Web 3 is being referred to as the next phase of the internet, but what exactly is it?
Essentially, web 3 is an internet that proponents claim is owned by users.What does that mean? Right now, the internet is dominated by a few companies such as meta, Amazon, and Google, and chances are that many of the online platforms you use are dominated by one of these giants.
Web 3 would cut out the middleman and spread ownership among users using blockchain technology.
People are not appropriately paid for their participation in web 2 platforms, according to proponents of web 3. Google may pay you x per million views on YouTube, but you're surely entitled to more, but the whole goal of crypto in general is to remove the intermediary for web3 platforms.
The entire aim of those technologies is to cut out the platform intermediaries...
Google, Amazon, and Facebook's Web3 would allow you to conduct online payments without going via a financial institution such as a bank; instead, platforms would include cryptocurrencies and nfts. A non-fungible token, or nft, is a type of blockchain receipt that confirms ownership of internet goods such as art, music, gifs, and even tweets.The data is decentralized, which means that no single entity controls all of your data; instead, your data is spread around the network and safeguarded, ensuring that it is properly stored and that no single person is in charge of the entire show.
Instead of an IPO, a hypothetical web 3 version of Facebook would create a cryptocurrency token and airdrop it to early adopters. Users would be rewarded for going viral and could earn tokens based on engagement. Tokens could also be used to vote on policies like content moderation. The value of those tokens would be determined by the platform's success, which means each person with a token would have a stake in the platform's success.
That's why blockchain project consultant Amy Lee is saying the change wouldn't just be social, but financial as well if web3 takes off.
But when it comes to people posting illicit stuff that we all agree shouldn’t be allowed - can it actually be removed? There are technical restrictions to this that most people are unaware of. For example, web3 would accommodate concepts like the metaverse, which are virtual worlds where individuals can socialize, work, and play as avatars.
The metaverse has also gotten a lot of attention recently, notably with Facebook changing itself to meta in 2021 to emphasize its concentration on this new sector.
So what are web 1 and web 2 if that's web 3?
From the 1990s to the early 2000s, web 1 was defined by static web pages that allowed users to do little more than download material. During this time, the internet was essentially attempting to imitate traditional media such as periodicals, newspapers, and newsletters. Web 2 began in 2004 and allowed people to download and upload information. Think of web 2 as the social media era, when the internet transitioned from being a computerized version of existing media to becoming its own distinct entity.
Another important aspect of web one is that it ran on open source protocols, so html, http, and so on. Some critics worry that the hyped-up web 3 will need to be centralized in order to be realized, which goes against its entire court principle. The problem is that Ethereum, the blockchain on which most of this is based, is known to be inefficient, with transactions being expensive and requiring a lot of energy.
Some argue that having widespread blockchain activity is technically unattainable because there's no viable way to scale those networks. Even though the goal of web3 is to transfer power from big companies to users, big venture capital firms have already made huge investments in web3 technology in 2021, VCs invested around 18 billion dollars in this space some critics think of web3 as more of a power shift than decentralization I've been skeptical of this concept of decentralization.
The core parts of web3 are now worth hundreds of billions of dollars...
So you could say we're already in web 3 beta. Metaverse games with crypto and nft enabled economies would be included in the future iteration of web 3. Those games are already in development and are expected to be released in the next two to three years. "Once the public catches on, and sees the vast improvements over traditional social media, I believe it will take off fast" said one crypto consultant on twitter.Definitions and ideas about the feasibility of web 3 vary, but one thing is certain: digital platforms and the ways we use them will continue to evolve.
here that will go and to what extent it will go is difficult to predict, but I'm confident that the next ten years will be very exciting.
---------
Author: Michael Bison
TechNewsCity Silicon Valley Newsroom
