 Hello, everyone. I'm Deepthi Rao. I'm a product technical PM at Meta Fintech in the Web3 team. Me and my team, we build all things Web3 and blockchain in the Meta world. So today, I'd love to discuss the creative economy and Web3. So let's dive in. We have a lot of content. So the agenda for today would be we'll cover a little bit of what Web3 is and why it's important. So we'll dive a little bit deeper into what makes Web3 unique and why is this a new paradigm shift in the way we engage with the Internet itself. Then we'll look at the creative economy, the way it is right now, a little bit about its evolution. And then we'll actually talk about how Web3 and the creative economy intersect. And we'll also dive into some of the projects that Meta has been working on in the Web3 space. So let's dive in. So what is Web3? Before we talk about what Web3 is, it'll help to set context in terms of what Web1 and Web2 were. So if you look at the evolution of the Internet, the first version of the Internet was Web1.0. It wasn't called Web1.0 when it came out in the 90s. But now that we look back, we would call it Web1.0 in terms of its characteristics. So it used to be a read-only protocol. The protocols were decentralized and community governed, but most of the value was accrued at the edges of the network. So if you remember back in the day, AOL, Yahoo, it was just a means of consuming information. So there was no interaction with the Internet. You would go into one of these sites and read up things that were published by people that worked at Yahoo or AOL or websites like that. So this was the very basic version of the Internet. It was a means of consuming information, mostly read-only. And then we entered into the Web2.0 space. This was starting from early 2000s. 2005 in particular was a pivotal year. It was around the same time where Facebook, Google, all of them became popular. So this was a more interactive version of the Internet. This was where you could post your feedback, your comment. And all of these web pages or these products on the Internet were managed by corporations. So the Facebook, Google, YouTube, Tumblers of the world. And all the value that was accrued was centralized to these companies that were operating the Internet. So it did provide an upgrade from Web1.0 where in the sense that the people using it could interact with it. They could post their comments. They could post their pictures. They could share their views. They could write their own blogs. So it wasn't just one way consumption. It was interaction. However, they did not have much control over the product itself. So in a way, the people using the Internet also became products. So and this was the entire paradigm of Web2.0. And we saw the emergence of Big Tech. Most of us are thriving because of Big Tech as well, because of our jobs there. But however, there was no sense of ownership by the users. It was centrally owned by these corporations. And the users could interact and use the Internet in a way. But all the value was accrued centrally. So now we emerge into this whole new paradigm shift of Web3.0. And as we speak, Web3.0 has been... This does a hype. A lot of people say, what is the use case? So I agree that Web3.0 does have a lot of fluff surrounding it. But at its very core, the technology is something that provides you a way to co-own the Internet. So it is truly decentralized form of Internet that is owned by the people that use it. That's owned by the builders. And it's orchestrated with tokens. Blockchain is the underlying technology that enables all of this. So you as a Web3 participant will not only read and write into this. You will also co-own the apps that you're helping build. And that is the central USB of Web3.0. So to summarize, Web3.0 is a new iteration of the Internet. It's based on blockchain, which incorporates concepts such as decentralization and token-based economics. And we will dive into this a little bit in more detail. So what do you mean by decentralized? So if you look at Web1 and Web2, the servers that were hosting, say, YouTube or Facebook for that matter, were owned by those companies, like Google owns YouTube. So the servers and the content also is actually owned by these companies. So Web2.0 and all the products that were result of or built on Web2.0 were owned by some of these corporations. And all the value, all the profit out of it would actually reach the corporations. However, with Web3, the whole concept of decentralization is that the apps and the services built on this are not mediated by any corporation. Instead, individuals like you and me have the ability to govern sections of Web3. And that is the biggest USB of Web3. And it's peer-to-peer. So in the absence of a central governing organization, Web3.0 depends on people like you and me, peers, to enable transactions, to enable governance, enable data collection and decide on how that data is used as well. So Web3.0, that's why essentially will be able to protect users' privacy as well. And the third concept of Web3 is ownership or tokenization. So we might have heard of a lot of crypto tokens in the last couple of years. There's like new tokens launching everyday. So what does this whole tokenization mean? So tokens are essentially the monetary incentive that Web3 or blockchains by nature provide to anyone that helps to either create, govern or contribute to the Web3 network itself. So Web3 tokens are basically digital assets that are associated with the vision of creating a