prefers the Iwanza as a dining room, where his
male children, relatives, and friends meet during the most important
hour of the twenty-four. With the savage and the barbarian food is
the all and all of life, food is his thought by day, food is his dream by
night. The civilized European who never knows hunger nor thirst
without the instant means of gratifying every whim of appetite, can
hardly conceive the extent to which his wild brother’s soul is swayed
by stomach; he can scarcely comprehend the state of mental
absorption in which the ravenous human animal broods over the
carcase of an old goat, the delight which he takes in superintending
every part of the cooking process, and the jealous eye with which he
regards all who live better than himself. After eating, the East African
invariably indulges in a long fit of torpidity from which he awakes to
pass the afternoon as he did the forenoon, chatting, playing,
smoking, and chewing sweet earth. Towards sunset all issue forth to
enjoy the coolness; the men sit outside the Iwanza, whilst the
women and the girls, after fetching water for household wants from
the well, collecting in a group upon their little stools, indulge in the
pleasures of gossiping and the pipe. This hour, in the more favoured
parts of the country, is replete with enjoyment. As the hours of
darkness draw nigh, the village doors are carefully closed, and after
milking his cows, each peasant retires to his hut, or passes his time
squatting round the fire with his friends in the Iwanza. He has not yet
learned the art of making a wick, and of filling a bit of pottery with oil.
When a light is wanted he ignites a stick of the oleaginous msásá-
tree—a yellow, hard, close-grained, and elastic wood with few knots,
much used in making spears, bows, and walking staves—which
burns for a quarter of an hour with a brilliant flame. He repairs to his
hard couch before midnight and snores with a single sleep till dawn.
For thorough enjoyment, night must be spent in insensibility, as the
day is in inebriety, and though an early riser he avoids the ‘early to
bed’ in order that he may be able to slumber through half the day.
“Such is the African’s idle day, and thus every summer is spent.
As the wintry rains draw nigh, the necessity of daily bread suggests
itself. The peasants then leave their huts about six or seven a.m.,
often without provision which now becomes scarce, and labour till
noon or two p.m., when they return home, and find food prepared by
the wife or the slave girl. During the afternoon they return to work,
and sometimes, when the rains are near, they are aided by the
women. Towards sunset all wend homeward in a body, laden with
their implements of cultivation, and singing a kind of ‘dulce domum’
in a simple and pleasing recitative.”
Let us conclude this brief sketch of the perils and inconveniences
that menace the explorer of savage shores by presenting the reader
with a picture of the approach of one of the ships bearing some of
the earliest English visitants to the cannibal shores of the Southern
Seas:
“Notwithstanding,” says Mr. Ellis, “all our endeavours to induce the
natives to approach the ship, they continued for a long time at some
distance viewing us with apparent surprise and suspicion. At length
one of the canoes, containing two men and a boy, ventured
alongside. Perceiving a lobster lying among a number of spears at
the bottom of the canoe, I intimated by signs my wish to have it, and
the chief readily handed it up. I gave him in return two or three
middle-size fish-hooks, which, after examining rather curiously, he
gave to the boy, who having no pocket to put them in, or any article
of dress to which they might be attached, instantly deposited them in
his mouth, and continued to hold with both hands the rope hanging
from the ship.
“The principal person in the canoe appeared willing to come on
board. I pointed to the rope he was grasping and put out my hand to
assist him up the ship’s side. He involuntarily laid hold of it, but could
scarcely have felt my grasp when he instantly drew back his hand
and raising it to his nostrils smelt at it most significantly as if to
ascertain with what kind of being he had come in contact. After a few
moments’ pause he climbed over the ship’s side, and as soon as he
had reached the deck our captain led him to a chair on the quarter-
deck, and pointing to the seat signified his wish that he should be
seated. The chief, however, having viewed it for some time, pushed
it aside and sat down on the deck. Our captain had been desirous to
have the chief aboard that he might ascertain from him whether the
island produced sandal-wood, as he was bound to the Marquesas in
search of that article. A piece was therefore procured and shown
him, with the qualities of which he appeared familiar, for after
smelling it and calling it by some name he pointed to the shore.
