What is Web 3.0?
Is this the future or a gimmick?
Web3, in the context of Ethereum, refers to decentralized apps that run on the blockchain. These are apps that allow anyone to participate without monetizing their personal data.
Source: Ethereum.org
Web3 famously called Web 3.0 is a newer generation of the internet, responsible for shaping the way we use it and also making the web decentralized. It will unlock the possibilities to give the user ownership over their content. Also would increase the security and efficiency of things happening on the Internet through blockchain.
To understand Web 3.0 we have to take a look over the previous iterations of the web.
Web 1.0 (Static Web)
It was the foundation of the Internet. In the years 1991–2004, the web was no less than a Wikipedia where people just came to consume the information. It was also called a Read-only web as it only contained static pages with zero to minimum interactions. The biggest thing about this web was that it wasn’t profitable even through ads, which made their way to the next generation of the Internet Web 2.0.
Web 2.0 (The Social Web)
Web 2.0 is the web we use today. This is the era of advertisements. During this time web evolved a lot. This generation of web made interaction with other people all around the world possible due to the presence of Social Media. This was the time where companies possibly started to maintain a monopoly over the market as they started adopting machine learning algorithms to create a better experience for the user. They did so by collecting huge chunks of data of the user and training their algorithms to give a personalized experience to every user so that they stay longer on their apps and web pages. This move made companies gain loads of revenue. And to be honest we are willingly giving our privacy to these companies just to use their apps and services.
Web 3.0 (The Semantic Web)
Web 3.0 is the next evolution of the internet where the web would be governed by machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, and no company would have the authority over the data of any user.
In Web 2.0 we users were the product of the content, but in this iteration, we might just become the owner of the content we see or upload. The biggest change that's gonna happen in the upcoming generation is decentralization. Which in simplified terms means that the data on the internet would be separated between the nodes of the blockchain, and everyone on the node would have the same copy of the ledger.
Torrents are the best example of decentralization. They had different servers located all over the world. If you want to download any file you need to have a torrent client like uTorrent or BitTorrent to collect that individual pieces on the network and assemble them to download. Not only that, this peer-to-peer connection helped them to establish a layer where it's very difficult to track users as millions of people were uploading the files. Even though torrents are banned in multiple countries, still they can be accessed through VPNs because of the chain of network they established.
This same is gonna happen in Web 3.0. It's going to become more secure, decentralized and no government would be included in this.
Web 3.0 also introduced us to a new term called DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). In simple terms, it means that companies would no longer require board members to make a decision. It would be implemented automatically through codes or smart contracts. The biggest benefits of DAO are that they are open source so they can improve over time and also support voting mechanisms to make a decision faster and accurately.
One major benefit of this web is e-payment. Companies would start adopting cryptocurrencies to become a payment method for their products and for those to happen crypto wallets (like MetaMask) would become popular. The biggest advantage to having those as a payment method is that you can send money anywhere in the world within minutes without taxation and currency exchange expenses.
Conclusion
Well, web 3.0 is not a gimmick and it's gonna become a part of our lives within the next decade and so. As blockchain technology is gonna get evolve and NFTs would become popular people would start to shift their aim to cryptocurrencies as a whole. Facebook’s Metaverse and Nvidia Omniverse would make the web3 experience more reachable to people.
People have already started creating lands and games based on virtual reality that runs on blockchains. NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are getting popular and even celebrities have started collecting them. And even concerts are happening in virtual reality. This craze is just gonna get wild over time.
To understand how blockchain works, click the link below.