decentralized internet. And this is the core of the ownership economy, which is facilitated by blockchain on Web3. So these protocols, so based on what blockchain we are using, they would have a set of protocols in terms of how many tokens do you get if you were to perform certain actions. For example, if it's a blockchain that needs proof of stake versus proof of work. So depending on the kind of blockchain it is, it will provide you a set of tokens for performing various actions like computation, for bandwidth, for storage, for hosting, for any of those purposes. So you can think of Web3 as a peer-to-peer decentralized economy where everybody participates to make Web3 better and participation will also result in incentives via tokens. So that in a sense is the core concept of Web3. So in the absence of this peer-to-peer decentralization, if you look at Web2, how are all these happening? You would have cloud providers, you would have companies providing cloud storage like AWS and you would pay them for it. And then you would have companies providing security maybe and you'd pay them for that. You'd have companies that would provide central governance for the product and then you would either pay them as a subscription or pay them for the service or pay them via your data. So that was the concept of Web2 versus Web3. You as a participant in the Web3 ecosystem would actually get incentivized for providing these services. And this whole new economy is made possible through blockchain. And why do you think this is important? So the main philosophy of Web3 is that it aligns network participants to all work together towards the common goal which is the growth of the Web3 network itself. And as a result, all the network participants also get compensated via tokens. So there is a clear alignment of incentives. So the participants are not the products in Web3. Instead they are co-owners of the network and everyone is working together to help the network flourish, help the network grow and they're all getting compensated accordingly. And that is what makes Web3 so unique and this entire paradigm shift is what makes this, it's what sets the stage for a whole new set of economic models to be kicked off. So now let's look at creator economy. So we're going to take a tangential route and discuss what the creator economy is in the Web2 world and then we will circle back to Web3 and see how the creator economy and Web3 will intersect. So stay with me on this one. Okay so what is the creator economy? So currently creator economy consists of all kinds of creators, could be artists, singers, musicians, comedians, bloggers, people like you and me that's creating content, educational content, any of that. So all of that would be a part of the creator economy and this was estimated to be over 100 billion USD in 2021. So in Web2.to all of us would participate in the creator economy either as a creator or as a corporation or a company enabling creators or as a consumer. So as a creator my options were to post my content on say LinkedIn or on YouTube or on Udemy and these were all platforms that were centrally owned by corporations. However, my monetary benefit for my content was decided by this network, by these corporations. So it was a very centralized nature in Web2.to. Despite of that the creator economy grew to over 102 billion in USD in 2021 and over 1.3 billion in funding for products in Web2.to in the creator economy space. If you might have heard big corporations like Google and Facebook announce a lot of incentives for creators in order to get people on their platform as well. So the creator economy really really grew in the last couple of years especially during the pandemic because more and more creators became digital natives. And in the last five years we've had over 1 billion creators. So as you can see this is not a small number. This is a huge market. Okay now let's look at the evolution of the creator economy and I touched upon this a little bit earlier. So in Web1 it was information economy. So you had companies that were, I wouldn't say they were Web1 but let's look at the creator economy itself. In the first piece the centralized corporations solved for discovery and distribution. So if you looked at creators on Instagram, YouTube, iTunes, Spotify of the world. So they went to these platforms to help get discovered, to get more followers. And the platforms monetized based on how many followers you had by showing ads to these followers for your content. In the second stage of the creator economy was where you had the influencer economy or the platform economy. So you as a creator could get a share for the revenue you were bringing to the platform through monetization rev shares. Like you could have affiliate links, you would have rev share with say YouTube for the ads that were being shown on your content. So you would get a cut or a portion of the revenue that YouTube was making out of your content and that was a way for creators to monetize. And the affiliate portion was where you would recommend products for companies and as a result of that based on how many people click through the links or how many people purchase the product, you would get a commission or a share of the profits. So that was the platform economy. And then that progressed to viewing creators as businesses and this was the whole era where we had Kickstarter's crowdfunding. So creators set up a way for people to fund their business and become maybe co-owners or have get some