The future of web 3 is here! 🚀
The future is already here it’s just not evenly distributed.
The future we are going to talk about is the revolutionary services built on web 3. Today we will take a close look at web 3 to demystify the hype about web 3 technology and will see what’s causing so much #fomo around this. Many developers and web 3 practitioners compare web 3 in 2021 with the 1997 Internet gold rush time, when Internet made everyone rich and wealthy for lifetime. 1997 was the year when all the big tech giants that we see today took off.
Before you get overwhelmed by hearing this let’s understand what the heck is web 3.0, how it originated, why its going to be a big thing, what are its main features and some of the alternatives of web 2 products build using web 3 technology.
To understand the whole story, Let’s go back in time to connect few dots from the past:
In 1989 when Internet aka web 1 was invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, he proposed an idea: “a web of hypertext documents viewable by browsers”.
Back in 90’s the technology and innovation was at its peak. The demand for a rapid knowledge transfer mechanism was on all time high. The small network built for the scientific communities at CERN starts spreading widely and Internet took off that market with its web 1 version. Tim’s idea to share hyperlinked texts via a network took off so much that the mainstream public joined internet within a few years and that’s how Internet was born.
Internet was the biggest game changer of 90’s. It offered a zero cost distribution channel for knowledge sharing and other information based services.
Web 1 was based on static information sharing, it was one way communication where websites store static information and users can read it anywhere in the globe with the access of internet. It lasted from the early 90’s until about 2004. It was all about consuming static content, usually in the form of texts, links and images. Then came web 2 with its two way communication technology.
Web 2.0 : Real time communication
The current version of Internet runs as a two way communication, users are an integral part of web 2.0, we are the creator, we interact with products and services and contributes a large chunk of data in a website or app. This gave rise to a large set of interactive products like social media, online payments, video streaming, gaming and many other personalized services born out of the Internet.
Now anyone can create and publish their content in the form of text, graphics, multimedia on internet with a click. You are constantly creating your footprints in form of your private and public data floating over the Internet. Internet providers know more about your choices and preferences and what’s on your mind more than a close friend or partner. But this ease and personalization also give rise to much bigger concerns of data theft, privacy and security.
The top Internet companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon who don’t charge us a penny for their platform specific services are profiting out of the massive data generated by its users. They own a big share of data floating all over the web, this makes Web 2 a centralized Web. These central forces of Web 2 keeps the door shut for new players and create a monopolistic economy.
Remember:
“If You Are Not Paying for the Product, You Are the Product”- Richard Serra
Every free service, app or website is trying to catch your attention only to monetize it later. Web 2.0 empowers companies to give away their products and service for FREE because FREE services catch more attention and brings in more data, down the line data brings more profits to these companies than they could’ve ever earned by monetizing their products and services. These companies lives on its users data. The company’s only goal is to get you in and keep you hooked as long as possible, because your attention is their original product.
Web 2 is all about data and it gave rise to digital monarchs like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and many more. It incentivized winners and created a winner take it all economy. That made these companies more powerful by concentrating all the resources, data, talent at one place and creating more inequality for new players.
The problem with so much centralized powers is that the owners are the single source of truth. They set the rules, and you play the game. The owner controls everything in the network from access permissions, governance, control over data to every rule that runs the whole network. This excessive concentration of power is where the problems arises and we see a screaming need for decentralization of this power with web 3.
Web 3.0
Wherever decentralization comes, you know its backed by blockchain technology. Web 3 is no different it relies on blockchain for its humongous powers over Web 2.
The USP of web 3 comes with decentralized web. It aims to hand over the control of every service to the participant in its network. Contrary to web 2 where current tech giants own veto powers over all kinds of data and services. Web 3 hands over the power keys to its users. It dissolves the middleman of web 2 and connect the demand with supply without any hidden charges and middle entity.
Web 3.0 applications are usually referred to as Decentralized applications or Dapps. Nor are not they owned by a single entity neither are they deployed to a centralized server. Rather, they’re isolated pieces of code deployed to a peer-to-peer network of a blockchain.
The validity of the blockchain and its app ecosystem is upheld through incentives. These incentives comes in the form of digital tokens also known as cryptocurrency. Tokens are awarded to its participants in the network through various protocols and consensus. Current internet believes in giving all the monetary profits to central servers like Google, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Content creators comes at the end of this profitability equation, in spite of they being the main agent who runs the system. Imagine there is no content on YouTube to watch, Twitter to scroll for, will you ever go back to them ?
