“Web.3.0” is probably the new buzzword that will be fanaticly repeated by your favorite digital transformation consultants. What is Web.3.0? Here is, a little introduction on the subject.
If Elon Musk and Google seems to prove us right for qualifying it of buzzword. It also proves us that this technological tendency can not be ignored anymore.
Research tendency for the word “Web3” on Google.
So concretely, what is Web 3.0? And, by the way, what were the Web 1.0 and the Web 2.0 about? Let’s explain it simply.
Web 1.0 → Web 2.0 → Web 3.0 can be translated as Search → Search & Write → Search & Write & Own.
Do you remember your old ADSL 56k. modem’s sound **biiiip biiiip biiip* *….MMMMH....*. *Biiiiip*? *If you do remember this sweet sound, you are probably part of the generation who saw the dawn of internet and of the so-called Web 1.0.
The Web 1.0 represented the ability for end-users to search and consult online information.
Yeah, this explanation was short but effective enough I guess!
So ok, right now we dive into something more… modern… usable and complex. If you are a digital native Web 2.0 is the web that we are used to use nowadays. You can look for information but also** publish** and spread your own content and personal information. What do we call “information”? It could be your personal datas on social networks, your old skyblog, historic of research…
The point to notice in this little description is the use of the word “spread”. You are not really spreading anything, you are letting your information freely accessible and as you may know most of the people has absolutely no idea of who own and use its data. You cannot prevent anyone from copy-pasting what you generate on internet.
Based on the previous paragraph you understand that you cannot control what you sow on internet. Something to note is that today, we are not considering being into the Web 3.0. We are just seeing the birth of tools that might be considering as belonging to it. So we might be at the beginning of a shift toward this revolution. Chris Dixon defines Web 3.0 as:
“The internet owned by the builders and users, orchestrated with tokens.”
According to the 2022 Messari report, it might seem intuitive that this user-owned (Web 3.0) economy will outperform the monopolist-owned (Web 2.0) economy in the long-term.
Web 2.0 might shift to Web 3.0 thanks to the adoption of blockchain-based technologies/tools allowing a decentralized, open and trust-less web. This new web creates monetary incentive for every web users. These users will be able to monitor and monetize their personal data and production. This incentive will also push for the adoption of web3’s tools.
ITHEUM and Oasis Lab are two examples that illustrates clearly the ability of controlling your own data through internet.
ITHEUM & Oasis Lab are the promise for each user to own and trade their data on purpose. This data are stored ton NFT or are managed through a SDK. Itheum is carried by Elrond and even promises to be usable in the metaverse.
See the big picture, you will own your NFme containing your personal data. It is a sunny week-end, you are opening your laptop, connect to Brave (your new Chrome). You check your Metamask wallet and notice a +0,004 ETH, it comes from the secondary market where you proposed to sell your age and e-mail to 5 companies. Then you turn on Audius (your new spotify), connect your wallet containing your NFme, Audius reads your localization in your NFme, you gain a little discount on your subscription for the use of this data.
Then, direction the metaverse, you want to see the projection of the new horror movie, you walk with your NFme to this room, however you can not enter the room it is forbidden for people under 18, and your NFme contains your tamper-proofed data with your age of 16 years old.
Below you can find the links related to these projects if you are interested by gathering more information.
Beside the two projects described above, the number of tools checking the criterias of the Web3 is spreading.
As you can see even Medium has its own challenger in the Web 3.0, **Mirror. **Mirror.xyz is a publishing platform for writers that leverages cryptocurrency and blockchain technology through a decentralized, user-owned, crypto-based network. This decentralized writing platform is developed to help creators connect with their target audience.
Is it time to innovate Medium?
Here, we will briefly tackle and summarize the primary criticisms around the Web 3.0. This part will wildly use the Messari report. This report is made of hundreds of pages and is hardly understandable by non-tech-savvy individuals.
Web3 domains differ from standard domain name system (DNS) addresses such as medium.com. A DNS is similar to a telephone directory, only it indexes public websites and their accompanying internet protocol (IP) addresses.
Today, the company Verisign manages nearly 85% of the world’s 200 million websites today. So, how is Web3 DNS different from traditional domains and could create a non-monopolistic Web?
In a nutshell, ENS is a name and lookup service built on the Ethereum blockchain that allows crypto users to translate their machine-readable addresses to human-readable addresses. Think of it as a nickname generator for public Ethereum addresses, aiming to make crypto more accessible. ENS is not opposed to DNS but complementary by utilizing Ethereum smart contracts to govern domain name registration and resolution.
Hence, the domain space for identities in Web3 could be 2–3 orders of magnitude larger, as there are 40x as many people as websites, 5x as many internet connected devices as people, and a lot of global citizens who won’t necessarily trust Verisign given decentralized alternatives.
But, because there’s always a “but”…
In this tweet, the former Twitter CEO tweeted at Musk, hinting that Web3 is largely in the hands of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which is also known as a16z questioning the possible decentralisation of the web3. I let you make your own opinion on this subject!
A Physical decentralized Web
As you know data are stored, routers and servers are used and the hypothetical existence of the Web 3.0 might be dependent of the decentralization of hardware.
One of the battle for Web 3.0 will be fought in the cloud, and how effectively we wrest control of that infrastructure from today’s dominant monopolies will be the difference between an open internet, and … just another name for the Web 2.0.
Of the various components in the Web3 hardware stack, decentralized storage is arguably the most robust.
The protocol IPFS deserves a glance in this part. IPFS offers a novel decentralized system which allows any individual nodes to store data. But these nodes must empty their cache eventually, which led to the introduction of Filecoin, an incentivized storage network built on IPFS that verifies the network is storing the data it says it will.
In other words, we are talking about decentralized cloud which is not owns by monopolistic big companies.
This article is a really brief introduction and do not dive into the technical subjects related to key subjects such as governance models of blockchain or Defi. It could be interesting to tackle these subjects in future articles. In this article you have the first key information to let you make your own researches.
References
Anthony Vinci & Nadia Schadlow (2022) ‘Web3’ is on the way. Authoritarians should be worried. Washington, D.C: WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post.
https://messari.io/pdf/messari-report-crypto-theses-for-2022.pdf