incentives for that funding. We also saw the emergence of platforms like GoFundMe and things like that where you could actually look at pet projects, the creators that you really enjoyed or followed and then fund their products as well. And then you also had the subscription based funding where you had the patrons and the fan subscriptions of the world where you could subscribe to your creators, pay them something every month and then incentivize them to produce content. So this was the evolution of the creator economy. Now Web 3.0 removes the intermediaries and enables the creators to directly connect to their followers, to their fans. So that the creators and the fans become co-owners of the ecosystem rather than being consumers and producers. So that's the paradigm shift and that's the change in the model. We are moving from creators as just producers and viewers as just consumers to being co-owners in the whole ecosystem itself. So why is Web 3.0 important for creators? Again, the entire concept of blockchain provides a way to authentically verify original content and then to be able to interoperate. So earlier, if you were a creator on Spotify, your content was tied to that platform and you couldn't take your followers, you couldn't take the content easily and put it on a different platform. So because these platforms are centralized and owned by separate corporations, they were siloed. So if you had to grow your following on YouTube, you couldn't take it to Instagram. So interop of your content was not available. Even though you were the content creator, it was your own content. There was no direct ownership of the content. There was no ownership of the fans. So if you quit Instagram or if you quit YouTube, you'd lose all your followers from there. So you were actually dependent on the platforms to continue the sustenance of your followership. With Web 3.0, because there is no centralized corporation that's acting as the gatekeeper of your followers, of your content, you will be able to directly reach out to your fans, sell to them directly, interact with them directly and also get paid royalties for continued usage of your content. So imagine a world where I as a creator say I made this presentation and I gave you this course content and I get paid directly by you guys. And then every time you reference my video or like every time it provides value to you or another person, I get a royalty out of that. So that would be the model that Web 3.0 would enable for creators. So not only is the first time purchase enabled directly between the creator and the fan, subsequent usage can based on smart contracts and how the protocol is set up on the blockchain, you will be able to enable royalties for the creator so that due credit and due rewards are sent to the original creator as well. So this is what Web 3.0 enables for creators. So as we can see, this is definitely great for creators. It is definitely a way for creators to be able to make a living and thrive. And so we are not the first ones. A lot of venture capital companies have recognized this. So if you look at all the funding that happened in the last one or two years, it's unprecedented. So So Rare is a blockchain based NFT game collectibles platform. They raised a huge series B round. Then MoonPay, again a crypto payment infrastructure raised a huge series A round. And then you had Forte and Dapper Labs, of course. That's very famous behind the NBA Top Shot products. They raised a huge series D round. So all of this unprecedented VC investment has happened in the last couple of years in the creator economy on Web 3.0. So here's a quick summary of Web 3 so far. So you can see that currently it's estimated to be about 3 trillion market cap. This would be the total crypto economy. And this was based on data from a few weeks ago. I do acknowledge that a lot has changed in the crypto world in the last few weeks. But that doesn't take away from the core benefits that Web 3 inherently provides. So and we also have like over 35,000, 34,000 engineers and developers that are providing open source crypto and Web 3 project code. We also have over 30 billion invention capital that has been deployed in crypto. And then there is currently an estimated 80 million wallets in the world and DeFi which is decentralized finance. These are again decentralized apps in the crypto economy built on blockchain. So that was the total 74 billion was the total value locked there. And NFTs, we'll dive into that in a little bit, generated 22 billion worth in the last one or two years alone. So if you look at this, Web 3 really has exploded in a good way in the last couple of years or so. Okay, now let's look at the Web 3 creator economy. So the first use case that all of us might have heard of is NFTs. So NFTs are non-pungible tokens. It's basically a cryptographic token that exists on the blockchain and it points to a real world asset. It could be anything. It could be art, which is what usually NFTs are used for. But it could also be music. It could be videos. It could also point to real estate. So by definition and the essential nature of the NFT is that it's a unique cryptographic token. And the uniqueness provides a lot of benefits and a lot of use cases that are yet to be explored. So we're just scratching the surface with art on NFTs. There are plenty of use cases where the non-pungible nature, which what it essentially means is that you cannot exchange the non-pungible token for another one because by nature they are