Web3 (also referred to as Web 3.0) is a notion for a new version of the World Wide Web that integrates ideas like blockchain technology, token-based economy, and decentralization. Tim Berners-Lee’s idea of the Semantic Web is not the same as this. Some journalists and engineers have compared it to Web 2.0, claiming that content and data are concentrated in a small number of businesses known as “Big Tech.”
Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood first used the phrase “Web3” in 2014. In 2021, venture capital firms, big tech companies, and cryptocurrency aficionados began to take notice of the concept. In 2013, the Web3 principles were initially shown.
Critics have voiced worries about a loss of privacy as a result of more extensive data collecting, or the concentration of wealth in the hands of a select few investors and individuals. Web3 is only a marketing phrase or jargon, according to billionaires like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey.
Context
The terms “Web 1.0” and “Web 2.0” designate distinct periods in the development of the World Wide Web through different forms and technology. The term “Web 1.0” essentially describes the years 1989–2004, when the bulk of websites were static pages and most users were consumers rather than content creators.
The concept of “the web as platform” is the foundation of Web 2.0, which focuses on user-generated content posted to wikis, blogs, social media, and forums, among other platforms. Most people agree that Web 2.0 started about 2004 and is still going strong now.
Words and phrases
Web 3.0, commonly known as Tim Berners-Lee’s 1999 vision of a Semantic Web, is not the same as Web 3. In the context of blockchain, Web3 alludes to a decentralized internet based on distributed ledger technology, whereas the Semantic Web envisioned a web of connected data.
Gavin Wood, a co-creator of Ethereum and the founder of Polkadot, first used the phrase “Web3” in 2014 to describe a “decentralized online ecosystem based on blockchain.” The concept of Web3 gained traction in 2021.
The end of 2021 saw a very high level of interest, mostly as a result of investments from well-known organizations and technologists as well as curiosity from cryptocurrency fans. In October 2021, executives from the venture capital company Andreessen Horowitz visited Washington, DC, to advocate for the concept as a possible answer to the online regulatory issues that legislators have been debating.
Idea
Olga Kharif has characterized the phrase “hazy” and stated that different people have different ideas on what Web3 is, but they all center on the concept of decentralization and frequently use blockchain technology, including different cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Web3 “would build financial assets, in the form of tokens, into the inner workings of almost anything you do online,” according to Kharif.
According to a policy brief released by the University of Cambridge’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy, Web3 is “the putative next generation of the web’s technical, legal, and payments infrastructure—including blockchain, smart contracts, and cryptocurrencies.” Liu, Zhuotao, et al. (2021) suggested three key architectural enablers of Web3: distributed ledger technologies for verified computing, secured interoperability, and decentralized or federated platforms.
The idea of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) is the basis of several ideals. Another important idea is decentralized finance (DeFi), which allows people to trade money without the assistance of banks or the government. Users can identify themselves using self-sovereign identification instead of an authentication method like OAuth, which requires contacting a trusted person to verify identity.
Arrival
Web3 has been characterized by academic academics as a potential remedy for worries about the over-centralization of the web in a few “Big Tech” businesses (Tomer J. Chaffer and Justin Goldston, 2022). Web3 has the potential to enhance data security, scalability, and privacy beyond what Web 2.0 platforms can offer, according to some.
The concept “is a long way from proving its use beyond niche applications, many of them tools aimed at crypto traders,” according to Bloomberg’s naysayers. A number of investors are wagering $27 billion that Web3 “is the future of the internet,” according to the New York Times.
Reddit and Discord are two Web 2.0 businesses that have looked into integrating Web3 technology into their systems. CEO Jason Citron hinted that Discord may be looking on including bitcoin wallets via their platform on November 8, 2021, when he tweeted a snapshot of the app.
After receiving a lot of negative feedback from users, Discord declared two days later that they have no intentions to include these technologies and that the idea was an internal one that was created at a company-wide hackathon.
According to several law experts cited by The Conversation, the challenge of policing a decentralized internet may make it more difficult to stop hate speech, cybercrime, online harassment, and the spread of child pornography. However, the news site also adds that, “[decentralized web] represents the cyber-libertarian views and hopes of the past that the internet can empower ordinary people by breaking down existing power structures” .
Other Web3 detractors view the idea as a component of a cryptocurrency bubble or as a continuation of blockchain-based phenomena, especially NFTs, that they believe are dangerous or overhyped. Concerns over the effects of cryptocurrencies and NFTs on the environment have been voiced by certain detractors.
The efficiency of cryptocurrencies varies; proof of stake was intended to be less energy-intensive than the more popular proof of work, but there is debate on how safe and decentralized this actually is. Some people have stated that they think Web3 and related technologies constitute a pyramid scheme.
Web3 was derided as a “plaything for venture capitalists” by Jack Dorsey, the former CEO and co-founder of Twitter. According to Dorsey, Web3 will transfer influence from companies like Facebook to venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, but it won’t democratize the internet.
The Buzzword
Writing for The Register, Liam Proven comes to the conclusion that Web3 is “a myth, a fairy story.” If parents want their children to become economists, they discuss it with them at night.
Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, was skeptical of Web3 in 2021, tweeting that it “seems more marketing buzzword than reality right now.”
Web3 was dubbed “vaporware” by Cornell University’s James Grimmelmann in November 2021, who described it as “a promised future internet that fixes all the things people don’t like about the current internet, even when it’s contradictory.” Grimmelmann also contended that, in contrast to the present internet, a shift toward a blockchain-focused infrastructure will centralize and result in greater data collecting.
In a blog post, software developer Stephen Diehl called Web3 a “vapid marketing campaign that attempts to reframe the public’s negative associations of crypto assets into a false narrative about disruption of legacy tech company hegemony.”
Decentralization concerns
“Many so-called ‘Web 3.0’ solutions are not as decentralized as they seem, while others have yet to show they are scalable, secure, and accessible enough for the mass market,” according to Kevin Werbach, author of The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust. He also added that while this “may change, it’s not a given that all these limitations will be overcome.”
Web3 is not as decentralized as it seems, according to Signal’s creator, Moxie Marlinspike, in early 2022. This is primarily because of consolidation in the cryptocurrency space, which includes the stablecoin market, which is currently dominated by Tether, cryptocurrency exchanges, which are dominated by Binance, Coinbase, MetaMask, and OpenSea, and blockchain application programming interfaces, which are currently primarily controlled by Alchemy and Infura. The new web is similar to the old web, Marlinspike added.
“Early adopters want to make a new internet that alleviates the problems of the old one,” according to a 2022 Ad Age story, but if businesses placed the same kind of individuals in control as on the previous version and those people had similar views, the same issues would arise.
Alex Smeele, co-founder of Non-Fungible Labs, was featured in another piece in the same edition of the magazine as saying that businesses wishing to take part in Web3 would “actually have to rethink their entire business model.”
Owners of NFT virtual real estate on websites like Decentraland may bar those without the resources from entering the metaverse, according to Ana Constantino, founder of the meetup platform Nowhere.
