Have you ever been given a company laptop?

It's yours to use freely, but anything created on it is company property and when you leave/lose your job, it's taken back from you.

That, right there , sums up the general theme of what we're talking about today.

Here Not There just raised $25M to build out 'Towns,' a Web3 group chat protocol and app.

...really? A chat app? We already have Telegram, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, iMessage, Discord...

What's the 'Web3' label bringing to the table?

The Towns app allows users to create a tailored experience that rewards member participation, and to sell NFTs in-chat.

Which is neat. But the key difference between Towns and the apps listed above, is that they're building an open protocol.

Cool. Big word. What does that actually mean?

Short answer: protocol means 'rule set.'

Long answer: think Email (open protocol) vs. Twitter (closed platform).

When you send an email from Gmail (Google) or Outlook (Microsoft), it uses the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to do so.

Neither Google nor Microsoft owns SMTP - no one does - but they're allowed to freely integrate with it. In fact, anyone can plug into it.

Which means even if you were to get booted from every third party email provider in the world, you could still set up your own email server, plug into SMTP and start mailing again.

On the flip side...

If you were to get booted from Twitter (a closed platform), it's out of your hands. The decision lies with the platform operator.

(Basically: open protocols = a laptop you bought yourself. Closed platforms = a company laptop).

So with an approach like that of Towns:

Users won't have to worry about whether the app owner will decide to prevent access, profit from their activities or change user rights.

And that's the big promise of Web3:

We get to take ownership over our digital lives.

(The same ones we're currently renting from a small group of tech giants).

Pretty neat!