unique. So as a result, they have become a foundational building block for creating digital economies and thriving communities. So especially artists have capitalized on NFTs as a way to sell directly to their fans and build direct relationships with them. So in 2021, over 20 billion in value was created via NFTs. You might have heard of the first NFT that was sold at Christie's auction at over 69 million. It was by an artist called Beeple and that kind of started the hype around NFTs. But by nature, NFTs provide a way for a creator to monetize their art digitally. So before NFTs were a thing, if I was a digital artist, there were very few platforms where I could sell my art. And there was no verifiable way to say that this is the original copy of my art. And there was no way for me to get paid a royalty every time my art was used. So anyone could just copy my art and use it. And there was no verifiable way for me to prevent that. With NFTs, we do have a technology that will allow us to enable proof of ownership and to enable royalty payments to creators as well. There are a lot of things that are yet to be made clear in the NFT space in terms of how would you handle integrity? How would you handle copies or counterfeits? There are a few open questions, but NFTs by nature provide the most feasible way to prevent or to protect ownership. And as a result, they have become the de facto way for digital creators to monetize their work. So if you look at this, let's compare between Web 2 and Web 3. What was the revenue and the value that was created for creators? So if I'm a creator on Spotify, Spotify as a platform has 11 million artists and every artist, if you were to look at the revenue of Spotify, on an average an artist would make $600 if you were to just divide the entire revenue over the number of artists. Of course, this number varies. Not everybody makes the same. There are some that make a lot and some very less. But on an average, this would be the amount an artist would make by streaming their music on Spotify. Again, this is the centralized nature. Spotify is a corporation, they would probably own the content and they'll pay you a little bit for the content that you made. Similarly, YouTube currently has over 37 million channels and on an average, every channel makes $405, which is not a lot. YouTube does not make content. That's the biggest thing to note. Spotify, YouTube, none of them make any content. They do not spend on inventory. This is all creator-driven content, user-made content. But the final winners in this game are Spotify and YouTube, not the creators themselves. However, if you were to look at NFTs, there are 22,000 plus creators till date but almost 4 billion in value was created. So if you look at the average, every creator that's in the NFT space that's creating digital art on NFTs makes over $170,000. So if you were to compare that with Web 2 platforms, you can see the vast difference. So Web 3 is very, very clearly very creator-driven. It helps creators own their content, connect directly and sell directly to their fans and the token economy makes them all co-owners. And I found this interesting that selling 25 music NFTs at like $0.10 equivalent, like 0.18 based more than a million streams. So if you were to make some music and a million people really liked it and streamed it on Spotify you would not even make as much as selling just simple 25 music NFTs on a platform wherever music NFTs are supported. So you can look at the vast discrepancy and Web 3 is definitely pro creators much, much more than the Web 2 counterparts. The other use case for Web 3 in the creator economy has been gaming. So this is a huge market. Most of the NFT sales that happened in the last year, a large percentage of that were for gaming. So 20% of NFT sales were gaming related. So this could be anything from if I as a creator create an avatar or a new sword design for a game, a widely popular game, then and sell it as an NFT and every time it's used or owned or resold, I would get a cut of the sale as royalty. So that is how NFTs and gaming intersect. And a lot of crypto wallet activity again happens from games. So almost 50%, 49, 50% is in the gaming space. And we have over 50 plus live Web 3 games with more than one K unique on chain users. So people that are on the blockchain that are playing live Web 3 games and contributing to this token economy and also earning from it. So not only do you play games, you will also earn every time you play in terms of tokens. And that is again the core value of Web 3. So as you can see, so NFTs and gaming are two major use cases. But this is again still touching the surface. There have been multiple other use cases that have been mushrooming in the last few months even. And we are just getting started. Okay, now let's look at what Meta is doing as a company in the Web 3 space. So as we can see now, we are at the very beginning of a new phase or a new version of the Internet. So we are on a journey to enable this in whatever way possible and participate it. This is the next generation of the Internet. And we want to help build the future of social connections on Web 3. So the metaverse as you might have heard isn't not just about new technologies. It's also about a way to help deliver next generation of social experiences. So we at Meta want to build a strong ecosystem that supports millions of creators in the best way possible while preserving the core nature of Web 3, which is decentralization and