What is Web3? The Decentralized Internet of the Future.
Understand Web3- the third generation internet where decentralized applications run on blockchain technology.
Web3 is the buzz we are hearing as “the future of the internet”. But what really is Web3?? Everyone seems to be having a different explanation and it seems confusing. 😕
So let’s dive right into it and focus first on how and why we reached this third generation of the internet called Web3 or Web 3.0?
Web 1.0
To understand Web3 let’s start with the original “Web” itself, also known as the World Wide Web, which is the foundational layer of the internet providing us with websites and a whole lot of things to read on these websites.
Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, invent the World Wide Web in 1989 while working at CERN where he was trying to create a system for sharing experiments and information among scientists across the world. Soon Lee realized the importance of this new information sharing invention and so he went on to create an open, decentralized protocol that allowed information-sharing from anywhere on the earth. Thus the first iteration of the Web called Web1.0 was born and was mainly static websites for reading with almost zero interaction between users/individuals. This Web 1.0 lasted from 1994–2004 and was known as the “read-only” web.
If you want to know more on Web1, Lee or CERN, watch the video below or else right hop onto Web2.
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 was championed by social media and takes off from around 2004. Instead of read only, now people could “read and write”. 👀 📝
Social media posts, user generated contents, reviews, chat interactions, mobile apps etc. all became popular formats in this era over the next 15 plus years. User-to-user interaction increased massively on some major platforms/websites as they became more and more dynamic and real-time instead of static as earlier.
Web 2.0 gave us a full-blown “digital economy” — with services we had never imagined - online yoga classes, small bakeries run from home kitchens, taxi hailing services, OTT platforms, governance portals and excessive DIY YouTube videos on everything under the sun from cooking to baking to bathing your pets.
So where is the problem then? Why not continue with Web2?
Well many reasons, but two major ones:
- Centralized control:
Web 2.0 gave rise to some big tech giants — Facebook, Google, Amazon etc. A handful of these top tech companies began to control a massive amount of the traffic and value generated on the internet through their advertisement driven revenue models, protected algorithms and other monetization trends. They also became powerhouses of customer data collection and that probably became the biggest problem of the We 2.0 era - DATA. 💻
In web2, you don’t have any control over your data or how it is stored. Most companies often track and save cookies and cached data. All this stored data is owned, operated and controlled by the company, sold to third parties and monetized by all those looking to sell their products online.
While you may say that my Facebook, Instagram or Twitter account is my own and the data belongs to me- but here is the irony - you leave Facebook today, you lose all your posts, pictures, comments, reactions from the last decade of your life’s social media snapshot. You cannot take your data with you. So a very CENTRALIZED control of your data. And an equally centralized control for profit sharing where big players like YouTube take a huge part of your contents profit and wield power to monetize or take down your content anytime.
2. Lack of Ownership:
Furthermore, in Web2 it is difficult to find a consensus on ownership of the massive sea of swarming content. So you see a meme and now its viral in 20 different versions and you cannot prove who the original owner is… you see a piece of digital art and there are a hundred different version of it available on the internet and being sold. You cannot prove ownership of this digital art piece unless you have taken the legal route of IP/copyright protection. Fake news, fake artists, fake scams proliferated all over.
So in comes Web3, trying to solve these problems and making the internet a better and evolved vision of the future.
Web3.0
Web 3 in the last two years has become like this catch-term for a new better internet vision. While the term started emerging in 2014 but the whole idea of web3 is still evolving and growing every single day and picked up more momentum in 2020s and onwards. This new-age internet has some major principles that define its core:
1. Web 3 is decentralized:
For Web3 believers, the biggest attraction is decentralization. Decentralization focuses on giving data control back to the consumers. It aims to remove centralized access control mediated by companies like Google, Apple or Facebook, and put it in hands of the consumers themselves. So you as the consumer will hold onto your data and decide what to do with it — sell/not sell…share/not share…sell to whom/sell not to whom…profit/not profit etc.
