The Future of Web is decentralized: All you need to know about web 3.0
Blockchain technology is causing a major disruption in the digital world. It is rapidly expanding beyond just the bitcoin transactions.
Blockchain technology is causing a rapid disruption in the digital world. It is significantly expanding beyond just the bitcoin transactions. Some bitcoin enthusiasts may see it as no more than a competition to the many emerging payment methods. But this technology has the potential to revolutionize how things work on the internet.
We live in a world with many blockchains, and hundreds of tokens built on top of them. These tokens are tradable. We’ll revisit this topic later in the article. Let’s see what web 3 is and a few web 3 examples:
What is Web 3?
It is a web that does not rely on centralized operations. Currently, we communicate with our devices through centralized services provided by tech giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon.
Our laptops are just mere screens, they are useless without a cloud. The decentralized web is all about decentralizing the rigid things set by big companies. With it, we won’t become reliant on their services to connect. We control the data, we interact and communicate directly with others who are in the network.
Why is it needed?
With our current web, all the user data lies in the hands of a few. It creates the risk of the data being hacked. These arrangements also assist governments to effectively conduct surveillance and easily impose censorship.
If one of these entities shuts down, all of our data and connections associated with it are irreversibly lost. There are rising privacy concerns about the adopted business models of these giant companies.
They fish out our private information freely provided by us and target us with ads. These services seem creepy, considering how much they know about us.
Decentralization, Transparency and Content Ownership defines Web 3. The decentralised web gives users choice. It assures control and privacy. The things on the network have very little chance of disappearing unexpectedly. Governments won’t be able to block the websites. The information is generated from many different places.
Here are some Web 3 Examples
Web 3.0 isn’t limited to decentralized social media platforms, it isn’t restricted to decentralized Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. With blockchain technology, there is a new kind of web to be unlocked.
It is getting transformed into a human to human economic network. Strangers are free to trade currencies, assets and valuable data. There is no institution or higher authority that can charge fees, set the rules or question the transactions.
To make the value exchange work, there is a prototypical contractual pattern. With performance, there is a reward. Bitcoins are simple examples of how blockchains verify the performance and the reward. The fulfilment of the contract is 100% guaranteed without anyone getting duped.
These smart contracts can be compared to automated vending machines. Trades are automated with a logic that can’t be easily breached.
With such a system in operation, you can trade art, intellectual property, insurance, real estate, even lawyers and credit cards, without any middlemen. This is done using decentralized applications (DApps) built on smart contract blockchains. Using them will be cheaper and quicker.
The superior economic efficiency gained by this will allow previously impossible business models to emerge. It will nudge the companies to reinvent themselves and be aligned with the technological advances in this area.
A company is a mesh of contracts. It has transactions with employees, shareholders, banks, customers and the state. Everything can be programmed on smart contract blockchains.
With blockchain, anyone in the world with a phone and an internet connection can instantly and directly participate in the global economy.
From a broader perspective, with Web 3.0, every user can be equated to a wallet, every digital file owned by that user can be deemed as an asset, and every exchange between wallets is a transaction.
Layers of Web 3.0
1) Edge Computing
In Web 2.0, commoditized personal computer technology saw a modification in the data centers. In Web 3.0 the data center is moving to the edge. Sometimes it also is directly moving straight into our hands.
Data centers are usually complemented by an array of advanced computing resources. Those resources are distributed among phones, laptops and other appliances. They are all set to produce and consume 160 times more data in 2025, compared to 2010.
2) Decentralized Data Network
Decentralized data networks allow various data generators to sell or trade their data. They can do it without losing their ownership, risking their privacy or relying on any intermediaries. This enables decentralized data networks to have a long list of data providers in the emerging economy surrounding only the data.
As mentioned before, when the data is decentralized, all users will own their data instead of tech giants and big companies. You will own your data, you will be able to trade it without losing your ownership, and you won’t be risking your privacy. You will be using the internet securely without getting tracked by anyone.
3) Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
AI and Machine Learning algorithms are now very advanced, they make valuable predictions and efficiently carry out many operations.
When they are built on top of decentralized data structures, with access to the humongous amount of data, the possible applications that could be developed can extend far beyond just targeting ads. With them, we can create a revolution in the domains of medicine and climate modelling.
Web 2.0 may also have similar capabilities, it is human-controlled and prone to corrupt behaviors. Biased product evaluations, rigged ratings and human errors ruin the digital experience.
Blockchain
To define in simple terms, blockchain is a significant layer of the technology behind web 3.0. Blockchain can be called the foundation of Web 3. It redefines the data structures in the backend of the semantic web. Blockchain is a decentralized state machine. It deploys intelligent contracts.
The logic of an application in Web 3 is defined by these smart contracts. Anyone building a blockchain application has to deploy their application code on the shared state machine.
Final Thoughts
With a steeping rise of popularity for NFTs and metaverse, Web 3.0 is now becoming significantly more popular than ever. This phenomenon is yet to take a concrete shape and penetrate into the daily lives of the people.
