**5. Early adopters and select use cases**

Since the central entity does not own end-user information or does not even require the end-users to provide more information than necessary (like connecting their smart wallets) businesses does not require special methods for data privacy. The inherent nature of blockchains safeguards applications and users from hacking and other fraudulent activities. The wide-spread adoption of cryptocurrencies has augmented the swift progress of Web3. Some industries because of its inherent nature and acceptability of peer-to-peer transactions have become early adopters of Web3 applications. At the same time, Web3 has resulted in emerging concepts such as the creator economy and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). This section covers some of the notable use cases and industries of adoption. The examples also bring clarity to some of the terminologies currently being used synonymously with Web3 which are use cases, for example metaverse.

### **5.1 Decentralized finance**

One of the industries with wide adoption of Web3 and having application of peerto-peer transaction is financial services. The decentralized application in this sector is called Decentralized Finance of DeFi. DeFi is an alternate economy making use of public blockchain for financial transactions [7]. DeFi in conjunction with cryptocurrencies has led to more transparency, reduction in transaction fees, and more importantly can avoid intermediaries such as banks and clearing houses. Use-cases of DeFi itself varies across asset management, lending, derivatives etc. across the financial services. However, peer-to-peer lending and cryptocurrency-based transactions (across borders) are the widely used ones. All cryptocurrency projects broadly fall under the DeFi category and some of the new projects include POLYGON, SOLANA, CARDANO, CHAINLINK, AVALANCHE etc.

### **5.2 Decentralized autonomous organizations**

An interesting aspect of Web3 adoption as compared to Web 2.0 adoption in early stages is not due to the characteristics of User Experience (UX) or ease of use from a front-end perspective, rather it is because of the blockchain features. The decentralized feature of blockchain initiated the idea of collective governance without a centralized authority and one of the best use-cases of Web3 is the DAO. Any governance parameter is dependent on the consensus of DAO members and smart contracts are used to replicate votes of DAO members this form of on-chain governance has gained relevance with Web3 adoption. Few of the notable examples include Uniswap, Decentraland, American CryptoFed DAO etc. [8].

### **5.3 Metaverse**

Metaverse is one of the broadly used terminology in conjuncture with Web3 and is sometimes referred synonymously with Web3. However, metaverse is a boundless virtual world or a three-dimensional internet representing the real world as close as possible. Metaverse and the experience of the virtual world can be provided using Web 2.0 or Web3 features. Metaverse focuses on user experience and uses many of the Web3 feature applications. Creator economy (NFTs), peer-to-peer transactions, decentralized control, and multiple other features are applied to enable realism in the metaverse. Retailers providing virtual experience of the shopping, virtual realestate experience, and projects such as the one from Meta (Facebook) to enable real life experiences on the web all fall under the category of Metaverse. Relevance to Metaverse in Web3 comes from the digital content it has to offer creating a marketplace for NFTs and smart contracts which are deployed on the Metaverse for peerto-peer transactions. The virtual or augmented reality projects apply the concepts of Web3 in its transactions it is likely to be considered as the most accepted use case of Web3.

### **5.4 Creator economy**

The creative industry including creators such as developers, artists, musicians, photographers, etc. uses Web3 for monetization opportunities. The creators can directly sell their artwork to interested buyers without any intermediaries. Web3 based businesses for creators focus on the artists and by enabling payments, licensing, intellectual property, storage, ownership, and digital asset management on the blockchain develop a value-based economy for the artists [9]. The digital assets are called the NFTs, and smart contracts are used on blockchains to track ownership of the NFTs. Any secondary sale of NFTs also result in monetary benefits to the creators. NFTs can also be used to incentivize community members, provide special access to events, offer exclusivity, and even provide business services. Marketplaces such as opensea (opensea.io) and foundation (foundation.app) are well used NFT marketplaces directly aligning buyers and sellers. NFT collections are also released by big corporations such as Coca-Cola, Adidas etc. for their branding, business activities and charity.
