Over the coming weeks, we'll explore the hidden economics behind today's internet, beginning with one simple question:
If online services are free...
...where does the money come from?
Read The Hidden Price of Free 👇
web3.foundation/insights/
Before the doors opened...
There were cables to untangle.
Stages to build.
Coffee to make.
Mic checks to run.
Signs to hang.
A hundred tiny problems to solve.
None of it makes the program.
But all of it makes the Summit.
Here's to everyone working behind the scenes.
Some of the best conversations never happened on stage.
They happened in the corridors.
By the river.
Over coffee.
Between sessions.
One of the things that makes Web3 Summit special is how accessible the speakers are.
The people shaping tomorrow's ideas are also the ones
The Chat Control debate isn't really about one piece of legislation; it's about a much bigger question:
Who controls our private communications?
Today, most messaging depends on companies operating central services. Tomorrow, it doesn't have to.
Privacy can't just be promised.
If you're watching a video of me talk online, you have no real way of knowing I'm me. That's the uncomfortable truth I opened my Web3 Summit talk with.
youtube.com/watch?v=7-dSlo…
Open source has never been just about code.
It's about people helping people.
Throughout Web3 Summit, Playground became a place where experienced builders sat alongside complete newcomers, ideas were shared freely, and every successful deployment was another reminder that
Every time we click "Accept", we make a trade.
Not with money, but with our data, our attention, and, increasingly, our autonomy.
The internet's most successful business model isn't really free, and it's fair to say we all pay for it in ways that are difficult to see.
This
Some conversations do not end when an event is over.
After joining us at Web3 Summit,
@dasupervielle, Director of Strategic Communications at CERES, one of the most important think tanks in Uruguay, published a thoughtful reflection titled “I don’t want to be a stormtrooper.”
Before the first talk...
Before the first conversation...
Before the first line of code...
There was Funkhaus.
A place with its own history that, for two days, became home to thousands of new ideas.
190 people deployed their own decentralized apps at @Web3summit 2026. Most had never touched @Polkadot before.
• 272 .dot domains published
• 22,820 XP earned
• 469 stars given
• 49 apps forked from each other's code.
That happened at a conference where most people did not
Privacy isn't just about keeping secrets. It's about preserving the freedom to communicate, organize, and think without every conversation being subject to mass surveillance.
Yesterday, the EU reinstated the temporary "Chat Control" regulation, allowing providers to continue to
At @Web3summit this past month, I gave probably what was one of the strangest presentations I've ever given. Over the past year I've been mulling over some big concepts and trying to put them all together in one coherent narrative.
What if all this talk about the K-shaped
