Web 3.0, Is It Time to Upgrade the Entire Internet?
The Internet is the backbone of our modern civilization and a big part of our economy. From our critical systems to the most basic communication channels are dependent on it. Even apps that give us such an amazing capability these days are only working because of the necessary infrastructure which is built over the Internet.
Truth is the Internet we are dealing with today, is a slow, fragile and forgetful entity and thinking of a fast, resilient and scalable Internet, unavoidably brings up the topic of re-architecting the entire web. Where eliminating the need of having central servers is the key factor in this process. How, and why? The answer requires a bit of backstory.
Web 1.0/2.0, HTTP and the Problem
What we call web is just a collection of protocols. These are sets of rules and ideas on how to best transmit data, those which are widely adopted by browsers and other tools. HTTP, developed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991, is the protocol used to access most of the web. It delivers virtually all type of data and it is considered a Client-Server protocol. But along the way Internet users experiencing some problems. Namely bandwidth, latency, resiliency, and centralization.
When you go to a website to upload or view a picture, each time your browser gets directly connected to the computers that are serving that website, even if their servers are far away and your data is very close. This transfer process consumes a lot of bandwidth. Data providers get charged because each time packets are passed to the next network device costs money. Worse of all, HTTP can’t get pieces of a file from multiple sources concurrently. A file has to be downloaded from a single server at a time.
Consequently, we end up with a system that is not just slow and expensive and but also unreliable due to centralization. If one link in an HTTP transfer cuts out for any reason, the whole transfer breaks. Also, content gets moved or deleted all the time, making your links fragile. Not to mention the unimaginable power we gave to specific services by centralization and how they can manipulate large swaths of the populace and how access to them can get easily blocked by governments or any other oppressive forces.
Web 3.0, Why it’s needed?
A new wave of technologies, known as Web 3.0, promises to return the internet to the hands of users. These technologies utilize the peer-to-peer (p2p) paradigm like blockchains to build applications and services. The decentralized nature of such solutions provides a hard cap by design to the possible accumulation of data and power. Web 3.0 is coming fast and promises solutions that improve the current architecture of the Internet. Protocols like IPFS and Swarm(tailored for Ethereum) approaching maturity level.
This movement is not only about blockchain. It’s about growing the Internet to a distributed system that supposed to be. It is about architecting a web that protects individual property and privacy. This opens unforeseen opportunities that truly changes the way we design modern applications.
To understand. Web 3.0 better, In a future post, we take a practical approach and discuss what’s IPFS and how It can change the Internet.
DISCLAIMER: This post just reflects the author’s personal opinion, not any other organization. This is not official advice. The author is not responsible for any decisions that the readers choose to make.