“While we had been thus engaged, many of the canoes had
approached the ship, and when we turned round a number of the
natives appeared on deck, and others were climbing over the
bulwarks. They were certainly the most savage-looking natives I had
ever seen; and these barbarians were as unceremonious as their
appearance was uninviting. A gigantic, fierce-looking fellow seized a
youth as he was standing by the gangway and endeavoured to lift
him over the deck, but the lad struggling escaped from his grasp. He
then seized our cabin-boy, but the sailors coming to his assistance
and the native finding that he could not disengage him from their
hold, pulled his woollen shirt over his head and was about to leap
into the sea when he was arrested by the sailors. We had a large
ship-dog chained to his kennel on the deck, and although this animal
was not only fearless but savage, yet the appearance of the natives
seemed to terrify him. One of them caught the dog in his arms and
was proceeding over the ship’s side with him, but perceiving him
fastened to his kennel by the chain he was obliged to relinquish his
prize, evidently much disappointed. He then seized the kennel with
the dog in it, when, finding it nailed to the deck, he ceased his
attempts to remove it and gazed round the ship in search of some
object which he could secure. We had brought from Port Jackson
two young kittens; one of these now came up from the cabin, but she
no sooner made her appearance on the deck, than a native,
springing like a tiger on its prey, caught up the unconscious animal
and instantly leaped over the ship’s side into the sea. Hastening to
the side of the deck I looked over the bulwarks and beheld him
swimming rapidly towards a canoe which lay about fifty yards from
the ship. As soon as he had reached this canoe, holding the cat with
both hands, he exhibited it to his companions with evident exultation.
“Orders were given to clear the ship. A general scuffle ensued
between the islanders and the seamen, in which many of the former
were driven headlong into the sea, where they seemed as much at
home as on solid ground; while others clambered over the vessel’s
sides into their canoes. In the midst of the confusion and the
retreating of the natives the dog, which had hitherto slunk into his
kennel, recovered his usual boldness and not only increased the
consternation by his barking, but severely tore the leg of one of the
fugitives who was hastening out of the ship near the spot where he
was chained. The decks were now cleared; but as many of the
people still hung about the shrouds and chains the sailors drew the
long knives with which, when among the islands, they were
furnished, and by menacing gestures, without wounding any,
succeeded in detaching them altogether from the ship. Some of
them seemed quite unconscious of the keenness of the knife, and I
believe had their hands deeply cut by snatching at the blades.”
Boatmen of Rockingham Bay.
The True Word expounded to a Potentate of Western Africa.
 PART XI.
RELIGIOUS RITES AND SUPERSTITIONS.

CHAPTER XXVI.
The mysterious “still small voice”—Samoan mythology—The man who
pushed the Heavens up—The child of the Sun—A Figian version
of the “Flood”—The Paradise of the Figian—Lying Ghosts—
Singular case of abduction—The disobedient Naiogabui—All fair
in love and war—The fate of poor Rokoua—The Samoan hades
—Miscellaneous gods of the Samoans—A god for every village—
The cup of truth—Mourning the destruction of a god’s image—
The most fashionable god in Polynesia—Families marked for
human sacrifice—“Tapu” or “tabu”—Its antiquity and wide-spread
influence—Muzzled pigs and blindfolded chickens—Ceremony of
releasing the porkers—Tremendous feast of baked pig—The tapu
in New Zealand—A terrible tinder box—The sacred pole and the
missionaries—The chief’s backbone—The Pakeka and the iron
pot—One of the best uses of tapu—Its general advantages and
disadvantages—Tapu among the Samoans—Witchcraft in New
Zealand—Visit of a European to a “retired” witch—The religion of
the Dayak—“Tapa,” “Tenahi,” “Iang,” and “Jirong”—Warriors’
ghosts—Religious rites and superstitions of the Sea Dayaks—
The great god Singallong Burong—Belief in dreams among the
Sea Dayaks—Story of the stone bull—Of the painted dog.

eligion, as signifying reverence of God and a belief in

future rewards and punishments, may be said to have
no existence among people who are absolutely savage.
Belief in life hereafter is incompatible with non-belief in
the existence of the soul, and difficult indeed would it be
to show a thorough barbarian who did not repudiate that
grand and awful trust. He is too much afraid of the mysterious thing
to confess to being its custodian. Undoubtedly he is quite conscious
of a power within him immensely superior to that which gives motion
to his arms and legs, and invites him to eat when he is hungry. He
“has ears and hears,” and “the still small voice” that speaks all
languages and fits its admonitions to the meanest understanding
bears the savage no less than the citizen company all the day long,
noting all his acts and whispering its approvals and its censures of
them; and when the savage reclines at night on his mat of rushes,
the still small voice is still vigilant, and reveals for his secret
contemplation such vivid pictures of the day’s misdoing, that his
hands ache with so fervently clasping his wooden greegree, and he
is rocked to sleep and horrid dreams with trembling and quaking
fear.
