When you are watching "Twelve Hours in Chang'an" at home, a cloud mining machine at Lao Wang's house next door is constantly transmitting the video files of the next episode for you; you paid 15 yuan to the video website to watch the show. For membership fees, Lao Wang's mining machine made 2 cents a day by passing files to nearby people.
You are an ordinary Internet user, and Lao Wang is a Web 3.0 participant.
You may have heard and seen a lot of content related to Web 3.0 recently. Are you thinking like a member of the BlockBeats team: What does Web 3.0 have to do with blockchain?
In a traditional sense, Web 3.0 is a new stage in the development of the Internet. It is based on the current Internet (or you can call it Web 2.0), and the changes brought by Web 3.0 have brought the Internet to a whole new level of development. Computer scientists and internet experts believe these changes will make the internet smarter and our lives easier.
Practitioners in the digital cryptocurrency industry have given higher expectations to Web 3.0. They have now begun to look forward to breaking the monopoly of traditional Internet giants and creating a new free world. The Web 3 Summit (Web 3 Summit), which opens in Berlin, Germany on August 19, will also fully discuss the topic of Web 3. Perhaps we can learn more about Web 3 at this event.
So, to better understand these paradigm-shifting changes, let's first look at the stages of development of the Internet.
Web 1.0 -> Web 2.0 -> Web 3.0: Evolving
The trend we are about to witness is that the Internet will evolve with the needs and usage of the users, and ultimately belong to the users.
Web 1.0 - Websites feed information to users
According to the content of the BlockGeek website, as early as the 1990s when the Internet was just beginning to become popular, the interaction between users and the network was at a very early stage, that is, users could only passively browse text, pictures and simple video content, what the website provided, what the user sees. There is almost no interaction to speak of.
For the post-90s, post-00s, there used to be an internet (early) version before social media and video streaming took off! In the mid-to-late 1990s, before Google and Baidu developed, the Internet was dominated by AltaVista and Netscape. At the time, the internet existed only to advertise their brick-and-mortar companies. These sites are "read-only sites", meaning you can only search and read information.
(#Blockbeats Note: AltaVista, one of the most well-known search engine companies in the world, was founded in 1995. It was acquired by Yahoo in 2003. In 2013, Yahoo announced the closure of the search engine AltaVista service. Netscape, Netscape Communications, used to be a An American computer services company best known for its eponymous web browser, Netscape Navigator. Netscape was acquired by AOL in November 1998.)
And the e-commerce websites of that era were actually the same as the promotional brochures issued by the supermarkets today. They just showed you the content, and you couldn't place an order on the website.
This is Web 1.0, slow Web 1.0, fully controlled Web 1.0.
Web 2.0 - The Internet begins to interact with people
The next generation of the Internet is known as the "Web 2.0" or "read-write" web. Now users are not just mere visitors, they can also create their own content and upload it to the site. Take the famous video blogger "Office Ono" as an example. In just 2 years, she went from an obscure video author to a video V with monthly income of tens of millions.
From about 2003, Dale Dougherty, vice president of O'Reilly Media, first proposed the word "Web2.0", and then the wave of "Web2.0" swept the world. In just ten years, "Web 2.0" completely redefines marketing and business operations.
Influential internet celebrities only need to post a video to fill a restaurant with long queues, or they can flood an online store with bad reviews with just one sentence. The influence of Internet people on the Internet is increasing day by day, and the era of websites feeding information to users in the past has passed.
The main goal of Web 2.0 is to make the Internet more democratic and as accessible to users as possible.
Web 3.0 - A More Humane Internet
In the eyes of traditional Internet people, Web3 may look like this.
Every time you buy something on JD.com, the website's algorithm will make recommendations by looking at other products purchased by users who have purchased a product like you or based on your previous browsing and purchase records. What happened in this process? Sites are learning your underlying preferences from other users and then recommending content you might like. Essentially, the website itself is learning and thus becoming more intelligent.
According to them, "Web 1.0 was primarily driven by content generated by businesses or institutions to attract their customers. Web 2.0 took the Internet further by allowing users to upload and share their content on websites. Web 3.0 was driven by online applications and websites. Receive information on the Internet and provide users with new information or data.”
Like the Semantic Web, what's the difference between "I love Bitcoin" and "I < 3 Bitcoin"? The syntax is different between the two sentences, but the semantics are the same. In our case, semantics processes the meaning or emotion conveyed by the data such that both sentences express the same emotion. The Semantic Web and Artificial Intelligence are the two cornerstones of Web 3.0. With semantic metadata, Web 3.0 will enhance the connection between data. As a result, the user experience will evolve to another level of connectivity that makes use of all available information.
Another example is artificial intelligence, which will filter through websites and provide users with the best data possible. In the current Web 2.0, we have begun to incorporate user input to help us understand the quality of a particular product or asset. A site like Rotten Tomatoes, where users can vote and rate movies. Movies with higher ratings are generally considered "good movies." Such a list can help us get "good data" without necessarily getting "bad data".
Or advanced 3D graphics, imagine that in an online game like Second Life or World of Warcraft, users are much more interested in their online characters than they are in their real selves level of interest. Philip Rosedale, creator of the game Second Life, believes virtual identities will be as popular as email addresses and cell phones. This view may seem far-fetched, but don't forget that 20 years ago, in 1997, only a few people had their own email addresses. In the future, there will be more and more people with 3D identities.
