Will web3 reinvent the internet business?

LIKE NEARLY everyone these days, Moxie Marlinspike has created a non-fungible token (NFT). These digital chits use clever cryptography to prove, with no need for a central authenticator, that a buyer owns a unique piece of digital property. Alongside cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, NFTs are the most visible instantiation of “web3”—an idea that its advocates and their venture-capital (VC) backers hail as a better, more decentralised version of the internet, built atop distributed ledgers known as blockchains. Technologists like Mr Marlinspike, who created the secure-messaging app Signal, digital artists, celebrities and even the occasional newspaper have issued and sold them to collectors, often for hefty sums (an immaterial version of The Economist’s cover image fetched over $400,000).