2. Web3 is Permission-less :
This is to say both users and suppliers, can participate without authorization from a governing body. Peer-to-peer is the mantra for Web3.
So I want to sell and you wish to buy, then “No” we don't need an Amazon in between if we were to jump into the Web3 era. In fact, Web3 projects are very heavily focused on building mass adoption of peer-to-peer transactions. If that happens, then banking and governance is looking at a huge change in the way it functions.
3. Web3 is Open and Trustless:
‘Open’ and built on community trust. Web3 projects are open sourced software built and executed in full view of the world. They are using blockchain and hyper-ledger technologies where each transaction is available for public viewing.
Community is a big part of the growing Web3 ecosystem. The motto remains that every project must win community trust in what they are set out to do and all decisions on development, operations or governance must be in unison.
4. Web3 is Ownership focused:
Web3 is democratizing ownership on the internet. It gives you ownership of digital asserts or your content like never before. This is because web3 projects are being built on blockchain and allows you direct control of your assets through Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). NFTs help to prove ownership and give clear representation of your assets.
PS: that also happens to be my banner image. Check out below and follow if you relate.
So web3 enhances the existing internet to a “read-write-own” version of the current web.
But there is a lot more happening in Web3 than just the above. So let’s take a deeper dive into some other important aspects of Web3 projects.
Web3 combines many evolving technologies and concepts, including blockchain, cryptocurrency, Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized applications (DApps), metaverse, digital avatars, community etc.
A small peek into how each of these relate to Web 3:
#1. Blockchain and Web3: Web3 projects are being built on blockchain technology. While this is by no means a mandate but how else will you bring in a decentralized, permissionless and open environment. Blockchain technology enables that for Web3 projects.
A blockchain stores information electronically in digital format. Its data storage structure in “Blocks of data” inherently make an irreversible and immutable ( non-changeable) timeline/chain of data which is decentralized in nature, i.e., cannot be controlled by one person or entity.
The biggest problem for Web3 projects however has been to scale traditional Layer 1 blockchains like Ethereum. Many companies such as Polygon are creating Layer 2 scaling solutions and these will form the backbone of the Web3 ecosystem to develop in times to come.
#2. Cryptocurrency and Web3: Well, cryptocurrency comes up pretty much everytime Web3 is mentioned.
“A new-age economy waiting for a new-age currency or vice versa”. 😃
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ehtereum, Dogecoin etc. are transacted on blockchain with smart contracts. They are often well liked by Web3 enthusiasts because they share the same core principles and vision of decentralization and equal access as seen by Web3 builders.
#3. NFTs and Web3: An NFT is a digital asset on the blockchain that can be sold or traded. Anything can be an NFT — jpeg photograph, music, audio files, in-game items and videos, a tweet or even a code etc.
Watch Tezos blockchain explain NFTs with a fun take. One of my favs because they explain it so beautifully.
#4. DApps and Web3: Decentralized applications are not controlled by one person. They run on a peer-to-peer network such as blockchain using smart contracts. Their data and all records are public. Anyone can make changes by modifying the underlying smart contract.
So let’s say in Web2 , you cannot change how the YouTube algorithm runs or you cannot build an entirely new game on top of Disney, you can only use the existing and you definitely need their permission….but with DApps you can do this in Web3. You can build an entirely new game on Sandbox. These dApps are built on blockchains and execute transactions with smart contracts. Smart contracts are open-source and can be modified. So you need the smart contract and you can modify it.
#5. Metaverse and Web3: The Metaverse is envisioned as a 3D embodiment of the internet merging our physical and digital lives with AR/VR based technologies. So yes, it is a different concept and it is not to be confused with Web3.
But metaverse and web3 actually link in together because the technologies that we spoke above to build web3 — blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs— all these will have huge roles to play in the virtual worlds of the metaverse as well for gaming, working, socializing and learning.
Read my earlier article on the basics of the Metaverse for more clarity. Embed below.
Time to get going for now. But if you enjoy and wish to learn more of Web3 then do follow this profile and twitter link for many more easy Web3 updates.
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