On 30 November, Jack Dorsey’s Block subsidiary — TBD — announced its intention to register the Web5 trademark to prevent confusion over the term’s meaning. However, a few hours later it abandoned the initiative under community pressure.
i have been instructed to make an announcement. it’s long. so i did the screenshot thing. pic.twitter.com/Bp67ehWMZi
— TBD (@TBD54566975) November 29, 2022
“Recently we noted that the term ‘Web5’ is applied to products and services that are diametrically opposed to the principles we outlined for Web5,” the statement said.
“TBD argued that such a step would guarantee the use of the term ‘to denote a genuinely open, decentralised layer for the new Internet’. At the same time the company did not plan to prohibit third parties from using the trademark provided that they ‘respect the term’s meaning and support its core characteristics'”.
“TBD listed the following as examples:”
- decentralised and trustless systems that empower individuals;
- open-source protocols that build and invest in an ecosystem to promote decentralisation;
- solutions that help people own and control personal data in a decentralised manner;
- developers or projects creating tools for decentralised identification.
“We hope to build a coalition of companies, individuals and other stakeholders to uphold these standards so that Web5 truly becomes a public good,” TBD concluded.
Not all community members welcomed the initiative. One user called it ‘owning and oppressing the space through wordplay’.
This is the preamble for everything that has their tenets in the world needing to abide to their ‘Web5’ trademark. In effect owning and oppressing the space with a play of words.
— Miguel Phoenix (@MiguelPho3nix) November 29, 2022
“This statement means that your company should leave the blockchain industry. This is not for you,” he wrote.
In response to the criticism, TBD stressed that the main aim of the initiative is to prevent those who deliberately distort the term for the sale of goods and services that run counter to the Web5 mission.
we have heard the community and we are responding to their concerns. pic.twitter.com/xw31x6LMZA
— TBD (@TBD54566975) November 30, 2022
“We have heard loud voices in the community, concerned about the possibility of abusing trademark law in a way that undermines the mission of decentralisation,” the statement said.
The company stressed that its aim is to ensure that Web5 exists independently from TBD and Block.
“Therefore we are suspending and cancelling our previously announced plan until further notice,” the company said.
As noted, Jack Dorsey presented TBD in August 2021. The unit initially planned to create a decentralised Bitcoin exchange on Block’s platform.
In June 2022, TBD published the concept of a decentralised platform with open-source Web5. According to the developers, the project would give users full control over their personal data and digital identities.
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