Tried to dig some info about what (the hell) it is supposed to depict and the only official hint so far was from their video reveal transcript [0]:
> It depicts a symbol made of three flowing lines that resemble the links of a chain. The words ‘The World Wide Web Consortium’ circle around it.
So the main part is not a word mark, after all, or at least not intended to be one. (Yes, hard to believe.) Some more hints may eventually appear in their mastodon thread [1] what (to me) does not seem like a properly managed public relations shtick at all, starting from the "alt text" of the new logo, that reads "new W3C logo" (sic), to single (at this point) response
> it's not a 'W', darling
(also sic). Yes, it seems that the this standards body public relations had been hijacked by some covert adversary, and can only hope it is just the PR part.
[0] https://www.w3.org/about/press-media/#transcripts:~:text=The...
[1] https://w3c.social/@w3c/115299385112878605