But the savage, while he acknowledges the mysterious influence,
has not the least notion as to its origin. To his hazy mind the word
“incomprehensible” is synonymous with “evil,” and the most
incomprehensible thing to him, and consequently the most evil, is
death. With us it is anxiety as to hereafter that makes death terrible;
with the savage death is detestable only as a gravedigger, a
malicious spirit who snatches him away from the world—where his
children and his wives are, and where tobacco grows, and palm-
trees yield good wine,—who snatches him away from all these good
things and every other, and shuts him in the dark damp earth to
decay like a rotten branch.
Death therefore is, in his eyes, the king of evil, and all minor evils
agents of the king, and working with but one aim though with
seeming indirectness. This it is that makes the savage a miserable
wretch—despite nature’s great bounty in supplying him with food
without reaping or sowing, and so “tempering the wind” that the
shelter of the boughs makes him a house that is warm enough, and
the leaves of the trees such raiment as he requires. Through his
constant suspicion he is like a man with a hundred jars of honey, of
the same pattern and filled the same, but one—he knows not which
—is poisoned. Taste he must or perish of hunger, but taste he may
and perish of poison; and so, quaking all the time, he picks a little
and a little, suspecting this jar because it is so very sweet, and that
because it has a twang of acid, and so goes on diminishing his
ninety-nine chances of appeasing his hunger and living, to level
odds, that he will escape both hunger and poison and die of fright.
Death is the savage’s poisoned honey-pot. He may meet it in the
wind, in the rain; it may even (why not? he has known such cases)
come to him in a sunray. It may meet him in the forest where he
hunts for his daily bread! That bird that just now flitted by so
suddenly and with such a curious cry may be an emissary of the king
of evil, and now hastening to tell the king that there is he—the victim
—all alone and unprotected in the forest, easy prey for the king if he
comes at once! No more hunting for that day though half-a-dozen
empty bellies be the consequence; away with spear and blow-gun,
and welcome charms and fetiches to be counted and kissed and
caressed all the way home—aye, and for a long time afterwards, for
that very bird may still be perched a-top of the hut, peeping in at a
chink, and only waiting for the victim to close his eyes to summon
the grim king once more. In his tribulation he confides the secret of
his uneasiness to his wife, who with affectionate zeal runs for the
gree-gree-man, who, on hearing the case, shakes his head so
ominously, that though even the very leopard-skin that hangs before
the doorway be the price demanded for it, the most powerful charm
the gree-gree-man has to dispose of must be obtained.
It is only, however, to the perfect savage—the Fan and Ougbi of
Central Africa, the Andamaner of Polynesia, and some others—that
the above remarks apply. If we take belief in the soul and its
immortality as the test, we shall find the number of absolute
barbarians somewhat less than at first sight appears; indeed, the
mythological traditions of many savage people, wrapped as they
invariably are in absurdity, will frequently exhibit in the main such
close resemblance to certain portions of our Scripture history as to
fill us with surprise and wonder. Take, for instance, the following
examples occurring in Samoa, furnished by the Rev. George Turner:
“The earliest traditions of the Samoans describe a time when the
heavens alone were inhabited and the earth covered over with water.
Tangaloa, the great Polynesian Jupiter, then sent down his daughter
in the form of a bird called the Turi (a snipe), to search for a resting-
place. After flying about for a long time she found a rock partially
above the surface of the water. (This looks like the Mosaic account
of the deluge; but the story goes on the origin of the human race.)
Turi went up and told her father that she had found but one spot on
which she could rest. Tangaloa sent her down again to visit the
place. She went to and fro repeatedly, and, every time she went up,
reported that the dry surface was extending on all sides. He then
sent her down with some earth, and a creeping plant, as all was
barren rock. She continued to visit the earth and return to the skies.
Next visit, the plant was spreading. Next time it was withered and
decomposing. Next visit it swarmed with worms. And the next time
had become men and women! A strange account of man’s origin.
But how affectingly it reminds one of his end: ‘They shall lie down
alike in the dust, and the worms shall cover them.’
“They have no consecutive tales of these early times; but we give
the disjointed fragments as we find them. They say that of old the
heavens fell down, and that people had to crawl about like the lower
animals. After a time, the arrow-root and another similar plant
pushed up the heavens. The place where these plants grew is still
pointed out, and called the Te’engga-langi, or heaven-pushing place.
