# What is Web 3.0? By [Amit](https://paragraph.com/@amitpandey) · 2023-05-26 --- Before we try to understand Web 3.0, its important to go back in history of the internet and understand its evolution. Once we understand how it has changed over the years, we would be in a position to appreciate why we need Web 3.0 today more than ever. ### History of internet Web 3.0 in a nutshell stands for a decentralized internet, but before we start to discuss it in detail, let us try to look at the journey internet has taken since its inception to reach here. Internet’s origin can go back to the 1960s but it was very limited in reach and was restricted to few computers inter connected over local networks to create a distributed network. Many changes occurred in the 70s and 80s in the protocol being used for the network. Major breakthrough occurred in the 90s when WWW (world wide web) was created which introduced us to hyperlinks and interface to access the information. This led to massive growth of internet and access to general public. But this first iteration of internet had its limitations and it was mostly used for disseminating the information and had less room for end user to interact with the information being shared. This can be said to be Web 1.0 (only static information was being shared over the internet) With advancement of technology in 2000s, the internet achieved the ability to let its end user interact with web pages and there were two way exchange of information. This experience was much improved than what was possible with Web 1.0. Now, users could create and post their own content on the internet and other users could interact with those content. Collaborations could happen on internet in the run time and information could be exchanged simultaneously. This led to large number of use cases such as social media, e-commerce, user generated contents, customized experience of web, advertisement and many more. This new look of internet revolutionized the entire mechanics of money making on internet and is often referred as web 2.0. Looking at how Web 2.0 has revolutionized the internet and has enabled billions of end users, why do we then need web 3.0? Web 2.0 being so useful has its own pain points which got highlighted with the advent of blockchain technology and hence more talks about decentralization. Let’s try to look at some of the pitfalls of Web 2.0. ### Challenges of Web 2.0 * **Centralization** - First and foremost is the centralized nature of Web 2.0 which means major companies own the data circulating over the internet and is being monetized. This leaves little control in the hands of end users. With centralization also comes the risk of censorship which is a debate in itself. * **Privacy risk** - Centralization also leads to single point of failure and hack at one data centre can leak user information or even user is not sure how the data collected is being used for monetization purposes. * **Interoperability** - Various websites or major companies operate in silo and they own & control the user data and how it is shared/used. This leaves very little in the hands of end users and they cannot move data across platform that easily. Simple example is we use email to login to multiple websites, sometimes user data within a company is not transferable from one country to another or what happens if the email provider shuts down or closes the email services for a country or region. * **Royalty or monetization issues** - In Web 2.0, most of the cases the companies own the way royalties are distributed to the artists or creator. Most of the times, the perpetual transfer of assets does not give anything to original artist but the production houses or companies keep getting the royalties. Now that we understand Web 2.0 and its challenges, it will be easier to take a sneak peak at web 3.0 and how it solves some of the problems from Web 2.0 ### What is Web 3.0 With the advent of blockchain technology and above mentioned issues blowing out disproportionately, it was imperative that internet needed to be decentralized. Web 3.0 is the next iteration of internet which stands for decentralized web using the blockchain technology. Blockchain technology is the underlying infrastructure for the Web3.0 interface. This decentralizes the way data is transferred over the network. Every individual gains control over their data and how its used or transferred over the network. Basic ingredient for a user to interact with Web 3.0 is a wallet which is used as a tool to connect with all the decentralized applications running on Web 3.0. Wallets are nothing but an interface for a user to interact with decentralized application over blockchain network. Wallet can be thought of as personal signature which is used to sign your unique identity every time one interacts with blockchain to transact. There can be different type of wallets and we will cover those in another chapter later. Decentralized application more popularly called as Dapp, is the backbone of decentralized internet over blockchain technology which uses smart contract in the backend to create trust in a trust less environment. Since those are executed on blockchain, these are immutable and trusted. ### How Web 3.0 solves the shortcomings of web 2.0 * **Decentralization** - Since Dapps are built over blockchain, these by nature are transparent and immutable which creates trust in the application. Major decision on the dapp is taken by the community of builders and users. Since this is more democratized in nature, it removes the risk of censorship or centralization of power. * **Need for Web 3.0 currency** - Blockchain is the building block for a decentralized web which means it has to decouple from traditional finance and Dapps need their own currency or tokens to operate and govern them. These are often referred as cryptocurrencies which are used to perform transactions on Dapps and also govern them thru DAO is some cases. * **Interoperability** - Web 2.0 suffers from the problem of lack of interoperability and data cannot be moved from one platform to another that easily. Since Web 3.0 utilizes blockchain, the data is in user’s control and is stored on decentralized network which makes it interoperable within a blockchain network. With more adoption, inter-blockchain operability will also be a norm. * **Self-Sovereign identity** - Since user is in control of their data, it provides them power to own and control their own identity and data stored over the network. With the access to a wallet, user can control their identity without involvement of any centralized third-party. * **Issues with Royalty sharing** - Web3 provides a platform for creators to control the royalty they receive for their art and even perpetual sales result in royalty being shared back to them without any third party intervention. Smart contracts combined with NFTs are the way forward for creators to control how they interact with their fan base and also have more control over the royalty from initial and subsequent sales of the art. Web 3.0 is a significant improvement over its predecessor and gets rid of lots of baggage that Web 2.0 comes with. But it is just a start and is far from mass adoption. This will go thru multiple iterations of ebb and flow before it is widely adopted in true sense where **DaOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organization**, more to come it later\*\*) will control the DApps instead of centralized powers within few companies. --- *Originally published on [Amit](https://paragraph.com/@amitpandey/what-is-web-3-0)*