Finally, the Internet will be everywhere. We already got this functionality in Web 2.0. Social media sites like Instagram, where users capture images on camera, upload and distribute them online, become their intellectual property. As a result, images become ubiquitous, that is, ubiquitous. The development of mobile devices and Internet access will enable the experience of Web 3.0 anytime, anywhere. The Internet will no longer exist on the desktop like Web 1.0, nor on smartphones like Web 2.0, it will be ubiquitous. Web 3.0 can also be called the ubiquitous web because most of the things around you are connected online, aka the Internet of Things.
*Part of this article is translated from BlockGeek.
The True Web 3.0 - A Human-Controlled Internet
From the above description, Web 3.0 is an Internet more suitable for human use, and its services to human beings are more excellent and natural. But what does this mean? This means that users need to provide their information to artificial intelligence and service providers in large quantities for free, so that they can train AI models to provide better recommendations and semantic associations, and the ubiquitous Web 3.0 experience will also lead to Internet users. With the disappearance of privacy, businesses know who you are and what you like to eat, but you know very little about businesses.
Privacy, data, rights, censorship, identity... these are the topics that blockchain Web 3.0 cares about.
In the digital cryptocurrency industry at the forefront of Internet technology, insiders have completely different views on Web 3.0. They believe that the Internet is already riddled with holes, and the four attributes mentioned above are only stages that the Internet will inevitably go through, but they are not enough to constitute web 3.0.
Several features of true Web 3.0
If Office Ono gets 100% of the advertising share instead of the platform's 30% or 40%, then she will get more income. However, in the current Internet stage, this goal is almost impossible to achieve, because the traditional Internet is operated centrally and is monopolized by Internet giants, and operators need to pay for various costs.
Web 3.0 requires a new paradigm to subvert today's Internet giant monopoly and protect the interests of every Internet user. Thanks to the features of blockchain technology such as decentralized storage, immutability, and information encryption, combined with the recent research summary of BlockBeats, we can roughly label Web 3.0 as follows:
Unified identity authentication system
Data confirmation and authorization
Privacy protection and anti-censorship
Decentralized operation
In view of many problems in the current Internet, such as the need to repeatedly register accounts, service providers abusing user privacy data, network companies using user data for profit, network services cannot be continued, etc., the four labels mentioned above can be used alone or in combination. , a Web 3.0 solution. Corresponding properties, block rhythm BlockBeats will be explained and discussed in detail for readers in subsequent articles.
Block Rhythm BlockBeats will also bring readers optimistic views of Web 3.0 and not optimistic about Web 3.0, so that readers can fully understand Web 3.0.
Web 3.0 will bring a transparent and credible Internet economic model
Because users have used Internet content for free for decades, everyone is not disgusted with the method of freeing personal data to websites and service providers through the "User Agreement" and "Privacy Agreement", and even take it for granted. . But we ignore that the money earned by the enterprise using the user's data will not be returned to the user, and the user is not entitled to the remaining profit after the revenue covers the operating cost. Many people take this for granted, but it's not fair.
Whether it is Web 1.0 or Web 2.0, because the centralization of operating services always brings more or less issues of transparency and trust. This problem can be solved through the application of blockchain technology of data rights tokenization, data confirmation and authorization. The data generated by the user in the Web 3 world is owned by the user, and the user has no right to use it without the user's authorization confirmation. At the same time, users may also get a share of the revenue generated by the use of data through the token economy of the digital cryptocurrency industry.
The emergence of the token economy and digital assets has also given users the opportunity to participate in the operation of Web 3.0 development companies. They can participate in voting and participating in dividends to achieve positive interaction between developers and users. Users are both users and maintainers. For example, the Brave browser recommended by BlockBeats before, when users surf the Internet in the browser, the browser will recommend advertisements to readers, and at the same time, it will return a part of the income to readers. It not only consumes the user's data, but also creates income for the user. More such products will appear in the future, allowing users to participate in the company's operations. Fred Wilson, a partner at AVC Capital, believes that this behavior can be understood as Open Data (open data), which is an important part of the development of Web 3.0.
Pharaoh mentioned at the beginning of the article, because he participated in the mining of a certain project, his mining machine is used as the CDN node of the video website, delivering video files to nearby video users, and calculating himself according to the uploaded traffic. The workload will be divided from Youku, iQiyi or Tencent Video. Lao Wang is a very standard Web 3.0 participant. He can enjoy the convenience of the Internet and make money for his contributions.
Web 3.0 will give users peace of mind
In the traditional Internet field, users' right to control their own data is actually very low.
For example, an article you published on a blog may be deleted due to a "stop service announcement" on Sina blog. Even the copyrighted music you paid for on NetEase Cloud Music will be deleted from the App because the NetEase Cloud copyright expires, and you will never be able to hear it again. It's also possible that your favorite game has "disconnected from the server" because the developer can't make any money, leaving you playing for months with nothing to do with your gear.
In the traditional Internet world, all this has happened, and more will happen. In the era of Web 3.0, this problem will be solved through decentralization.
Blockchains such as Ethereum 2.0 and Dfinity, which are known as global computers, will provide developers with basic computing services. There is no need to rent servers. User data can also pass IPFS, Sia, OrbitDB (using IPFS's decentralized database) ) and other technologies to decentralize storage, no one can control your data anymore. As long as you are willing to pay for the blockchain smart contracts that the game runs, you can still play the entire game even if you are the only one left.
Changes to products and games must also be voted through by the community, and developers no longer have dictatorial powers. The founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, was furious because of the random modification of character skills in the online game World of Warcraft. The emergence of Web 3.0 will limit this from happening.
Web 3.0 is ruthless but can be surprisingly fair
Web 3.