But the heads of the people continued to knock on the skies. One
day, a woman was passing along who had been drawing water. A
man came up to her and said that he would push up the heavens, if
she would give him some water to drink. ‘Push them up first,’ she
replied. He pushed them up. ‘Will that do?’ said he. ‘No, a little
further.’ He sent them up higher still, and then she handed him her
cocoa-nut-shell water bottle. Another account says, that a person
named Tütü pushed up the heavens; and the hollow places in a rock,
nearly six feet long, are pointed out as his footprints. They tell about
a man called Losi, who went up on a visit to the heavens. He found
land and sea there, people, houses, and plantations. The people
were kind to him and supplied him with plenty of food. This was the
first time he had seen or tasted taro. He sought for some in the
plantations and brought it down to the earth; and hence they say the
origin of taro. They do not say how he got up and down. When the
taro tree fell, they say its trunk and branches extended a distance of
nearly sixty miles. In this and the following tale we are reminded of
Jacob’s ladder.
“Two young men, named Punifanga and Tafalin, determined one
afternoon to pay a visit to the moon. Punifanga said he knew a tree
by which they could go up. Tafalin was afraid it might not reach high
enough, and said he would try another plan. Punifanga went to his
tree, but Tafalin kindled a fire, and heaped on cocoa-nut shells and
other fuel so as to raise a great smoke. The smoke rose in a dense
straight column, like a cocoa-nut tree towering away into the
heavens. Tafalin then jumped on to the column of smoke, and went
up and reached the moon long before Punifanga. One wishes to
know what they did next, but here the tale abruptly ends, with the
chagrin of Punifanga when he got up and saw Tafalin there before
him, sitting laughing at him for having been so long on the way.
“In another story we are told, that the man came down one
evening and picked up a woman, called Sina, and her child. It was
during a time of famine. She was working in the evening twilight,
beating out some bark with which to make native cloth. The moon
was just rising, and it reminded her of great bread-fruit. Looking up to
it she said, ‘Why cannot you come down and let my child have a bit
of you?’ The moon was indignant at the idea of being eaten, came
forthwith, and took up her child, board, mallet, and all. The popular
superstition of ‘the man in the moon, who gathered sticks on the
Sabbath-day,’ is not yet forgotten in England, and in Samoa, of the
woman in the moon. ‘Yonder is Sina,’ they say, ‘and her child, and
mallet and board.’
“We have a fragment or two, also, about the sun. A woman called
Manquamanqui became pregnant by looking at the rising sun. Her
son grew, and was named ‘Child of the Sun.’ At his marriage he
asked his mother for a dowry. She sent him to his father the Sun, to
beg from him, and told him how to go. Following her directions, he
went one morning, with a long vine from the bush, which is the
convenient substitute for a rope, climbed a tree, threw his rope, with
a noose at the end of it, and caught the Sun. He made his message
known and (Pandora like) got a present for his bride. The Sun first
asked him what was his choice, blessings or calamities? He chose,
of course, the former, and came down with his store of blessings
done up in a basket. There is another tale about this Samoan
Phaeton, similar to what is related of the Hawaiian Mani. They say
that he and his mother were annoyed at the rapidity of the sun’s
course in those days—that it rose, reached the meridian, and set
‘before they could get their mats dried.’ He determined to make it go
slower. He climbed a tree one morning early, and with a rope and
noose all ready, watched for the appearance of the sun. Just as it
emerged from the horizon, he threw, and caught it; the sun struggled
to get clear, but in vain. Then fearing lest it should be strangled, it
called out in distress, ‘Oh! have mercy on me, and spare my life.
What do you want?’ ‘We wish you to go slower, we can get no work
done.’ ‘Very well,’ replied the Sun; ‘let me go, and for the future I will
walk slowly, and never go quick again.’ He let go the rope, and ever
since the sun has gone slowly, and given us longer days. Ludicrous
and puerile as this is, one cannot help seeing in it the wreck of that
sublime description in the book of Joshua, of the day when that man
of God stood in the sight of Israel, and said: ‘Sun, stand thou still
upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the Sun
stood still, and the Moon stayed until the people had avenged
themselves upon their enemies.’
