What is Web3.0 ?

Web 3.0 enables a future where distributed users and machines are able to interact with data, value and other counterparties via a medium of peer-to-peer networks without the need for third parties.

The idea behind Web3 is that it is decentralized, so that instead of users accessing the internet through services mediated by the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook, YouTube, it’s the individuals themselves who own and control pieces of the internet. Web3 does not require “permission,” meaning that central authorities don’t dictate who uses what services, nor is there a need for “trust,” referring to the idea that an intermediary does not need to facilitate virtual transactions between two or more parties. Web3 theoretically protects users privacy better as well, because you’re the owner of your data. Data could be public however it will not be owned by big giant companies. Hence you are directly paid for all your work, effort, and skill. No company can control and charge the service fee from you.

Web 3.0 would be aimed at being more autonomous, intelligent, and open. It would interconnect all the data in a decentralized way — a huge jump from the current system where the data is stored in centralizedsean repositories. There would be two important pillars on which Internet 3.0 will be based: semantic web and artificial intelligence (AI).

Web 3.0 will fundamentally expand the scale & scope of both human and machine interactions far beyond what we can imagine today. These interactions, ranging from seamless payments to richer information flows, to trusted data transfers, will become possible with a vastly increased range of potential counterparties. Web 3.0 will enable us to interact with any individual or machine in the world, without having to pass through fee-charging middlemen. This shift will enable a whole new wave of previously unimaginable businesses and business models: from global co-operatives to decentralised autonomous organisations and self-sovereign data marketplaces.

Think of it this way: The nascent days of the Internet in the 1990s were Web 1.0. From the year 1989–2005, everything was static on the web. We just used to navigate between pages and get information. There were no algorithms to make the web intelligent.

Then came Web 2.0 starting in the mid-2000s. Platforms like YouTube, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter emerged to bring order to the Internet by making it easy to connect and transact online. There was a shift from static to dynamic web pages and companies started taking control of the data and used it to market so that it brought revenues to them . Critics say over time those companies amassed too much power.

Web3 is about grabbing some of the power back. In a Web3 world, people control their own data and bounce around from social media to email to shopping to booking & purchasing using a single personalized account, creating a public record on the blockchain of all of that activity. It is expected that web3.0 will provide more personal browsing experience and will help establish a more equitable internet.

“To the average person, it does sound like voodoo,” said Olga Mack, entrepreneur and blockchain lecturer at University of California, Berkeley. “But when you press a button to switch on lights, do you understand how the electricity is made? You don’t have to know how electricity works to understand the benefits. Same is true of the blockchain.”

The Web3 movement has been helped along by the rise of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which are digital collectibles and other online files that can be bought and sold with cryptocurrency. Then there are the publicity stunts. Recently, a group of crypto enthusiasts banded together to attempt to purchase a copy of the U.S. Constitution with digital currency. They organized under the name ConstitutionDAO. (A DAO stands for a decentralized autonomous organization, the name for an online collective of crypto supporters who assemble together collectively in a group governed by blockchains and tokens. It’s very Web3.)

Reddit is using this idea of web3

Reddit is currently making Web3 inroads by trying to devise a way to use cryptocurrency tokens to allow users to essentially own portions of the communities they participate in on the site. The idea would be that users would use tokens known as “community points,” which they earn by posting on a certain subreddit. The user then accrues points based on how many upvotes or downvotes that post gets from other users. (It’s basically Reddit Karma on the blockchain.) Those points can essentially function as voting shares, allowing users who have made valued contributions to have more of a say when it comes to making decisions that will affect the community. Because those points exist on the blockchain, their owners have more control over them; they can’t easily be taken away and they follow you around. To be sure, this is only one use case, a kind of corporate version of a Web3 concept known as Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAOs, which use tokens to make ownership and decision-making powers more equitable. One example of a DAO is Augur, a decentralized betting platform.

Insightful Questions

“I’m not in a position to say who will win,” Dryhurst said. “But Web2 companies will be folding Web3 ideas into their services to stay relevant.”

James Grimmelmann, a Cornell University professor who studies law and technology, has become vocal about his doubts.
“Web3 is vaporware,” said Grimmelmann, referring to a product that’s announced but never delivered.
“It’s a promised future internet that fixes all the things people don’t like about the current internet, even when it’s contradictory.”

He said if part of the impetus is to resist giving up personal data to Big Tech companies, then the blockchain is not the solution, since that will make even more data public.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “The vision says the problem with the internet is too many centralized intermediaries. Instead of having lots of different applications and sites, we’ll put it all on blockchains, which puts it all in one place.”

References :

https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Web-30
https://slate.com/technology/2021/11/web3-explained-crypto-nfts-bored-apes.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l44z35vabvA&ab_channel=Web3Foundation
https://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/features/web-internet-3-0-new-changes-ai-blockchain-decentralised-explained-2536242
https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/infoxication/32201
https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Web-30

Conclusion

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