Decentralized Dreams: Shaping The Next Chapter Of Web3

And if this expectation were not met, they would just leave the network. “The vision says the problem with the internet is too many centralized intermediaries. Instead of having lots of different applications and sites, we’ll put it all on blockchains, which puts it all in one place.” On balance, he said, collective voting on the rules of engagement will be better than what users experience on major social media platforms today. In a Web3 world, people control their own data and bounce around from social media to email to shopping using a single personalized account, creating a public record on the blockchain of all of that activity.

Centralization has helped onboard billions of people to the World Wide Web and created the stable, robust infrastructure on which it lives. At the same time, a handful of centralized entities have a stronghold on large swathes of the World Wide Web, unilaterally deciding what should and should not be allowed. To Grimmelmann, web 3.0 development Web3 represents technologists reaching for the idealistic ethos of the dawn of the internet — everyone can freely use the information superhighway! He said if part of the impetus is to resist giving up personal data to Big Tech companies, then the blockchain is not the solution, since that will make even more data public.

Is this really the future?

“To the average person, it does sounds like voodoo,” said Olga Mack, entrepreneur and blockchain lecturer at University of California, Berkeley. “But when you press a button to switch on lights, do you understand how the electricity is made? You don’t have to know how electricity works to understand the benefits. Same is true of the blockchain.” Donations to freeCodeCamp go toward our education initiatives, and help pay for servers, services, and staff. People who believe in the project can buy and hold ownership, and people who think the project is headed in the wrong direction can signal this by selling their stake. Tokens also brings about the idea of tokenization and the realization of a token economy. Tokens also introduce a native payment layer that is completely borderless and frictionless.

• And, like many Bitcoin fans, he is more skeptical of other cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum, the blockchain that most of the web3 ecosystem runs on.
• On DeSo, a network for blockchain-based apps, users are paid for popularity, participation, posts and work.
• It’s the only way that we can actually keep it going 70 more years into the future.
• The same cryptographic principles underpinning cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are being leveraged by applications to provide secure, cross-platform identity services.
• Each token may represent a specific fraction or whole unit of the underlying asset, making it divisible and easily tradable.

It also gave rise to social media and made content creation accessible to people who wouldn’t have the technical know-how in web 1.0. Web3 is a term describing a future internet built on decentralized blockchains, which are the ledger systems currently used by cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin — which currently has over 40,000 nodes in its network and processes over $30B in transactions each day — demonstrates that an application can be run in a distributed manner at scale, without compromising security. It inspired the development of other blockchain projects such as Ethereum which, in addition to transactions, allows participants to deploy code that can verifiably run on each of its nodes.

Web3’s key terms and tech

Theoretically, Web3 would be free to use, but since it hasn’t rolled out en masse yet, it’s hard to say. To participate in transactions without your country’s currency, you would have to invest in cryptocurrency before even making an online purchase. But the developer of the app, and the wider network it belongs to, said there was a “renaissance” in money afoot.

If the entire internet ran on Web3 blockchain architecture, and everything was indelibly written into the blockchain, nothing would be anonymous. That would be fine for some, but not those who need to remain anonymous for their safety. The first version of the internet that was publicly available to use, the World Wide Web, is referred to as Web 1.0. Dating back to the early 90s, it was largely made up of static web pages connected by hyperlinks.

Explore deep-dive content to help you stay informed and up to date

“So it’s much harder for someone to like, fake my identity, because we have … cryptographic-based proofs that I have done this, and only I could possibly have done this,” Wood said. Wood gave the example of a Web3 version of Twitter which he said would give more users control over their posts and make verifying identities easier, for example. The phrase, also shortened to “Web3,” has become an internet buzzword recently with high-profile technologists, including Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, debating the meaning of the term. Clients receive 24/7 access to proven management and technology research, expert advice, benchmarks, diagnostics and more. Fill out the form to connect with a representative and learn more. Digital giants and service providers own customer data, which is used to earn revenue.

So, there’s no requirement for a centralized entity to govern those interactions. In another case study, Friend.tech, a new, innovative social network, is leveraging AA to onboard native Twitter users into the Web3 space. To address privacy concerns voiced by users of Web2 social media platforms, the developers at Friend.tech developed a self-custodial wallet for all users. Through the use of AA, users have full control of private keys and assets, and all content remains secure, filling a gap in the current Web2 social media landscape. In addressing one of the major qualms across several blockchain protocols, AA can significantly help improve user experiences.

Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC Pro

First, if there’s going to be a Web3, you should understand what Web1 and Web2 are. Web1 was the first draft of the internet, the one that proliferated in the 1990s and early 2000s. Much of Web1 was built using “open protocols,” which are ways of exchanging information that can be used by anyone, rather than just one entity or organization. Back then, people mostly used the internet to read web pages and chat with friends or strangers.

Web3 has the potential to change the nature of the internet from corporate-owned networks to controlled by users while maintaining the Web2 functionalities people love today. Users can govern these blockchain-based networks through cryptocurrency tokens. As the network grows, value can accrue to the community through the rising price of tokens. Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Reddit don’t directly charge people to use their platforms.

A new paradigm for the Internet

Web3 introduces new paradigms that require learning different mental models than the ones used in Web2.0. Educational initiatives informing Web2 users of these Web3 paradigms are vital for its success. Web3 allows for direct ownership through non-fungible tokens (NFTs). No one, not even the game’s creators, has the power to take away your ownership. And, if you stop playing, you can sell or trade your in-game items on open markets and recoup their value. “If we stay in the current paradigm, we will move further and further into a realm where a small handful of companies run by a small number of people run our experiences in cyberspace,” he said.

But true believers say there is no place for Facebook in a Web3 world, no matter how hard the social network tries to be part of the next generation of the Internet. It’s an umbrella term for disparate ideas all pointing in the direction of eliminating the big middlemen on the internet. In this new era, navigating the web no longer means logging onto the likes of Facebook, Google or Twitter. In web3, Identity also works much differently than what we are used to today. Most of the time in web3 apps, identities will be tied to the wallet address of the user interacting with the application. Also, if the company ever does become successful, it will take a very long time for anyone involved to realize any of the value, often leading to years of work without any real return on investment.

What are the core ideas of Web 3.0?

But most of that activity ended up being distributed and monetized by big companies, which kept most, if not all, of the money and control for themselves. Web3 is the name some technologists have given to the idea of a new kind of internet service that is built using decentralized blockchains — the shared ledger systems used by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether. In Web2, a transaction—whether it’s an exchange of money or information—relies on two parties (and usually a central facilitator as well) trusting each other with the information that’s being shared. Instead, the technology is designed so that a transaction goes through only if certain criteria are met and data are verified. Just as cryptocurrency blockchains are built to prevent “double spending,” a blockchain-centric internet would, in theory, make it harder to manipulate and control data.