What is Web 3.0?

In this article, you’ll learn about web 3.0 and how cryptocurrency ideas ties into the evolution of our current internet, and what it means for you as a user. 

But before that let’s find out what is web 1.0 is and what web 2.0 is. Then we can learn about what is web 3.0 is. 

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Web 1.0 – Initial overview of what the internet was

Between the years 1991- 2004, the internet was mostly a bunch of static pages. That means, whenever you load a page it just showed some stuff and that was it. Some called it read-only. There wasn’t any logging in or interacting with posts or viewing analytics. Most of the early internet wasn’t even profitable by ads. It was mostly just like one big Wikipedia all hyperlinked together. 

Now of course, with time we slowly made improvements, and things like flash and javascript added many new different features. However, during this time the users of the internet were consumers. They went to the internet to consume information.  

Web 2.0 

From around 2004 until now, during this time the web evolved a lot. But one of the biggest changes was the interactivity of the internet. This meant that not only did we get information from pages. But the web pages started getting information from us as we viewed Facebook and youtube. And performed google searches these centralized companies started collecting data about us. So that they could serve us better content which in turn would make us stay on their website longer. 

This meant more money from them but eventually, they realized they could package up all the data they had collected on us and sell it to advertisers. Web 2.0 is the age of targeted advertising and the lack of privacy for its users. But to be fair, we willingly gave up this privacy to cool apps like Facebook and Twitter. 

In web 2.0, I and you could both view Facebook and see two different news feeds because the page depended on who was viewing it which is an important note for a difference in web 3.  The content on your feed is the company sorting data by information that you know that you face them such as likes, and how much you watched a video. 

But if you look at the ads that they show you, that is them sorting data by the information you didn’t know you give them when you went to go some special place last night like a restaurant. They knew that. When you drop your kids off at school every day at 8 a.m except for Fridays, they knew that. And there is even an article that said machine learning started showing a guy some parenting ads because they knew he was going to be a father before he did. 

If it is not machine learning, it is probably because his girlfriend used their public IP address to search for her symptoms. And the machine learning algorithm probably already knew when she was ovulating anyways. Whatever the case is, how they predicted this one centralized company controlling all of this data whether we want to or not is scary.   

Web 3.0 – the next evolution of the internet 

This will probably utilize blockchain technology and the tools of decentralization. In web 2.0 you were the product as you were browsing social networks. But in web 3.0 some believe that you’ll be the owner of your content, the stuff that you post online. This is kind of true, so if you want to stay up it’ll stay up. But if you want to take it down, they say, in web 3.0 you can control that. Because as we all know, usually when something is on the internet it’s always on the internet. 

For example, Odyssey is a blockchain alternative to youtube where videos can be posted and creators can earn library tokens which are a reward for enticing viewers to watch their videos. The thing about odyssey though is that they can’t stop a video from being posted. If someone uploads it and someone else in the network wants to share it, they technically download that video and then let others watch that video and download it as well. 

It is kind of like a big torrent network. Your post couldn’t get taken down because your post wouldn’t just be on one of Facebook servers. It would theoretically be on thousands of computers around the world ensuring that the blockchain social network you are on is not attacked or censored. 

Theoretically, this means there would be a lot of illegal and hateful things posted but it would be in the name of freedom of which the users of the network could probably decide on a system to reduce that harmful content. 

How web 3.0 regulate 

In web 3.0, experts say that we will reach the post of the internet where every company is run by a decentralized group called a DAO which stands for Decentralized Automation Organization. DAO means that there are no CEOs or Presidents to impress. Those with the most tokens get to vote on how the company changes not limited by a government or some family tradition. 

In web 3.0 there will be no censorship of social networks like Facebook or Twitter. 

One controlling authority cannot shut it down. One of the biggest things in web 3.0 is that your digital identity is not 100% connected to your real-world identity. This means I can view pages, download things make purchases, and any other activity on the internet without being traced to the real me. 

There are many ways we can anonymize ourselves online. We’ll get more information about that in another article.

What does web 3.0 mean for us?

In the next decade, you might be able to buy amazon gift cards using Metamask and pay with ethereum, or that you could anonymously leave a like on one of your friends’ posts using one of your hidden wallets. 

It’s not going to be a bunch of life-changing stuff all at once. It will likely be a series of ideas that grow together until centralized companies like Facebook and google are disassembled by the legislature while decentralized unregulated DAOs grow to replace them. 

Web 3.0 foundation 

There is a company called the web3 foundation that supports increasing decentralization on the internet. Their 3 big projects are the Blockchain Polkadot, Polkadot’s Test Chain, Web3 Summit. Which is not a good overview of web 3.0 is. But they also offer some grants which a lot of them have to do with supporting and using the Polkadot blockchain. 

So it seems to me the Polkadot team used the web3 name as a brand to push their won agenda. This would be like Facebook buying a foundation like a web 2.0 and saying they are the ones who initiated it. Facebook is a company while web 2.0 is an idea. And the same as Polkadot is a company and web 3.0 is an idea. One does not own the other.  

Web 3.0 is a big concept that is a bunch of little ideas. Not one idea run by a foundation to get you hyped up for the next step of the internet or to buy their tokens.