Can you imagine a world without the internet?
30 years ago almost nobody used the internet. In the 2000s number of active users started to grow rapidly, and today, there are almost 5 billion active internet users.
Because of blockchain technology we are on the edge of creating the new internet, web 3.0.
In this article, I will explain what is web3 in crypto and how it works. If you would rather watch a video, check my animated video on this topic.
To understand web3, let’s start with the short history of the internet.
Table of Contents
Web 1.0
Web 1.0, also called the static web, is the beginning of the internet when everyone used Internet Explorer and we had those old websites which were not user-friendly. There was no algorithm that could serve you with the content you wished for and it was mostly company-owned websites. Companies hosted the websites and generated content that readers could not interact with. It was a read-only web. Users were there to absorb the content and the whole web was not customer-centric.
Web 2.0
Everything changed when companies understood the possibilities of the data provided on the internet. What made us evolve in Web 2.0 were new technologies. Those technologies were JavaScript, HTML 5, and CSS. What they did is they enabled users to interact with the websites. That was the birth of social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter where users could create content. It began to be a user-centric web, especially when companies understood how they can benefit from it.
Companies are collecting data to serve you with the content you want and they do so by tracking every word you type and everything you see on the web. On one hand, it can be pretty scary as it seems like we are being monitored, but on the other hand, it is pretty cool when google knows exactly what you need.
The problem with web 2.0
The problem with web 2.0 is that it is fully centralized around those huge corporations which are responsible for our data privacy. You’ve probably heard many times about Facebook’s data leak or even experienced a 10-hour network shutdown, which is a pretty normal thing to happen when you have a website on a centralized server.
When you post a picture, that information goes to a centralized server, and from there it’s distributed to other users. Your privacy is in the hands of that centralized server.
But also, since the information is being sent to their servers, it is not immune to censorship. Many times Twitter and Youtube blocked content that they found inappropriate.
Web 3.0 (Web3)
The term Web3 was invented by Gavin Wood, funder of Polkadot and one of the co-founders of Ethereum. Web 3.0 aims to be a decentralized version of the internet we have today. With the help of blockchain technology, information is sent across the whole network. That would mean that no corporation would be the holder of users’ data.
The importance of web3 lies in decentralization and content ownership. It cannot be censored and the owner of the content is known because it is recorded in the blockchain. Web3 marks an era of user-generated content with ownership rights.
Now, someone can argue that they can download a picture their friend posted and publish it on their own, even though the friend withdrew it. And that is just one of the challenges that web 3.0 faces. It is a new space which will take time to evolve but it is sure interesting and will attract many new innovations in our world.
How does web3 work?
Web 3.0 runs on decentralized applications (dApps). Decentralized application is a type of open-source software application that runs on a distributed blockchain network. You can think of dApps as your normal application that you use on your phone or desktop. However, they are not run by a single server, but by a blockchain network. They look pretty similar to the end-user and they can do pretty much the same as the ones we are used to now.
For example, there’s Steemit, which is a social network dApp where people can post content and communicate. Unfortunately, decentralized applications are still unknown to the majority of the world so the number of people using them is pretty low. However, there are plenty of Dapps that are being built in the crypto ecosystem and some of them will be used by billions.
Web 3.0 definitely has the potential, but it still has some obstacles to overcome before changing the internet as we know it. For sure, it will be an interesting journey to witness.