Sebastiaan van der Lans

A truthful internet makes a trustworthy society. That’s what we firmly believe at WordProof, and as winners of Europe’s Blockchains for Social good, I dare to say that our visions align: we need a better internet for all citizens. Europe has a reputation for fighting for a better internet, hence GDPR. This article focuses on what policymakers could do to lead the way towards a ‘Trusted Web’. TLDR; there’s a massive opportunity for policymakers today!

Even though the internet has brought us many good things, it has a deep-rooted issue: trust. On the internet, citizens suffer fraud, manipulation, and theft on a daily basis. Policymakers can play a role in guiding the world towards a trustworthy internet. That’s what Europe tried to do with GDPR, and that’s what organizations like Europe’s NGI – Next Generation Internet – work on every day.

Today, WordProof officially received the € 1 million prize as the winner of Europe’s Blockchain for Social Good competition. “How did WordProof win that € 1 million from the European Commission?” is a question we frequently get, as winning prizes is an interesting alternative (or addition) to searching for investors as it doesn’t cost you equity. I sat down with Frank van Dalen, who was the initiator of WordProof’s submission, to share our lessons learned about winning prizes to finance and grow your start-up!

Frank started as WordProof‘s angel investor and is actively involved in the company. He has a very (!) rich track record in both entrepreneurship as in politics. We took the time to write down our lessons learned, based on Frank’s track record and our collaboration as a team at WordProof over the last 15 months.

Although a prize is not the same as a subsidy or funding application, there are also many similarities. In this blog, 8 insights are shared that enabled WordProof to keep 175 other blockchain companies behind in Europe’s Blockchains for Social Good competition.

In the last decade, WordPress’s market share grew from a little over ten percent to over one-third of the web. This makes it the most used Content Management System (CMS) by a large margin. Can WordPress still grow, and where will that growth come from? Is WordPress your best bet as a CMS? Here’s why I firmly believe that WordPress will cross the magic 50% market share mark before the end of this decade while being the best choice for individuals, businesses and enterprises!

At the time of writing (June 2020), WordPress’s market share is at a staggering 37.3%. At the start of 2011, its market share was 13,1%, so it reached an average growth of 2.47% per year.

If WordPress continues at this rate, we’ll end up with over 60% market share on January 1st, 2030 (hitting 50% at the end of 2025). However, as WordPress is already used by so many websites, where will those new users come from and why will WordPress be interesting to them?

“In the coming years, 3 billion new people will be connected to the internet. WordPress is free to use and translated into over 50 languages. As translations are a community effort, they don’t need to make sense from a business perspective.” said WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg in this 2017 interview. 

I agree that this will be a logical driver for adoption from a macro perspective. However, I will look at it from an enterprise perspective, presenting you five drivers that will fuel further WordPress adoption this decade:

1. WordPress at Scale: Enterprises use WordPress too!
2. The WordPress Ecosystem and Its Economics
3. Marketing is Changing and WordPress Fits in Perfectly
4. Google Loves WordPress
5. WordPress and e-Commerce

After exploring these drivers, you might agree that just half of the web at the end of this decade, or even by 2025 is a conservative estimate. Joost de Valk, the founder of Yoast SEO, made a bold guess: “WordPress has reached critical mass in multiple ways and is on its way to 50%, maybe even within the next two years”.

One of the many highlights of WordCamp Europe 2020, the biggest online WordPress event in history was the conversation with Matt Mullenweg on the future of WordPress. Firstly he and Matías Ventura looked at upcoming features for Gutenberg, WordPress’s revolutionary new editor. Some of those will be shipped around August, in WordPress 5.5. After that, they did a 40-minutes Q&A. I cherry-picked some of the many highlights and transcribed those insights for you.

• Gutenberg Demo
• The State of Gutenberg and WordPress 5.5
• How Gutenberg’s License might affect Adoption
• Moving Humanity Forward with Open-Source WordPress
• Is WordPress a Monopoly?
• HTML in Gutenberg
• A Paywall Site in Gutenberg Without Coding
• Are Freelancers and Agencies in Danger as WordPress Gets so User-friendly?
• Images and Image APIs in Gutenberg
• How to Train Users in Using Gutenberg?
• WordPress, e-Commerce, and Shopify
• Pay it forward; Grow WordPress through Radical Generosity

At the end of February, the WordPress community gathers in Miami for WordCamp Miami. For WordProof, it will be the first time we physically present our solution in the United States, as I’ll be speaking at this wonderful conference. The main topic will be how WordPress and blockchain can lead to a more trustworthy internet.

The event was held at Florida’s International University. Here’s the video of my talk:

How would you compete with a CMS with tens of millions of users, and tens of thousands of contributors like #WordPress?

You simply CAN’T!

Sebastiaan van der Lans, founder WordProof.io

How to fight disinformation? Yesterday, Nieuwsuur broadcasted an item highlighting three initiatives to decrease the impact of fake news. WordProof.io is one of them. Thanks to Rudy Bouma and Fleur Damen for making this important item.

Source: Nieuwsuur, NOS, February 16th, 2020.

Last week’s Sunday episode had 736.000 viewers.

Learn more about our Self-Soreign Identity Solutions, our Timestamp Ecosystem, and the value of content timestamps.