Web3: A reality or a hoax?

 

Web3: A reality or a hoax?

Exploring new technological trends is appealing, but you can't possibly keep up with them all. Especially something like Web3, which consistently generates headlines while also raising eyebrows. We understand!

New technology may be perplexing—and tempting to dismiss as nothing more than hype.

What is the internet, anyway?

When the internet initially became available, most people were ambivalent. Some dismissed it as a passing trend. Similarly, some people replied to the now-famous meme, "What is the internet, anyway?” 

The internet was a complete revolution. It helped form who we are now. Individuals (and whole nations) recognised its significance early on and reaped the most significant benefits.

Can the past teach us anything?

The history of the internet may teach us a lesson. What seems to be hype today may very well represent the future of technology. The goal is to recognise trends that have the potential to become revolutions. Web3 definitely checks off a lot of the criteria.

If you're reading this blog, be ready to learn about Web 3.0, whether it's worthwhile to investigate this developing technological area, and what it implies for cryptocurrencies.

 

Web 1.0 and Web 2.0: The Internet's Evolution

I just want to say that there's not some internet encyclopaedia verified by the “Institute of Global Technology” that has a strict definition of what web 3.0 is.

Instead, I'll give you a high-level summary of web 1.0. What a lot of people say web 2.0 is, and then I'll explain this new phenomenon that many people call web 3.0.

Let's start with 1.0, which is a primer on the internet. Between 1991 and 2004, the internet was largely made up of static pages that displayed just a few lines of text when you visited them.

A hyperlinked Wikipedia in 1991?

Some call it read-only. There wasn't any logging in, interacting with posts, or viewing analytics. Early internet use wasn't even mostly lucrative via advertising. The majority of it was basically one giant, hyperlinked Wikipedia.

Of course, we made improvements with time, and things like Flash and JavaScript added many new features. However, during this time, the only users of the internet were consumers. Through the internet, they discovered it.

Then there's Web 2.0, which roughly corresponds to 2004 to the present. The internet expanded rapidly during this period. The internet's interaction, though, was one of the biggest developments.

This meant that we were not only receiving information from the sites but that the web pages were also collecting information from us.

Do we have privacy in the 21^st Century?

As we viewed Facebook and YouTube and performed Google searches, these centralised companies started collecting data about us to serve us better content, which would make us stay on their websites longer.

This meant more money for them, but eventually, they realised they could package up all the data they had collected on us and sell it to advertisers.

Web 2.0 is the era of targeted advertising and data breaches. But, to be fair, we willingly surrendered this privacy in exchange for cool apps like Facebook and Twitter.

In web 2.0, you and I may both visit facebook.com and receive quite different news feeds since the page changes depending on who is seeing it, which is an important distinction in web 3 that we'll discuss momentarily.

The content on your feed is the company sorting data by the information you know you gave them, like likes and how much you watched a video.

But if you look at the ads, they show you that they are sorting data by the information you didn't know you gave them.

“They” know what you are doing.

They knew when you went to eat tacos last night. They could tell since you dropped your kids off at school at 8 a.m. every day except Fridays, they knew that. There was even one article that said machine learning started showing a guy some parenting ads because they knew he would be a father before he did.

How did they predict this? One centralised company controlling all of this data, whether we want to or not, is scary.

 

Next up is Web 3.0.

This is what you came to learn about. Web 3.0 is the next evolution of the internet, probably utilising blockchain technology and decentralisation tools.

When using social networks in web 2.0, you were the product. However, some people anticipate that in web 3.0, you will be the content's owner (the stuff you post online).

For now, this is true, so if you want a post to stay up, it'll stay up. But, still, suppose you're going to take it down. In that case, 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.

“Odyssey” a new YouTube?

Here's one example that's already real. Odyssey is a blockchain-based YouTube alternative in which producers may earn library tokens for encouraging visitors to watch their videos.

The thing about the odyssey is that they can't really stop a video from being posted if someone uploads it and someone else on the network wants to share it.

However, they can technically download that video and then let others watch that video and download it as well, kind of like an extensive torrent network, if you know what that is.

Could Web 3 lead to violent crimes?

To be more explicit, since your post was not saved on one of Facebook's servers, it could not be deleted. Instead, it would theoretically be on thousands of computers worldwide, ensuring that the blockchain social network you're 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; the users of the networks could probably decide on a system to reduce that harmful content, but that's for another blog.

DAO role in Web 3

In web 3.0, experts say that we will reach the internet point where every company is run by a decentralised group called a DAO, which stands for a decentralised autonomous organization.

If you want to learn more about what those big words mean, we have included an article on the subject and its application.

Why there are no CEOs in DAO?

However, DAOs suggest that there are no CEOs or presidents to impress. Instead, those with the most tokens vote on how the company changes, not limited by government or family tradition.

In Web 3.0, social networks like Facebook or Twitter will not be censored. One controlling authority cannot shut them down.

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Lastly, one of the biggest things in Web 3.0 is that your digital identity is not 100% connected to your real-world identity. I may now access sites, download items, make transactions, and engage in any other online activity without anybody being able to identify me personally.

But now, there are many ways we can anonymize ourselves online. Still, bingo, I think that might be a future blog idea. For those who are considering Web 3.0, some of these are hard ideas.

Future Of Web 3

What Web 3.0 means for us is that in the next decade, you might be able to buy Amazon gift cards using Metamask and pay with Ethereum, or that you could use one of your secret wallets to leave a like in secret on one of your friend's postings. Life-altering events won't occur all at once.

It'll likely be a series of ideas that grow together until centralised companies like Facebook and Google are disassembled by the legislature. Then, in contrast, decentralized, unregulated DAOs will grow to replace them.

“Web 3 Foundation”: A Scam?

I also would like to briefly discuss the Web 3.0 framework. Now there is a company called the Web3 Foundation that supports projects for increasing decentralisation on the internet.

Their three big projects are the Blockchain Polkadot, Polkadot's test chain, and the Web3 Summit, which isn't a good overview of what Web 3.0 actually is. But they also offer some grants, which involve supporting and using the Polkadot blockchain.

So, it seems the Polkadot team used the Web3 name as a brand to push their own agenda. However, it is not the topic of this blog.

To understand what I mean by this, it would be like the company, Facebook, buying a foundation for Web 2.0 and saying they are the ones who initiated it. Web 2.0 is a concept, but Facebook is a business. So, in the same way, that Polkadot is a blockchain and Web 3.0 is an idea, one doesn't own the other.

I also read another fascinating article called Why Web 3.0 is a Scam. Where Trader University discusses how Solana is using the uniqueness of Web 3.0 as well.

I want you guys to understand that Web 3.0 is a big concept with many little ideas. Not one idea is run by a foundation to get you hyped up for the next step of the internet or buy their token.

 

Web3 is still in its early stages and is not extensively used.

We are still in the early phases of Web3 evolution. However, the most frequently embraced features of Web3 concentrate on trading and investment, which explains the interest in cryptocurrencies.

This hardly touches the surface of Web3's capabilities.

Invest in Web 3?

There is a lot of space for expansion. Many initiatives are gaining pace to provide real-world value, such as intelligent contracts managing real estate or metaverse gaming. As these initiatives progress, they will influence Web3 and how the internet grows in the next few years.

Many possibilities and occupations will exist due to Web3's continual changes. The most significant time to begin developing your Web3 abilities and reaping the advantages of Web3 is right now.

 

 

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