Welcome to Web3

The case used in this module

Each module tells its own made-up Brindlecove story, so details can differ from one module to the next.

Key words

Money

A special kind of IOU that everyone trusts other people will accept in exchange for goods and services.¹

IOU

A promise to pay someone back at a later date.¹

Store of value

Something expected to keep its value in a fairly predictable way over time.¹

Unit of account

The thing prices are written in, for example on menus, contracts or price labels.¹

Medium of exchange

Something people hold because they plan to swap it for something else, not because they want it for itself.¹

Fiat money

Money the central bank won't convert into gold or any other asset. Bank of England money has been fiat money since 1931.¹

Ledger

A collection of transactions: a record of who paid what to whom.²

Blockchain

A shared digital ledger where transactions are grouped into blocks, and each block is linked to the one before it.²

Double spending

Spending the same digital money more than once. Digital money is easy to copy, so a system has to stop this.³

Web3

A catch-all term for a vision of an internet where users own things, built on blockchains and tokens.⁴

Oracle problem

A blockchain can record data from the real world, but on its own it can't check that the data is true.²

Recovery phrase

Also called a seed phrase. The master key to a crypto wallet: anyone who has it can take everything in the wallet.⁵