Introducing Consensus Journal: Placing Web3 in Perspective

As of in the present day, CoinDesk’s digital journal – previously generally known as Layer 2 – will likely be renamed Consensus Journal.

Final December we launched Layer 2 as a venue to discover crypto, blockchain and Web3’s large themes: the reinvention of cash, the decentralization of the web, the re-ordering of organizations round trustless collaboration (to call a couple of). We referred to as it Layer 2 (usually used to explain dietary supplements to a blockchain’s base layer) as a result of we conceived it as a second layer to what we had been doing within the newsroom. CoinDesk has lengthy been a number one supply of crypto information. Layer 2 aimed to build on the daily headlines, supplying context, rationalization, opinion and investigation.

The necessity for such content material has by no means been extra acute. Within the final 12 months, we’ve seen crypto and Web3 seep ever extra into mainstream dialog. It has penetrated America’s energy facilities. NFTs (non-fungible tokens) at the moment are minted by actors, athletes and musicians, whereas franchises resembling Bored Ape Yacht Membership are taken significantly in Hollywood. Central banks are releasing digital currencies, spurred by financial competitors from bitcoin and ether. Wall Road banks are providing custody and trading providers, hoping to get a lower of the motion. Washington, D.C., which for a very long time largely prevented crypto, has lastly stepped as much as regulate the business, and take its cash.

On the similar time, we’ve additionally witnessed the ugly facet of the blockchain revolution. Names together with Terra, Celsius Community, Three Arrows Capital and, not least of all, FTX have handed into the identical infamous lexicon as Lehman, Enron and MF International. Crypto’s status is as soon as extra in the bathroom within the monetary press, particularly amongst skeptics who by no means gave it an opportunity anyway. Trillions in worth has been misplaced, in all probability setting again the trigger by a number of years.

It’s a blended and sophisticated image: loads of good and an excessive amount of unhealthy. Crypto is an business with a lot promise that’s sullied by frequent controversy, incompetence and malfeasance. (Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX falls squarely within the final class.) Nevertheless it’s an business that deserves explaining and contemplating. Regardless of the fallout from FTX, there are nonetheless thousands and thousands of builders, asset holders and observers on the market who consider in Web3 and wish to perceive its implications. Web3 provides options for the long run even when it’s not all the time good at enunciating or proving them.

Additionally, FTX confirmed why journalism nonetheless issues: CoinDesk’s early November story about Alameda’s dodgy balance sheet, which set off the unraveling, is a riposte to all those that mentioned the very best reporting and evaluation nowadays comes from vigilantes with nameless Twitter accounts. At CoinDesk we’re by no means afraid to uncover unsavory points of what more and more highly effective actors are doing.

So why the identify change? As a result of {a magazine} at its greatest is a dialog: a spot the place folks can supply and debate concepts. Magazines are highly effective once they spark dialogue about what’s taking place now and will occur sooner or later. And that’s Consensus, CoinDesk’s annual occasion, throughout. It’s the place the most important conversations in Web3 occur. Consensus Journal goals to be the place the place a few of these conversations start, whether or not it’s in options by our writers, in interviews with main figures or in opinion items that deal with the newest scandals and triumphs.

Like Layer 2, Consensus Journal is partly periodical, partly ongoing evaluation. It’s made up of month-to-month Theme Weeks dedicated to crypto and Web3 matters (resembling our marquee Most Influential checklist, which we revealed in the present day) in addition to every day commentary. We’re right here to discover the massive themes in print and on TV (placing them on the stage in Austin, Texas, in April) and to supply commentary you don’t discover wherever else (like describing SBF for what he really is).

We’ve much more plans for the Consensus Journal expertise utilizing our DESK social token. Keep tuned for extra information on that quickly.

We hope you take pleasure in our new look and that you just, too, will wish to be a part of what’s subsequent. None of us is aware of what the long run holds. However we’re steadfast in our perception that peer-to-peer, decentralized applied sciences will likely be a part of it and it’s on all of us to be paying consideration.