Obviously No! Unless you are a their employee.
Point is these systems are getting rich out of common people like you and me. The original creators are only getting a non fungible token of popularity and social acceptance through likes and comments, which are non magnetizable tokens in short term. With web 3.0 this trend will be shifted inside out, the middleman will be out of business and content creators will be directly incentivized for their content with digital crypto tokens.
The use of these incentive tokens is where things starts getting more interesting in web 3. The basic incentive is getting paid for actions on the network. An action comes in the form of creating content, posts, tweets, videos and graphics for the people using that network. Every creator will get their fair share in the profits earned through their piece of work. Many blockchain based web 3 social networks have already joined the Dapps ecosystem as Bitclout and Steemit.
Anyone can use a decentralized app. Every Dapp use a unique seed phrase for logins. Logins are anonymous. Payments are built-in using payment wallets like MetaMask which support different crypto tokens, everything on Dapp is anonymous and is backed by cryptography.
Disrupting Features of web 3.0
Web 3.0 brings a fundamental disruption, one that will disrupt everything with time. It is a leap forward to an Open Source, Trustless, Decentralized and Permissionless networks.
- Open Source: The main principle of blockchain is transparency and that comes with its open source software made available to every node in the network. Its code is built by an open and accessible community of developers.
- Trustless: It’s built assuming that every user can be traitor. With that hypothesis, the blockchain consensus is built such that noone can temper with the data neither today nor in the future. The hash algorithm backing the system makes it impossible to hack the system. In web 2 third parties insure trust, but here the network itself is backing users as a trusted authority which removes third party from the equation and let participants interact publicly or privately without any need of trusted third party.
- Decentralized: Web 3 is a separate set of code that runs freely on the internet. It has no headquarters or anything of that sort which holds single point of control to shut it down, control or modify its data, services and users. Its runs on a network spread across the internet among its participants.
- Permissionless: Since blockchain isn’t backed or run by a central authority or government, its doesn’t abide by any government law and regional controls, thus making web 3.0 free of all kinds of censorship and governmental rules. Anyone from any remote part of the world with access to the internet can participate in web 3 without authorization from a governing body.
Web 3 increases the privacy, security, access to a more equal web, possibility to coordinate. It incentivise every contribution, work, service, data and content provided by its users.
Where Web 2.0 was driven by the advent of mobile, social and cloud, Web 3.0 is built largely on three new layers of technological innovation: edge computing, decentralized data networks and artificial intelligence.
Web 3.0 runs with the motto of “Sabka sath, Sabka vikas”. Its a replacement of monarchy powers with democratic powers.
But who said democracy doesn’t comes with problems, It has its own problem and certain use cases can’t support democracy at all. Not every participant in a democratic/decentralized system is well qualified to rule the system.
Problems with decentralization
Though decentralization promises distribution of powers. Certain use cases still relies on some layer of centralization. Centralization makes things easier to coordinate. Achieving full decentralization introduces difficult problems like communication, incentives and consensus. But they are problems worth solving. Researchers are looking for better alternatives to full decentralization, I hope this get’s solved as we move into web 3.
Some alternatives of Web 2 services in Web 3
If you are finding it hard to imagine how does a dapp in web 3 looks like (which are nothing but typical app of a web 2 world built using web 3 technology stack), try out some of these currently popular dapp of web 3 world.
- The current DNS system of web 2 to locate specific servers and sites is replaced with Inter Planetary File System, IPFS for short.
- Twitter and Reddit with Noise cash
- Social network sites like facebook, Instagram with Bitclout
- GoDaddy of web 3.0 with Unstoppable domains
- Stock images sites with Rarible
- Amazon like marketplace with Purse
- AWS like Cloud services with Sia tech
- Hostinger like hosting with Shiftnrg
- TripAdvisor like services with Travala
- Credit cards with Blockfi
These are just a few examples of some products of web 2 built using web 3 technology stack, the possibilities of more unique product which can only be built in web 3 is endless and we are still in the nascent stage of web 3 to take off completely. A lot more exciting products are yet to be built, maybe some of you reading this might brainstorm and come up with more unique products using web 3. Let’s see how its takes off…
Currently web 3 is facing some energy issues, government censorship and various other issues. But the promises shown by web 3 paints a bright picture of the next decade. Let’s see whether by 2030 we will be using the same gmail and substack to communicate with each other or web 3 will bring us more closer for a web 4 discussion…
Leave your thoughts on what do think of web 3 and how its changing your world.
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