ownership. So we want to help facilitate Web 3 in a way where we are enabling Web 3 to be better but not in the way where Web 2 had its drawbacks. So we understand that Facebook was a part of Web 2. But in Web 3, we want to build and leverage the core nature of decentralization and openness of Web 3 as well. So and how are we doing this? We have three principles. The first one is going to be interoperability and portability. So we want to enable a way to seamlessly carry and manage your identity, payment methods and purchases across platforms. So that is going to be our first tenant and we want to be blockchain agnostic. We want to support decentralized and centralized both forms to unlock parallel, unparalleled experiences. And this is definitely going to provide more economic opportunity for people and businesses. And then we also want to help creators and businesses unlock innovation through digital assets. And ultimately, if everyone in the networks or in the Web 3 space succeeds, we as a company as well will be successful. And we want to emphasize on this. Responsible innovation is our first motto. So we have four tenets, privacy, equity and inclusion, safety and integrity, and then economic opportunity and interoperability. So we want to double down on the best features of Web 3, which would be decentralization, interoperability and ownership, co-ownership rather than centralized ownership. So we want to provide that while making sure we do not compromise on privacy and safety and integrity. So this is going to be the new paradigm for Meta to operate in the Metaverse as well. So our first project on the Metaverse would be digital collectibles or NFTs. So what are we building? So we just launched to a handful of creators a way to be able to share your digital collectibles that you created on Instagram. So you will be able to connect your digital wallet, which is a third party wallet, and share your digital collectibles with your millions of followers. And then we'll also enable automatic tagging of both the creator and the collector. So this is just the first step. So we want to make it seamless and easy for people that are not tech savvy or crypto savvy to be able to mint, buy, sell, collect NFTs on our platforms. And the first step would be to be able to display your digital assets. The next step would be to create and mint. And then the third would be to buy and sell as well. So this is some screenshots of what we launched recently. This is a way for you to connect your wallet and share your NFTs on Instagram. So up until now, if you were a creator on Instagram, there was no way for you to share your NFT, something that you created on Instagram directly. With this feature, we will be enabling you as a creator to connect your wallet and share the collectibles that you have created or the ones that you bought with your Instagram followers. And then we are using the core tenets of Web 3 to display ownership and creatorship as well. So we will be, if you look at this, we'll show that this is an NFT via the digital collectible tag. And you'll also be able to see who owns the collectible and who's the original creator as well. And this is going to be recorded on the blockchain, which is decentralized again. So we don't own that data. So why did we build NFTs? So by building support for NFTs, we want to essentially make the whole concept of non-fungible tokens more accessible. Till now, NFT was this technology that many digital creators were afraid of because it seemed so inaccessible. There are a few steps you need to do in order to create a crypto wallet, go and mint your NFT and then sell it. It was not very accessible to people that were not crypto native. So our whole aim of enabling NFTs on Instagram is to improve accessibility to all the millions of creators so that we make it so easy for them to create and sell and buy NFTs that they can focus on their art instead of trying to onboard onto the complexities of crypto. So we want to definitely lower barriers to entry and make the experience seamless. And while we do that, we have two major tenants that we will definitely not compromise on. First is safety. So we want NFTs on Instagram to be safe and enjoyable. So integrity and safety will definitely be our first priority. And then you can keep your account secure through our tools and also to put distilled collectibles that go against community guidelines. So that we are building an experience that's safe and enjoyable for everyone. And the second one is that we know that a lot of plaque has come to blockchain technologies in terms of sustainability. And as a result, we are aware of that and we want to help reduce emissions impact as we create more and more products in Web 3. So we will be purchasing renewable energy in order to offset the emissions impact as a result so that we are net neutral in terms of our impact on the environment. So this is the reason why we are entering this space with NFTs. This is going to be the first project in the Web 3 space. But we want to participate in the best way and provide creators the best possible opportunities to connect with their fans while leveraging all the core benefits of being on a Web 3 platform. And we acknowledge that this is just the beginning. We have a long way to go and we are super excited about the future of Web 3. I hope that was useful. Thank you so much for listening through. I welcome feedback and comments. You can reach me on my LinkedIn. That's my LinkedIn profile as well. Thank you.