What Is Web3 and Why Is It Being Discussed So Much?

Apart from the never-ending pandemics, inflation, and supply chain crises, the new decade has seen remarkable technology developments. We now have a new version of the Internet, Web3 or Web 3.0, four decades after its inception in the late 1980s. Web3 is being heralded as the Internet’s future by the crypto and blockchain communities. Web3 has a bit of a convoluted notion. Nonetheless, the overall goal is to create a decentralized network in which users are not reliant on digital behemoths like Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon.

Web3, the new era of the Internet has the potential to revolutionize the world. Thus, businesses worldwide are partnering with Web3 development company to build future proof business solutions.

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What Was Web3 Before It?

It’s crucial to know what occurred before Web3 in order to grasp its actual meaning. In the late 1990s, we received Web1, the initial version of the Internet. The first edition was simply a collection of links and linked homepages. In Web1, there were little problems, usability, or scope, and all you could do was browse and write articles for other people to read.

In practice, the online community was quite sequestered due to infrastructure, access, and ability limitations. There was a small community of bloggers and forums back then, but very few individuals were making money online as they are now.

In 1999, the Internet launched its second phase, known as Web2, after nearly ten years of Web1. Because the websites allowed for more user engagement, it was dubbed the read and write version of the Internet by some. People were enabled to go from being content consumers to content creators thanks to blogs like Tumblr, and then Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

The Internet grew into a platform where anyone can construct and enhance functions from real life as it got more accessible and legible. Despite the fact that Web2 has been around for more than two decades, innovators are pushing for the Internet to become more decentralized.

What exactly is Web3?

The New-Age Internet, also known as Web 3 or Web 3.0, is the third main phase of the Internet since its birth. Web3 can be thought of as the read, write, and own phase, if Web2 can be thought of as the read and write phase. While the Web2 Internet is an important aspect of our lives today, it also brings with it some undesirable baggage. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook, to name a few, have a monopoly on the Internet.

Web3 aspires to provide users more control over their data by combining the openness of Web1 with the size of Web2. In essence, Web3 will appear to be similar to the current Internet on the surface, preserving all of the functionality while updating the underlying technology.

What Is Web3 and How Does It Work?

Web3’s major goal is to decentralize the current Internet by handing control over to end-users from internet behemoths like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Since Web3 promotes decentralization, only one technology can best implement it: Blockchain.

The notion of Web3 is built on blockchain technology, just like other buzzwords that took 2021 by storm, such as NFT and Bitcoin. Gavin Wood, a co-founder of Ethereum, created the term Web3 in 2014 and now manages the Web3 Foundation. The Ethereum blockchain is now used in the majority of Web3 development.

If the present Internet is rebuilt on the blockchain, no single body will be able to govern Web3 applications, known as dApps (decentralized application). Today’s websites and applications are powered by servers, via which data is ingested and ejected. You get a reaction every time you do something on the Internet.

However, the platform owner is the only one who knows what is going on in the background. Web3 uses blockchain to change this by keeping users in the dark regarding privacy protection measures, security protocols, and other operations. All participating systems operate as nodes in this distributed ledger system.

Your Web3 Identity

The identifying method in Web3 is different from what you’re used to on the Internet today (Web2). Your identity on any Web3 platform will be linked to the crypto wallet address you use to engage with the platform. MetaMask is a great example of a crypto wallet like this, and its browser extension lets you transform your Web2 browser to a Web3 browser. Unlike conventional Web2 authentication techniques such as checking in via email or social media accounts (which require personal information), a wallet address remains anonymous unless you publicly identify it as your own.

By transferring your identity and building up your reputation over time, you can utilize the same wallet address across different decentralized applications. Specific tools and protocols, such as IDX and Ceramic, can be used to replace standard authentication and identification layers, allowing users to establish their own self-sovereign identity. The Ethereum Foundation is also working on a blockchain-based identity management system that allows users to log in using their Ethereum address.

Web3 and the Metaverse

The Metaverse is a linked online universe that has captured the attention of crypto enthusiasts, social media moguls, and game creators. The concept of the metaverse as a collection of interconnected online worlds necessitates the smooth transfer of your user account, avatar, and data from one world to the next.

Every business is creating its own metaverse, and they are unlikely to collaborate since they do not want to share their user base. That’s where Web3’s decentralized Internet comes to the rescue. Users can simply transition from one metaverse to another if no single entity owns or governs the many metaverse realms. The usage of crypto as the metaverse’s primary currency has drawn a large number of crypto enthusiasts to Web3’s development.

