The two-fold purpose of this book is to equip consumers and professionals with a strong understanding of the benefits of NFTs, DAOs, and DApps, and enable users from all backgrounds to grasp how these technologies will help positively transform society and their daily lives in the Web 3.0 era.

This book discusses NFTs, DAOs, and DeFi, and explains how these technologies work. But even more importantly, it explains what it means for you and how it will transform your life. As discussed in the previous paragraphs, all these technologies have one thing in common: decentralization. These technologies make use of blockchain in one way or another and offer a way to manage assets, organizations, and financial transactions by people without the need for a centralized authority.

Non-fungible assets or NFTs are digital assets, but unlike a digital asset stored on your computer or mobile, the ownership information about an NFT is stored on the blockchain. Thus, while people may copy the digital asset, they cannot claim to be the owners of the asset because the ownership information is not only stored but also protected against unauthorized changes by the blockchain.

Decentralized autonomous organizations or DAOs also make use of blockchain but in a different way. Imagine a traditional organization that needs someone with authority to run the organization. It could be the owner, the CEO, a manager, or a board of directors running the organization, but there will always be someone with the final authority. On the other hand, a DAO does not need a central authority to manage its operations. In contrast, it is managed by what we call smart contracts. A smart contract is a piece of code that governs the organization, and the organization runs according to the rules mentioned in the code. And just like an NFT’s ownership information, the code resides in the blockchain and is protected by unauthorized changes.

Decentralized finance or DeFi, is the application of blockchain to financial transactions. In traditional financial systems, there is always a regulator that dictates the conditions of financial transactions. Central banks are one of the biggest regulators of traditional financial systems, and any banker that deals with the central bank regulations will tell you how complex it is to follow these regulations. But financial transactions can be decentralized using blockchain technology. Cryptocurrency is an example of decentralized money. For example, Bitcoin does not have a central authority but you can still buy, sell, and use bitcoins.