Deutsche Telekom and its U.S. subsidiary T-Mobile have linked and launched their third T Challenge, inviting developers and startups to compete for the best public blockchain protocol on solutions for Web3 using 5G networks.

The T Challenge is open to submissions through Jan. 20. The final $592,000 prize will be split between six announced winners, including an all-expenses paid trip to Bonn, Germany, to present ideas to Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile.

“Web3 is one of the major trends of the future," Claudia Nemat, board member for technology and innovation at Deutsche Telekom, stated in a release. "With the third edition of the T Challenge, we as a telecommunications provider want to explore the new possibilities of these technologies for us and our customers. This is done in the awareness that impactful technologies such as Web3, crypto, or metaverse require a special degree of digital responsibility in their design."

The emerging blockchain integrations and use cases have further distanced the technology from its misunderstood association with cryptocurrency and seen wide uses adopted for its decentralized and immutable structure.

The release cited McKinsey’s recent investigation of Web3 “beyond the hype,” where the consulting giant wrote it expects the evolution to alter the pervasive, centralized web services to be more user-empowered.

“Web3, the next iteration, potentially upends that power structure with a shift back to users," the firm wrote. "Open standards and protocols could make their return. The intent is that control is no longer centralized in large platforms and aggregators, but rather is widely distributed through ‘permissionless’ decentralized blockchains and smart contracts."

The firm added that “one of the trickiest aspects of Web3” is governance, where the structure “is meant to take place in the community rather than behind closed doors. Revenues can be given back to creators and users with some incentives to finance user acquisition and growth.”

McKinsey predicts this shifted business model in digital applications would effectively remove intermediaries “with respect to data, functionality, and value. Users and creators could gain the upper hand and through open-source rather than proprietary applications would have incentives to innovate, test, build, and scale.”