For nearly as long as the internet has existed, internet users have been creating valuable content and data for websites while receiving back little in return. Centralized platforms themselves, or the companies behind them, have absorbed most of this value coming from user-created data and content. At the same time, scandals involving what these major internet players do with users’ data have also caused legitimate privacy concerns.

Below we’ll discuss how the issue of data ownership has persisted through multiple iterations of the internet, and how MetaBlox is using a Web3 model to finally distribute the internet’s value equitably among the billions of users who create it.

Centralized Internet, Centralized Benefits

While the internet has caused massive advancements across numerous industries and the arts, its benefits remain unequally distributed. ISPs and internet platforms have profited massively from their users’ data, which often functions essentially as the entrance fee for using such services: the user must hand over to the platform ownership of whatever data they share/post on it. So although internet users are constantly contributing data that increase the value of the internet, they get none of this value back.

For example, social media posts complimenting businesses or their products effectively function as free advertising, while social media users may not even realize that they are creating valuable data. During the early internet, users had minimal control over their data, and once information was shared online, it became the property of the website hosting it.

With the advent of Web2, the internet shifted towards interactivity, social networking, and user-generated content. Social media and content sharing platforms empowered users to contribute, share, and generally engage online on a massive scale. However, the convenience and creative opportunities provided by Web2 came with a price: user data became the currency of the digital age. Tech giants accumulated vast amounts of user information, often without explicit consent, leading to concerns about privacy breaches and unauthorized data monetization.

The Decentralized Web

Blockchain technology, on the other hand, has enabled a new generation of the internet whose core tenets include user autonomy and data ownership. Known as, ‘Web3’, this iteration of the internet uses decentralized networks to reduce reliance on central platforms fore exchanging data. This design ensures that internet users’ data is stored across a distributed network, enhancing security and reducing the risk of single points of failure or control.

As a result, blockchain networks have supported the creation of decentralized applications for social networks, online games, AI chatbots, video streaming sites, cryptocurrency exchanges and NFT platforms, and more. These ‘dApps’ operate without using single centralized servers to authenticate data, as the necessary computations are executed in conjunction, by many different computers–that is, by blockchain nodes.

Taking Back Data Ownership

Since blockchains store and verify data decentrally, dApp users don’t have to worry about their content being sold or exploited. Thanks to the decentralized, automated nature of the blockchain, which implements protocols consistently and without any human interference, users can securely store their data while maintaining control over who accesses it and how it’s used.

All this creates the possibility of a self-sovereign internet identity that empowers users to share their data without simply giving it away to the platform in question…

Monetizing What’s Yours

As a result of this newfound user-sovereignty, Web3 allows for different app and network operating models that actively incentivize engagement via tokenomics. Because they are built on a blockchain, no entity active on these platforms can simply profit from taking the users’ data. This same technology that enables such data sovereignty also enables tokenomics for attracting users. For instance, users can earn tokens on play2earn games or by trading crypto on DeFi platforms.

The DeWi Future

Web3's engagement-for-rewards model has also found an iteration in the DePIN–or decentralized physical infrastructure network, while retaining the benefits of data sovereignty provided by other blockchain applications.

DePINs aim to provide decentralized network services or other services built upon blockchain/decentralized networks, including various types of marketplaces, as well as wireless access networks. Some of the marketplaces built using the DePIN model allow users to monetize their data through tokenomics. For instance, individuals can earn tokens by adding the data their vehicles produce by exporting it to the blockchain.

At the same time, the other form of DePIN (indicated in the map’s top left section), also known as DeWi (decentralized wireless) focuses on providing wireless network (like WiFi) coverage, by offering token incentives to deployers of the network’s infrastructure and its underlying blockchain. Thus DeWi networks also helps democratize wireless network access and ownership by allowing individuals to become their own and others’ providers through hosting nodes, which generate tokens.

Crowdsourced Network Infrastructure

DeWi brings responsibility for wireless network deployment and operations out of centralized, private hands and into a community of providers who deploy nodes or become validators of blockchain helping to provide wireless network services. These community contributions, following the DePIN model, can be rewarded with tokens according to a given protocol. This incentive motivates the further growth of the given network by attracting additional contributors.

Moreover, some DePINs allow users to mine or validate the network with nonspecialized equipment- even smartphones. DeWi thus lets users themselves, who produce so much of the internet’s value, claim a portion of that value via tokenomics.

Worldwide Decentralized WiFi

A global and truly decentralized WiFi roaming network with millions of locations worldwide, MetaBlox is offering users a vision of the internet that isn’t limited by the data-greedy motivations of centralized platforms/networks, implementing instead a DeWi framework.

MetaBlox WiFi routers, which provide access to this network, are also miners that run consensus algorithms between themselves to authenticate users’ credentials for WiFi access. In the process, they issue mPoints for their owners. mPoints will become available to stake for ROAM tokens after the project’s token listing in 2024.

Now, you can even mine mPoints with your existing WiFi router by adding it as an access point/node in MetaBlox’s DePIN.

Moreover, MetaBlox users’ data is kept secure since it’s not stored on a central server or authenticated by a centralized third-party entity. Instead, since data exchange and verification is carried out in a decentralized way by a collection of nodes that adhere to a predetermined protocol, users maintain control over their data.

Moreover, only MetaBlox WiFi users have access to the private key for their Web3 identity credential, or DID (decentralized identity), which lets them access the network. Anyone can download this special credential onto their device for free from the MetaBlox app.

One Decentralized OpenRoaming Network

MetaBlox’s decentralized WiFi locations, provided by blockchain miners, are also OpenRoaming WiFi locations. Those with an OpenRoaming profile downloaded onto their device enjoy secure and automatic connections at all MetaBlox miners–no need to enter a password or go to the network settings. In effect, this creates a global OpenRoaming network of integrated public networks. Luckily, the DID provided by the MetaBlox app comes with an OpenRoaming profile.

After getting their DID and connecting to WiFi via a MetaBlox miner for the first time, users get seamless, automatic connections at all miner locations subsequently. In addition, they get automatic WiFi OpenRoaming at the 2 million+ hotspots provided by members of the Wireless Broadband Alliance. This organization spearheaded the worldwide WiFi OpenRoaming project, while MetaBlox, as a WBA member itself, aims to decentralize OpenRoaming using DeWi.

How MetaBlox Users Can Claim the Network’s Value without Hosting a Node

While they provide WiFi access at particular locations, MetaBlox miners, as mentioned, don’t verify or gather data in a centralized way, functioning instead as blockchain nodes that handle network data decentrally. Users thus maintain sole autonomy over their data and identities, and what data they do share becomes a matter of choice.

Their engagement and data, moreover becomes not the entrance fee to the network, but a way for users themselves to claim part of the value they create for the network.

How? Not only does the MetaBlox app let users access global decentralized OpenRoaming WiFi, but it also allows them to collect rewards simply for using these networks. Users can, at any location hosting a MetaBlox miner/WiFi network, ‘check-in’ to the network on the app and collect mPoints in return. In reality, this action performs the important task of validating the OpenRoaming network’s underlying blockchain.

A New Horizon for the Internet

In the pursuit of genuine user autonomy and data ownership, DeWi networks like MetaBlox have emerged as a transformative force. While centralized platforms harvest and exploit user-generated data, these new models pave an alternate path forward. Through the integration of blockchain technology with wireless networks, DeWi enables truly self-sovereign data ownership for internet users, who are thus able to reclaim the value of the online world they help build.

Check out MetaBlox’s social media channels and website for updates on the global WiFi DeWi!