Roughly six hours after TBD, the Bitcoin-centric subsidiary of Jack Dorsey’s Block, announced its intention to trademark the “Web5” name, the controversial plan was scrapped, with TBD saying the voice of the community was heard and it was "responding to their concerns.”

TBD took to Twitter on Tuesday to announce their intention to seek protection for Web5, in a move designed to avoid confusion over the term’s meaning and “and ensure that the term is used as intended.”

Web5—a purported “extra decentralized web platform” that would enable users’ direct control over identity and personal data—was announced in June 2022, with Dorsey saying at the time that “this will likely be our most important contribution to the internet.”

The idea is to build the next iteration of the internet that would combine the legacy Web2 model and the novel conception of Web3, enabling developers to write Decentralized Web Apps (DWAs) using Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) running on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The decision to trademark the term “Web5,” according to TBD, while not intended “to prevent others from using Web5,” came in response to the desire “to establish an initial way to defend its principles.”

“We are working on ways to enable commercial and non-commercial uses of “Web5“ as long as participants respect the meaning of the term and uphold its main attributes,” TBD said in a statement.

(By Andrew Asmakov)