I'm trying super long posts on X. Let me know if you finish reading it! Web3 promised us ownership, but we’re letting our data slip back into the same old traps. I’m writing this, bathed in the cool aircon of my Airbnb at the end of a sweaty, sunburned, yet enjoyable week at @EthCC. While the location drew plenty of complaints when announced, it finished in glorious approval from pretty much everyone who came. Even the French national pastime of walkouts, grounding many flights, couldn’t dampen the mood. Cannes was a roaring success. We sponsored an event with @fractlCMOs on the first day of ETHCC. Landing from northern England, the heat hit hard. Still, I had some great conversations with founders and genuinely enjoyed being part of a well-organised event. Rime, our host and organiser, packs enough energy to power a small city. It showed in the vibe of our brunch. It was here, on day one, that I first got an itch at the back of my brain. My very first inkling that Web3 has a data problem. It all started with a conversation around AI Agents in Web3 and the need for them to have an identity attached to them. This is part of our roadmap over at @OntologyNetwork, so I was very pleased to find that so many builders understood why this should be something they’re considering. It was during one of these conversations that World ID came up as a solution of choice. I’m not here to trash World ID, but I am not alone in thinking that they don’t align with Web3 ideals when it comes to data. There are many documented issues around informed consent for individuals, questions over the security of storing biometric data, and ethical issues around the targeting of certain regions to ‘purchase’ biometric data. However, the founder I was talking to wasn’t concerned with these issues. World ID had an identity solution. Questions over how data was obtained and stored could be ignored for convenience. This didn’t seem to be the data ownership model Web3 had been promising me. Following this conversation I had a couple of days meeting various builders, founders, VCs, and entrepreneurial types in general. Lots of great ideas around payments, AI agents, DefAI, and so on. The builder space is certainly alive and well. Then came my next, and most significant, warning shot about Web3’s data problem. I found myself beachfront, in a beautiful hotel with an ice cold beer. I’d come prepared for a chat to see what each of us were working on, and see if we could collaborate. However, I must admit I left the conversation feeling slightly bruised and battered and it took me the best part of the day to figure out why. The reason? We were just so far removed from each other when it came to our principles on data ownership. It was during our conversation around decentralized reputation and how @OrangeProtocol could improve the experience of users on a platform, as well as how you could aggregate data (with the users permission) from many different places to allow for better market segmentation, that the phrase that threw me was dropped. “Why should we share our data with you, so other people know what our users are doing?” At the time, I’m sorry to say, I missed the importance of this statement. Something felt off. I lost my train of thought. The conversation struggled from this point on. But, I didn’t fully grasp the significance of this until later. Turns out, when it comes to data, some Web3 builders are just wearing a different hat while playing the same old game. It isn’t their data. Or it shouldn’t be. One of the founding principles of identity and data in Web3 is that it belongs to the user. That’s why Decentralized Identity and Zero Knowledge Proofs exist in the first place: to keep your data in your hands. We say it all of the time, “if someone is going to benefit from your data, it should be you’. But here I was, faced with the same data approaches as we’ve seen time and time again in Web3… and I missed my chance to call it out. Too many projects hoard your data and call it their moat. But it’s your data. Always has been. Use it as your right, to build reputation in DeFi, DAOs, gaming, or whatever Web3 throws at us next. It shouldn’t be locked in someone's vault. So my biggest lesson from Cannes, apart from investing heavily in suncream businesses, is simple: demand your data, now. If we’re not careful, we’ll repeat Web2’s mistakes, stockpiling and selling your info at will. Don’t let them play the same old game. Your data. Your choice. Your Web3.