Adam Neumann and The Future of Crypto --- WeWork's ex-CEO has co-founded a Web3 darling

"To understand the current state of Web3 -- that future version of the internet that proponents promise will be decentralized and better -- look at Adam Neumann and the "Goddess Nature Token."

Mr. Neumann is, of course, the former head of WeWork who in 2019 was ousted from the company he co-founded after an epic run of oddball leadership and financial adventurism. The Goddess Nature Token is an effort to marry Web3 technology with environmentalism and is the core product from Mr. Neumann's newest venture, Flowcarbon. That startup late last month raised $70 million from a long list of investors led by venture-capital giant Andreessen Horowitz.

Flowcarbon's status as a Web3 darling says a few things. First, that attaching the word "blockchain" to any business plan draws investors. Second, that Web3 doctrine holds that the tech behind blockchains makes any startup better and its goals more attainable -- despite there being scant evidence for that, and plenty of informed critics who disagree. And finally, that in an industry where hype can seem the primary currency, even Mr. Neumann's notoriety doesn't preclude getting funded.

Web3, for those unfamiliar, is billed as the future of the internet and everything on it. Think of Web 1.0 as relatively basic webpages from the likes of Yahoo and Excite, and Web 2.0 as today's interactive online services, dominated by Facebook, Google and other tech giants.

 Web3, according to its proponents, is all of that built with new tools that distribute control and benefits much more broadly.

More specifically, Web3 is the evolution of cryptocurrencies and the blockchains -- databases distributed across computers on the internet -- on which they are built. Instead of being simply money, like bitcoin, blockchain tokens can also store other data within them.

In other words, Web3 tokens can represent not just data but ownership and access, and can be traded like money.

For believers in all that Web3 potential, the world crypto supply's $1 trillion value drop since its November peak is, while unpleasant, no reason to lose faith.

"The short-term fluctuations [in crypto prices] can be painful in the moment, but frankly in the public markets many companies are also down 70% to 80%," says Arianna Simpson, a general partner in charge of crypto investment at Andreessen Horowitz. The firm is one of the biggest bettors on crypto, having just announced its third fund dedicated to Web3, this one for $4.5 billion.

Among these new products and services that may or may not become real businesses is Flowcarbon and its Goddess Nature Token, or GNT for short. The carbon offsets represented by GNTs are a certificate, verified by a third party, that says that some company or other entity reduced the amount of carbon in Earth's atmosphere, or prevented it from increasing.

For reasons related to corporations and governments trying to avoid the worst ravages of climate change, there is a growing market for such offsets. A Goddess Nature Token represents an offset and happens to live on a blockchain.

Mr. Neumann and his wife, Rebekah Neumann -- also one of Flowcarbon's five co-founders -- discovered they could earn some carbon offsets from property they owned. They founded Flowcarbon after making inquiries about why the markets for such offsets were so slow-moving and illiquid, according to Dana Gibber, the company's chief executive and another co-founder.

For all the hype and money around Web3, it remains unproven and distinctly unclear whether using blockchains will ultimately allow companies to do things they couldn't do better with other technologies.

"People have claimed that if the crypto bubble collapses, or regulators step in, that it doesn't matter because this is the future of the web, regardless," says Molly White, a software developer who documents the frauds, failures and setbacks of crypto and Web3 on her blog. "But the reality is very, very different. People are using the blockchain not because it's a technical benefit to the project."

The seemingly inseparable technical and economic challenges are one reason blockchains have so far been used primarily for financial speculation, says Nader Al-Naji, founder and head of the DeSo Foundation, a nonprofit effort to create a new blockchain that solves some of those challenges.

His project aims to create a blockchain on which social networks can be built that will ultimately reward the people who use them, by giving away crypto tokens. DeSo was launched with much fanfare last summer. A total of $200 million was invested in the token underlying the project, through a direct purchase of DeSo tokens by Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, and Winklevoss Capital, among others. The DeSo token is now worth about a 10th of what it was worth when I last wrote about it in December, and a 20th of its level in June 2021.

Mr. Al-Naji says he is "not worried at all" about the cratering price of the DeSo token. His faith in Web3 is unshakable: "We know that at some point the market will recognize there's a need for a social blockchain."

Many Web3 startups focus on luring users with the promise of growing rich by being an early adopter. This is enabled by "tokenomics," the ability of these startups to reward their earliest users with tokens they say will become more valuable as more users join.

To critics of Web3, blockchains are at best an unnecessary encumbrance on a startup like Flowcarbon. And at their worst, Web3 and its largely unregulated financial machinations are just a new way for the rich and powerful to siphon money from less wealthy and sophisticated investors.

From the perspective of those who build with the tools of Web3, however, it's the system of investor protections that's broken and needs to be fixed, even if not everyone benefits equally. "There will be a higher risk that ordinary people will lose money," says Mr. Al-Naji.

The solution, he argues, isn't a lack of regulation, but a more scientific approach to it: "See what breaks, then legislate."" [1]

1. EXCHANGE --- Keywords: Adam Neumann and The Future of Crypto --- WeWork's ex-CEO has co-founded a Web3 darling
Mims, Christopher. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 04 June 2022: B.6.