Let’s start with the hot 🔥 topic you may have heard that everyone is talking about..

What is Web 3.0?

Since the origin of Internet and World Wide Web, we have seen many disruptions that computer based or digital technologies bring to traditional non-digital technologies. For example, consider how information and knowledge was transferred to community at large before the age of Internet started. Knowledge was not easily accessible, people had to travel tens to hundreds or even thousands of miles to access Libraries or Schools where the knowledge was stored. It worked well for some time but this was not easy to scale to the masses. Building many Libraries, Schools or Universities are expensive and still it would not scale to educate every person on earth.

The world's first University was in Takshashila, 
established in 700 BC. After 2721 years since Takshashila 
University was built, and more than 25000 Universities 
established worldwide, maximum acceptance rate for student 
admission is less than 50% even today!

With digital technologies like Internet and World Wide Web, we have solved the issue of scaling knowledge transfer to a great extent. Knowledge is in the form of digital content, media, videos, online courses etc is easily accessible to masses wherever they have access to Internet. In fact knowledge is so easy to access and abundant, we now have computers learning without any supervision from humans.

GPT-3 developed at OpenAI, is a neural network machine 
learning model trained using vast amount of Internet data 
(175 billion parameters). It can be used to generate 
machine generated relavant text from a very small amount of 
input or contextual data.

All this was made possible due to the evolution of Internet and corresponding technologies built on top of it. I say technologies because there is no single technology or piece that makes current Internet or World Wide Web (or simply the Web) possible. Web is composed of many technologies woven together to provide various services for users. As these technologies evolve, we see improvements in the services they provide. The evolution of Web as we know can be understood as below

• Web 1.0 made it possible to build content on Internet in the form of Websites. Similar to how the content is in Books, a digital version of content published as Webpages can be accessible anywhere using a Website on Internet. We saw hundreds of thousands Websites full of knowledge popup all over Internet using Web 1.0 technologies. We saw many businesses with physical presence started opening Internet Websites to extend their users through e-commerce. We saw hundreds of services developed around distribution and discovery of physical goods or digital content like AltaVista, Netscape, Google!.

  Web 1.0 technologies enable mass consumption of physical or digital goods & services where central entities produce the content or products and users are the consumers of content or products.

• Web 2.0 technologies made it possible to further scale the content generation and accessibility to masses. With technologies like Mobile phones & accessibility of Web in the form of Mobile Apps, we can reach more than 1.8 billion websites that exists now over the Internet, all available on the palm of our hands. Not only that, we have services like Wikipedia, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok etc. that allows users to publish or review content. We have services like Facebook, Twitter, Discord etc. that allows to have social interaction over Internet.

  Web 2.0 technologies not only enables mass consumption but also mass production of content. Users can generate or review content which other users can benefit from, without depending on central entities.

  This last highlighted statement comes with conditions or constraints and we wish it was true but it isn’t and hence I have to strike it off. I will discuss these constraints in the next section.

• Web 3.0 is the new generation of technologies that would likely solve constraints associated with Web 2.0

So what are the constraints of Web 2.0? Many would think Web 2.0 is empowering users and bringing real changes to the lives of the people. But is it really empowering users? Current Web 2.0 services and platforms allow users to generate content, express opinions on social platforms, at virtually no cost to the users, or so it seems. Many content creators have been transformed from just being consumers to big influencers using Web 2.0 platforms. But do you see such transformations scaling to the masses yet? If you agree the answer is “NO” then think why? Let me list some of the constraints below

• Ownership : Users are not always in control of the content or their own data. Why? because user data is stored at centralized entities who provide services to users.

• Privacy : Users are not creating value by using the products, instead Users are becoming the Products, creating value to the big entities who own platforms. Why? because how you use the products, when you use products, which location/device you use the products from, even what other products you use is not private information while using centralized entities.

• Value : Users are not really benefited by using services, instead Users are serving the entities who own these services. Why? because these platforms are monetizing user data to benefit central entities who own them.

• Control : Users are not becoming influencers on social networks, instead Users are being influenced by the entities who control these social networks. Why? because algorithms that generate feeds we see on social platforms are not fully controlled by users, instead it is increasingly being controlled by central entities who own social networks.

• Trust : Users can not trust their data or privacy to remain safe with centralized entities. Why? because centralized entities more often fail to prevent hacks.

Why centralized entities can not solve all these problems? because they really can’t. No really, it is difficult to solve all 5 at the same time with the current architecture of centralized entities.

The 5 principles : Ownership, Privacy, Value, Control and Trust, are necessary to achieve ubiquitous digital freedom.

So what are the technologies that would solve the above problems of Ownership, Privacy, Value, Control and Trust for the masses? Remember how I talked about the Web as composition of many technologies that are woven together? Advances in Decentralized Computing, Cryptography, Mathematics helped in making a system called Blockchain. Blockchains record information in a decentralized, immutable storage in such a way which makes it difficult to modify or temper with.

The first Blockchain technology called Bitcoin aims to 
provide a decentralized peer-to-peer electronic cash 
system. It was first to demonstrate that a trust less 
monetary system can be built without needing a central 
authority.

Technologies that are built on top of Blockchains are the most promising developments we have seen to help solve the issues with Web 2.0.

• Ownership : Public key cryptography existed since the Web 1.0 era, but ability to record ownership in Blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum etc. as NFTs and being able to prove ownership using public/private keys solves the digital ownership issue.

• Privacy : Instead of using user identifiable information like email, username etc., public/private keys can be used as identities for decentralized services.

• Value : Replacing a centralized entity taking huge revenue cuts from users directly benefits users with peer-to-peer transactions using DeFi really empowers the creator's economy.

• Control : DAOs or decentralized autonomous organizations provide control to users in a truly democratic fashion.

• Trust : Smart Contracts on Blockchains can automate execution of contracts without the need of trusted third party or centralized entity.

Web 3.0 will have technologies that are empowering users in a real sense, building on the principles of providing Ownership, Privacy, Value, Control and Trust to users.

Probably nothing!