What is Web3? Why Are People Curious About It?
The third generation of web technologies is known as Web3 and it is the new evolution of internet service that is developed using decentralized blockchains. The web (World Wide Web) is the foundation layer of how the internet is used by offering website and application services. It is evolving according to the needs of global users and now it has arrived in the era of decentralized applications with the extensive utilization of blockchain-oriented technologies. In this blog, we are going to discuss the evolutions of the web, web3 features, how web3 works, applications of web3, and limitations of web3 along with why web3 is the sudden talk of people.
Why Web3 is the sudden talk of people?
As Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are helping in empowering intelligent and adaptive applications, tech talents have become magnets for global industries. Web3 is important for today’s tech world as it fully transforms websites by enabling people to interact with them. Web3 also known as Web 3.0 is not only managing our data but also provides a way for redistributing ownership of the internet. In simple terms, Web3 is getting decision-making and ownership from a small group of people and transferring them to the hands of a large community and it became very democratic as per the words of Josh Neuroth, the head of Ankr is a web3 infrastructure company.
Ownership
The importance of web3 is that it gives us ownership of our digital assets extraordinarily. For instance, when we play any online game and if we have to purchase some game items, they will be tied to our account directly for our usage. If the game creator deletes our account, or if we stop playing the game, we might lose the value that is invested into your purchased items. But web3 allows direct ownership through NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) which means you can trade the in-game items and not even a game creator has the power to take away your ownership once you have decided to stop playing.
Censorship
Censorship resistance is the need of the hour as it is powering up dynamics between platforms and content creators. OnlyFans has over 1 million content creators and it is the primary source of their income. It has encountered a problem that its income was getting robbed through the content they have created on this particular platform. Even though the issue has been resolved quickly, the creators have lost their reputations and content. But Web3 allows our data to live on the blockchain and when we decide to leave the platform, we can take our reputation and contents with us and we can even plug them into another interface with the aligned value.
DAOs
DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations that allow owning the platform as well as own the data on Web3. They enable us to coordinate decentralized ownership of a platform to make decisions for the future. DAOs are automating decentralized decision-making among the pool of resources or tokens. The users of DAOs are allowed to vote on how the tokens can be spent and the code performs the voting outcome automatically.
Identity
Today it is common that us to have an account on various platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, and so on. But these platforms require personally identifiable information for creating accounts. If we want to change our details, we have to do it on every account. Unexpectedly, it leads to censorship problems that may end up with profile locking issues by the platforms. Web3 resolves these problems by enabling us to control our digital identity using Ethereum Addresses and ENS profiles. Ethereum Address offers a single login for accessing all the accounts of various platforms with a secured, censored, resisted, and anonymous environment.
Native Payments
Surprisingly, Web3 payment infrastructure is based on banks and payment processors. It uses tokens like ETH for sending money to the browser directly. It requires no trusted third party for payment processing. Web3 even excludes the people who don’t have bank accounts and it helps avoid the usage of illegal immigrants.
Evolution of Web3
The web is considered the pillar of modern life that depends on the internet for everything. It is better to know the invention of the web and the evolution of web.
Web1.0 – 1990 – 2004 – Read-Only
When Tim Berners Lee was developing the protocols, he invented the World Wide Web. It was invented at CERN, Geneva in the year 1989 and his core idea was to create open and decentralized protocols that make information-sharing possible from anywhere on earth. This first inception is known as Web1.0 and it was loaded with static websites owned by many companies. These static websites have zero interaction with viewers as they contain read-only content.
Web2.0 – 2004 to Present – Read-Write
Web2.0 has evolved with social media platforms that allow read-write information sharing. Instead of providing content to users, companies have started sharing platforms for users to generate content and interactions. Slowly, web2 has become an advertising-driven revenue model as companies have to control the unreasonable traffic and value generation. However, users can’t own the content they are creating or gain benefit from its monetization.
Web3 – Read-Write-Own
Web3 is the expected future evolution of the web that was coined by Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum. He presents the solutions to the ownership problem as many crypto adopters felt that the web needs too much trust. Web3 provides the way for relying and trusting on private companies to serve the best interests of the public by using blockchains, NFTs, and cryptocurrencies. The core ideas of Web3 are decentralized, permissionless, native payments, and economic mechanism.
Features of Web3
Artificial Intelligence is the foundation of Web3 which is constructed with ubiquitous properties and the semantic web. As AI provides faster and more relevant data to users and provides the ability users to filter information based on their usage, many websites are implementing AI features to them. The semantic web is used to categorize and store information to help a system with specific data and it enables users to generate and share better content over the internet with ownership.
Following are the key features of Web3 that helps in defining what the third generation of web in store for the users around the world.
- Decentralized: Applications and services have distributed approach where they have no centralized authority.
- Blockchain-Based: As the enabler of decentralization, blockchain breaks the centralized database infrastructure. It also enables an immutable ledger of transactions and activities that help users by providing verifiable authenticity for the decentralized world.
- Cryptocurrency-Enable: The usage of cryptocurrency services overtakes the usage of fiat currencies and it is the main feature of web3.
- Autonomous with AI-Powered: Automation and Autonomous have been largely powered with Artificial Intelligence technologies.
How does Web3 work?
Web3 basically works with cryptocurrency that empowers users with the ability to pay for goods and services with decentralized payment using cryptocurrencies. It is also built on blockchain technology for decentralization. As it is the concept of DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), it allows self-governing operations of a platform through decentralization. Web1 and Web2 are built on IPv4 addressing space, Web3 requires more internet addresses by IPv6 services for managing the massive growth of web usage.
Applications of Web3
Web3 enables growth for the following types of applications and services that already exist in the internet world.
- NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) enables storage in blockchain with a cryptographic feature.
- DeFi (Decentralized Finance) is an emerging fin-tech application where decentralized blockchain is used for enabling modernized financial services.
- The cryptocurrency creates a new world of currency transactions with an aim of separating the world from fiat currencies.
- dApp – Decentralized Applications that are built on blockchain and smart contracts for enabling services in a programmatic approach and logged in an immutable ledger.
- Cross-Chain Bridges that enable a degree of interoperability over the domains.
- DAOs that are organizing entities for web3 services to provide some structure and governance in a decentralized manner.
- Many upcoming applications that utilize the decentralized approach
Limitations of Web3
Even though web3 has numerous benefits, there are some limitations that to be addressed in its ecosystem for global wide usage.
- Accessibility: Web3 can be used in wealthy and developing countries as it has high transaction fees. This challenge can be resolved by upgrading the ecosystem with network upgrade and layer2 scaling solutions.
- User Experience: Web3 is currently too high and it is one of the primary barriers to global usage. Users must go through hard with the security concerns, tough technical documentation, and unintuitive user interface navigations. It could be resolved with more technical-based progress that can be easily adopted by non-technical users.
- Education: Web3 has a lot of new paradigms that need various learning models. However, Web3 is not difficult but different. Educational initiatives about web3 through television broadcasts will be helpful for global reach.
- Centralized Infrastructure: Web3 is evolving quickly as it is very young. Currently, it depends on the platforms like GitHub, Discord, Twitter, and so on. To be filled this gap requires high-quality and reliable infrastructure dedicated to Web3 usage.
Conclusion
Web3 is the beginning of creating a better web and it should be continued to evolve with reliable infrastructure and dedicated support. Undoubtedly, Web3 provides a promising future for World Wide Wed. Learn Artificial Intelligence Course in Chennai at SLA Institute to understand the Web3 concepts more clearly through best practices.