“There are but few tales in Samoa in which we can trace the
deluge; nor are these circumstantial as those which obtain in some
other parts of the Pacific. It is the universal belief, however, ‘that of
old, the fish swam where the land now is;’ and tradition now adds,
when the waters abated, many of the fish of the sea were left on the
land, and afterwards were changed into stones. Hence, they say,
there are stones in abundance in the bush and among the mountains
which were once sharks and other inhabitants of the deep.”
The Figians, islanders of the same group, have an advantage
over the Samoans in this last mythological matter of the deluge.
They have at least half-a-dozen versions of the great flood, of which
the two following, furnished by Ellis and Williams, will serve:
“They speak of a deluge which, according to some of their
accounts, was partial, but in others is stated to have been universal.
The cause of the great flood was the killing of Turukana—a favourite
bird belonging to Udengei—by two mischievous lads, the grandsons
of the god. These, instead of apologizing for their offence, added
insolent language to the outrage, and fortifying, with the assistance
of their friends, the town in which they lived, defied Udengei to do his
worst. It is said, that although it took the angry god three months to
collect his forces, he was unable to subdue the rebels, and,
disbanding his army, resolved on more efficient revenge. At his
command the dark clouds gathered and burst, pouring streams on
the devoted earth. Towns, hills, and mountains were successively
submerged; but the rebels, secure in the superior height of their own
dwelling-place, looked on without concern. But when at last the
terrible surges invaded their fortress, they cried for direction to a god,
who, according to various accounts, sent them a shaddock punt, or
two canoes, or taught them to build a canoe themselves. However,
all agree the remnant of the human race was saved: the number was
eighty.”
So says Mr. Williams. Now for a literal translation, furnished by Mr.
Osmond to Mr. Ellis:
“Destroyed was Otaheite by the sea; no man, nor dog, nor fowl
remained. The groves of trees and the stones were carried away by
the wind. They were destroyed, and the deep was over the land. But
these two persons, the husband and the wife (when it came in), he
took up his young pig, she took up her young chickens; he took up
the young dog, and she the young kitten. They were going forth, and
looking at Orofena (the highest hill in the island), the husband said,
‘Up both of us to yonder mountain high.’ The wife replied, ‘No, let us
not go thither.’ The husband said, ‘It is a high rock and will not be
reached by the sea;’ but the wife replied, ‘Reached it will be by the
sea yonder: let us ascend Opitohito, round as a breast; it will not be
reached by the sea.’ They two arrived there. Orofena was
overwhelmed by the waves: Opitohito alone remained and was their
abode. There they watched ten nights; the sea ebbed, and they saw
the two little heads of the mountains in their elevation. When the
waters retired, the land remained without produce, without man, and
the fish were putrid in the holes of the rocks. The earth remained, but
the shrubs were destroyed. They descended and gazed with
astonishment: there were no houses, nor cocoa-nuts, nor palm-
trees, nor bread-fruit, nor grass; all was destroyed by the sea. They
two dwelt together; and the woman brought forth two children, a son
and a daughter. In those days covered was the land with food; and
from two persons the earth was repeopled.”
The Figian believes in a future state of perpetual bliss, but not that
the soul, as soon as it leaves the body, is absolved of all care.
Indeed, according to popular belief, the journey of the soul from
earth to heaven is a very formidable business.
“On the road to Nai Thombothombo, and about five miles from it,
is a solitary hill of hard reddish clay spotted with black boulders,
having on its right a pretty grove, and on the left cheerless hills. Its
name is Takiveleyaiva. When near this spot the disembodied spirit
throws the whale’s tooth, which is placed in the hand of the corpse at
burial, at a spiritual pandanus; having succeeded in hitting this, he
ascends the hill and there waits until joined by the spirits of his
strangled wife or wives. Should he miss the mark he is still supposed
to remain in this solitary resting-place, bemoaning the want of
affection on the part of his wife and friends, who are depriving him of
his expected companions. And this is the lone spirit’s lament: ‘How is
this? For a long time I planted food for my wife, and was also of
great use to her friends. Why, then, is she not allowed to follow me?
Do my friends love me no better than this after so many years of toil?
Will no one in love to me strangle my wife?’