What exactly is Web3? Here Are Some Suggestions For Explaining It To A Friend

The decentralized web is now referred to as Web3

Early investments and projects were guided by Web3, a philosophical touchstone. MetaMask is now the most popular means for people to get access to the Ethereum blockchain and other Ethereum-compatible networks.

It’s a secure way to obtain a public key on your phone or computer, but it also offers a new way of engaging with the web: one in which only you have access to your accounts and data, and you can choose what to publish and what to keep private. MetaMask can also be referred to as a cryptographic consent manager.

Beyond decentralized money and identification, we meant the rest of the stack when we talked about the decentralized web. Other aspects of the decentralized web, such as decentralized storage (IPFS and Arweave), decentralized storage (Golem, W3BCloud, and others), and decentralized data are just becoming crucial parts of the stack (Graph Protocol).

Web1 is read-only, Web2 is read-write, Web3 is read-write-own

When I asked my Web3 developer brother how he describes Web3, he said that Web1 was read-only, Web2 was read-write, and Web3 was read-write-own. Open source protocols such as TCP, IP, SMTP, and, of course, HTTP were used to create the first version of the Web.

A protocol is a set of rules that numerous computers agree to follow when communicating with one another. These core protocols govern the flow of information and messages on the internet, and you don’t have to pay to use their rules in your application or service.

Web2 refers to the internet’s next generation, which is based on free and open source protocols. Individuals could add material to the web, which was a significant change from the static, read-only versions of Web1 websites.

What began as upvotes on Digg message boards evolved into microblogging, and now there are over 2 billion Facebook profiles. Another slight alteration occurred as well. Web2 firms paid the fees instead of maintaining your own server to display your websites. However, in exchange, they established a silo of user data, behavior, and actions that advertising may use to build a social graph. The individual user is the product in Web2.

Web3 is a money layer that runs on the internet

The ability to make knowledge internationally accessible, inexpensive, reproducible, and abundant was one of the internet’s most major advancements. These attributes are diametrically opposed to the rarity and difficulty of obtaining goods of worth, such as money or property.

Bitcoin was the first system to bring scarcity to the internet, thanks to its ability to solve the “double spend” problem that plagued early attempts at digital money. The prospect of using duplicate digital money and spending it in two or more places at the same time is referred to as the double spend conundrum. In the mainstream financial world, banks, credit card issuers, and payment processors authenticate transactions themselves to minimize the risk of double-spending.

To ensure that an account does not double spend, decentralized cryptocurrencies rely on a network of miners or validators. This has far-reaching implications because verification no longer relied on a trusted centralized source. Anyone with an internet connection can access the ledger and join the peer-to-peer network. Social consensus can defend a cabal attempting to erase or censor transactions.

Web3 is a new internet patronage model

The increasingly nebulous “creative economy” refers to online places that enable producers to monetise in innovative ways. OnlyFans, Twitch, and other platforms give users the option of earning directly from their followers rather than relying on an ad-driven, attention-based revenue model. Unlike Web3 networks, however, authors can be kicked off the network at any time and do not own the content they post.

Web3 is still not decentralized at any level

Anyone who has spent enough time in the Web3 ecosystem is aware of the design compromises that engineers must make in order to achieve maximum decentralisation, user-friendly apps, and scalable infrastructure.

Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of Signal, recently stated in his own examination of Web3 that “the idea underpinning web1 was that everyone on the internet would be both a publisher and consumer of information as well as a publisher and consumer of infrastructure.” We’d each have our own website and email server…However, and this cannot be stressed, this is not what people want. “No one wants to be in charge of their own servers,” says the author.

The Future of Web3

Web3 proponents will tell you that in the future, it will be the most widely used form of the Internet. The actuality of the future Internet, on the other hand, will be a hybrid of the early Web1, the current Web2, and the developing Web3. Big tech companies like Facebook have already invested a significant amount of money and resources in Web3 and are unlikely to relinquish control anytime soon.

The move from Web2 to Web3 will most likely be gradual, and you will hardly notice it. It’s the same thing that happened when Web1 users switched to Web2 without even noticing it. In the Web3 ecosystem, where consumers have more control over their data and services, the potential for innovation is enormous. With NFT minting website development, content creators have more control over their digital assets in web 3.0. However, it will not be as perfect as the Web3 proponents claim. The Internet is constantly evolving, and this is just another natural evolution that will occur over time.