It was not so long ago that the internet was born. Not many understood what it was, but people slowly started to use it. Especially as the technology advanced and the user interface became more and more user friendly. Well, a very similar process is occurring with cryptocurrency. This article serves as introduction to the decentralized internet. It does not endorse any products. You need to do your own research.
Brief History
Some websites that wanted to attract more traffic started noticing a trend. If the website would offer some sort of incentive to a user for visiting, it would be more likely to get attention. A number of these websites were learning orientated. They offered a skill for the user to learn. In order to keep the user working hard at the skill, the website offered tokens. These tokens were like points in a game and had no value.
As this trend grew, more people noticed how effective these tokens were. The idea of digital money was a dream of a number of techies. When techies started seeing the effect of the valueless tokens on websites, their dreams of digital money were stimulated afresh. Cryptology was advanced enough to create such a concept also.
Arrive Satoshi Nakamoto
Then there was one person, or a group of people, who looked at all the available technology and started writing code. This code eventually lay the foundations of a decentralized internet. Nakamoto was not the only, or even the first, to create such a system. However his system was eloquent and simple and his vision was contagious.
Techies from all over the world began to work on this digital money, Nakamoto called Bitcoin. When Bitcoin was launched, Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared and left his social experiment, Bitcoin to run completely independently. The first cryptocurrency was born.
Blockchain
Bitcoin was created on what is known as a blockchain. The blockchain is a distributed ledger that records all the validated Bitcoin transactions. Certain immutable rules were written into the blockchain to make sure that it could not be tampered with. Therefore the blockchain can be thought of as the underlying technology for Bitcoin. Today there are many alternatives to blockchain technology, for example the hashgraph and the Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG).
Decentralized Internet
An internet browser that is built on top of cryptocurrency’s underlying technology has made the possibility of a decentralized internet a reality. A decentralized internet can be visualised as multiple copies of each transaction verified. The experience of using a decentralized browser basically appears the same as the centralized internet to the user. However the setup is vastly different. For a user, the most notable difference is the lack of username and password requirements for each and every app. Apps on the decentralized internet are also referred to as DApps.
A user has to be exceptionally careful not to lose the original setup keys, password, and/or any other information he or she received upon setting up his or her original account. This is because these are only generated once and no copy exists because there is no centralized place to keep a copy. So there is no possibility of recovering this information. This information cannot be stored online in any form because if anyone else gains access to it, they also own everything that belongs to the original user.
Conclusion
Cryptocurrency opened up new opportunities for the internet. Although there does not seem to be much difference between current centralized internet browsers and their decentralized counterparts, there are major differences and advantages to decentralized internet browsers. The main advantage is the user owns his or her browsing. In addition monopolies are harder to create. Enjoy exploring the new decentralized space with confidence of security and ownership.