“Blessed at last with the company of his wife or wives, who bear
his train, or sad because of their absence, the husband advances
towards Nai Thombothombo, and, club in hand, boards the canoe
which carries spirits to meet their examiner. Notice of his approach is
given by a paroquet which cries once, twice, and so on, according to
the number of spirits in the canoe, announcing a great number by
chattering. The highway to Mbulu lies through Nambanggatai, which,
it seems, is at once a real and unreal town, the visible part being
occupied by ordinary mortals, while in the unseen portion dwells the
family who hold inquest on departed spirits. Thus the cry of the bird
answers a twofold purpose, warning the people to set open the
doors that the spirit may have a free course, and preventing the
ghostly inquisitors from being taken by surprise. The houses in the
town are built with reference to a peculiarity in the locomotion of
spirits, who are supposed at this stage to pass straight forward:
hence all the doorways are opposite to each other, so that the shade
may pass through without interruption. The inhabitants speak in low
tones, and if separated by a little distance communicate their
thoughts by signs.
“Bygone generations had to meet Samu or Ravuyalo; but as he
died in 1847 by a curious misfortune, his duties now devolve upon
his sons, who, having been long in partnership with their illustrious
father, are quite competent to carry on his office. As it is probable
that the elder son will shortly receive the paternal title, or an
equivalent, we will speak of him as Samuyalo the Killer of Souls. On
hearing the paroquet, Samu and his brothers hide themselves in
some spiritual mangrove bushes just beyond the town and alongside
of the path in which they stick a reed as a prohibition to the spirit to
pass that way. Should the comer be courageous, he raises his club
in defiance of the tabu and those who place it there, whereupon
Samu appears to give him battle, first asking, ‘Who are you, and
whence do you come?’ As many carry their inveterate habit of lying
into another world, they make themselves out to be of vast
importance, and to such Samu gives the lie and fells them to the
ground. Should the ghost conquer in the combat, he passes on to
the judgment seat of Ndengei; he is disqualified for appearing there
and is doomed to wander among the mountains. If he be killed in the
encounter, he is cooked and eaten by Samu and his brethren.
“Some traditions put the examination questions into the mouth of
Samu, and judge the spirit at this stage; but the greater number refer
the inquisition to Ndengei.
“Those who escape the club of the soul-destroyer walk on to
Naindelinde, one of the highest peaks of the Kauvandra mountains.
Here the path of the Mbulu ends abruptly at the brink of a precipice,
the base of which is said to be washed by a deep lake. Beyond this
precipice projects a large steer-oar, which one tradition puts in the
charge of Ndengei himself, but another more consistently in the
keeping of an old man and his son, who act under the direction of
the god. These accost the coming spirit thus: ‘Under what
circumstances do you come to us? How did you conduct yourself in
the other world?’ If the ghost should be one of rank, he answers: ‘I
am a great chief; I lived as a chief, and my conduct was that of a
chief. I had great wealth, many wives, and ruled over a powerful
people. I have destroyed many towns, and slain many in war.’ To this
the reply is, ‘Good, good. Take a seat on the broad part of this oar,
and refresh yourself in the cool breeze.’ No sooner is he seated than
they lift the handle of the oar, which lies inland, and he is thus thrown
down headlong into the deep waters below, through which he passes
to Murimuria. Such as have gained the special favour of Ndengei are
warned not to go out on the oar, but to sit near those who hold it, and
after a short repose are sent back to the place whence they came to
be deified.”
The gods of the Figians would, however, seem to cling with
considerable tenacity to the weaknesses that distinguish the most
ordinary mortals. They quarrel, they fight, and worse still, descend to
act the part of lady-stealers, and this even when the booty is the
daughter of a neighbouring god. The last “pretty scandal” of this
character is related by Mr. Seeman in his recently published work on
Figi:
“Once upon a time there dwelt at Rewa a powerful god, whose
name was Ravovonicakaugawa, and along with him his friend the
god of the winds, from Wairna. Ravovonicakaugawa was leading a
solitary life, and had long been thinking of taking a wife to himself. At
last his mind seemed to be made up. ‘Put mast and sail into the
canoe,’ he said, ‘and let us take some women from Rokoua, the god
of Naicobocobo.’ ‘When do you think of starting?’ inquired his
friends. ‘I shall go in broad daylight,’ was the reply; ‘or do you think I
am a coward to choose the night for my work?’ All things being
ready, the two friends set sail and anchored towards sunset off
Naicobocobo. There they waited, contrary to Figian customs, one,
two, three days without any friendly communication from the shore
reaching them, for Rokoua, probably guessing their intention, had
strictly forbidden his people to take any food to the canoe. Rokoua’s
repugnance, however, was not shared by his household. His
daughter, the lovely Naiogabui, who diffused so sweet and powerful
a perfume, that if the wind blew from the east the perfume could be
perceived in the west, and if it blew from the west it could be