Innovation and Inclusion: Challenges of the New Web

Roughly a third of humanity still isn’t online—yet we’re busy building the “next” internet. You’re scrolling through a slick Web3 app where users supposedly own everything… but the people who could benefit most aren’t even in the room. So who is this new web actually for?

A strange paradox sits at the heart of this “ownership revolution”: the people designing it are some of the most connected on earth, while billions still share phones, juggle data packs by the megabyte, or lose signal when it rains. In glossy decks, we hear about “banking the unbanked,” but many real users are still fighting to keep a cheap Android charged. Meanwhile, new systems for “participation” often assume you can pay gas fees that rival a day’s wages in some cities, read dense English-language docs, and navigate interfaces that feel like cockpit panels. It’s a bit like launching a gourmet food market where you need a chemistry degree just to read the labels: technically open to all, practically tailored to a tiny, over-served crowd. If this trajectory continues, Web3 doesn’t just risk leaving people out—it risks hard-coding exclusion into its foundations.

Here’s the quiet irony: while Web3 talks about global inclusion, fewer than 5% of its developers sit in Africa, Latin America, or the Middle East. The blueprints are being drawn far from the places they claim to transform. At the same time, projects like UNICEF’s CryptoFund are routing millions in crypto to startups tackling real-world problems, and networks like Helium prove communities can co-own critical infrastructure. Yet their growth patterns show familiar gravity: tools, capital, and decision-making concentrate where power already lives, unless we interrupt that default.