What is Web3

✔️ Web3 in short means decentralized Internet.

✔️ With Web3, you take control of your digital identity.

✔️ Web3 could revolutionize how we use the Internet.

✔️ Is the world ready for Web3?

What is Web3?

Web3 may be the next phase of Internet development. The intention of Web3 applications is to do as much as possible in-house. Dependence on the big tech companies like Google and Facebook will be a lot less or even disappear altogether with this new generation of the Internet. Eventually a Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) will appear, allowing users to control all their information.

This all sounds wonderful, but is it realistic? Join us in the world of the World Wide Web, where nothing stays what it was and a deus ex machina (sudden change for no apparent reason) lurks around the corner!

The history of the WWW

We're not going to tire you with endless pieces about people and dates, but a global history seems appropriate.

ARPANET

ARPANET or ARPA Network was conceived in the late 1960s in the US. Computers were still so expensive that it made economic sense to share them with any research institute that might need them. That way you didn't have to have an extremely expensive monster of a machine in every institute.

A side benefit, argued by some as the main issue, was that communications could continue as usual during a nuclear war if the computers remained connected.

In 1988, this ARPA Internet was decommissioned, but in the meantime they had invented File Transfer Protocol and e-mail here.

WWW

The World Wide Web (read) was proposed and introduced by Englishman Tim Berners-Lee. He proposed an information management system in 1989 and implemented it later that year. The first communication between an HTTP client and server over the Internet came from his hand.

Well-known protocols, which are still in use today come mainly from this era: TCP/IP, SMTP and HTTP. Very importantly, it is free to use these protocols.

You could call this Web1, the beginning of the connection of computers around the world, also known as the Internet. It was a kind of two-dimensional world, where you looked at websites without being able to do much else.

Web2

The second generation of Web sites were interactive and centrally managed. The term Web2.0 (read & write) was coined by Tim O'Reilly and dates from around the turn of the millennium. He described it by saying "you no longer had to be a Webmaster to upload information to the Internet."

The terminology may not seem so familiar to you, but the companies at the center of this era are: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, and so on. The reason they look so familiar to you is that we are in the midst of the Web2 era!

Web2 is known as the social Internet, where you can share stories, images, videos and other applications. A less attractive aspect of this era is the violation of users' privacy and the selling of your personal information and preferences to companies that then send you targeted ads.

The rise of Big Tech

The reason these companies have become so big is known as the network effect, as well as the bandwagon effect. For example, the network effect means that if many people use an application, more will follow. Sort of like sheep herding behavior. As a result, competition dies out.

The bandwagon effect is the principle that an opinion widely shared by others also becomes your own. If everyone has an account at company X, it must also be the best company. In this way, alternative browsers, social media and search engines have died a quiet death. Many people can still remember Netscape, Alta Vista and Myspace. Some companies were better than their competitors, but were driven out by the above effects.

Algorithms and nonsense

Another aspect that is becoming increasingly important to users is the influence of algorithms and fact checkers, which judge your content and can remove your post, account or forum. This dependence gives these companies enormous power, including on public opinion. They can "steer the herd."

This era is called by Andrew Keen in his book "The cult of the amateur." According to him, anyone can put anything on the Internet without thorough knowledge, and we have noticed this on social networks like Twitter or Facebook. With freedom should really also come responsibility, but yes.

Web3

Web3 (read & write & own) or Web3.0 has not really begun yet. One could argue that we are in the middle of it, but it is not out of the question that it will be a perpetual transformation.

The term Web3 was coined in 2014 by Gavin Wood, best known for Ethereum. It wasn't until around 2020 that there was a bit of a stir in this business, which until then had been dominated by Big Tech.

Decentralized Internet

Web3 is a period of change. It must herald the end of centralization (Google, Facebook) and ensure the elimination of the middleman (banks, notary). It should be a new Internet revolution.

Techniques you can use for this because of their decentralized nature are the blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFTs and DeFi.

Control over your data comes into your own hands, so central authorities like Google or Facebook can no longer sell your personal data to advertisers. With a fancy phrase, they call this a Self Sovereign Identity (SSI). You then decide what all you share with whom and your privacy becomes your own business.

How does Web3 work?

At Web3, they are working to integrate Internet applications. "Ideally," you could log in with just one profile to access all the applications and Web sites you are a member of and want to work with. This will take some doing, but will also have quite a few questionable implications.

The big technology companies are doing this too, but do you really want to put your whole life on Google Docs or something? What's to stop Google from ever charging money for it and denying you access unless you pay? That everything is connected does come in handy without question, but the danger is clear.

So Web3 must work to integrate all the important sites without using private companies. It must become a decentralized Internet. The problem is, Big Tech has the money for new developments and is centralized, allowing them to drive specific applications. The rest of the Internet consists too much of little islands without big money, so it's all slow.

Parts Web3

Web3 has a number of important components and changes in store for us that we will list:

1. Blockchain. A blockchain is decentralized. This means that not all the information is on a company's server, but spread across thousands of nodes. No one can come forward and say that someone no longer has access, because blockchain is permissive. You don't need permission to join a blockchain network. Everything is decentralized and borderless. You also don't have to trust any company or person, it is trustless, that is, trust is built into the system through a majority of nodes approving or disapproving a new block. A brief description of how blockchain works: eliminating the middleman.

2. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI). This means that you have complete control over the creation, storage and management of your digital identity. Google or Facebook can then no longer use your personal data because you have not given permission to do so via SSI, or because you share an account without any aspects that identify you. One way that has been proposed to regulate this is through crypto wallets and a peer to peer public and private key. One disadvantage to this method is that you have to pay (small amounts) for everything with cryptocurrency and we are not used to that.

3. Decentralized apps. Whereas today we are still dealing with centralized services, such as Amazon and Google, that use the client-server model, with dApps we can participate independently of these big players in all kinds of operations on the Internet that you normally have to purchase from a big provider. A very well-known variant of this is DeFi, where you can do financial operations without an intermediary that cannot be denied you. You just have to meet the conditions in a smart contract. Many of these decentralized apps, such as exchanges, have their own token, such as Uniswap. If you want to join, the smart contact "says" you can do this and that if you put in an amount of coin X (e.g., UNI). For example, you can borrow, lend and provide liquidity there without an intermediary.

4. DAO. A DAO is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization. This type of organization operates completely autonomously, independent of central leadership. The participants themselves and the software let everything happen by itself. This is a particularly convenient principle, where the people who run the governance tokens of such a network in their hands may vote which way to go. Everything is automated from cradle to grave in such a DAO. Once it runs, no one has to open the door, answer the phone or finish the mail. He works forever without any effort. The only thing you have to trust in a DAO is the software.

5. The Metaverse. This is a collection of 3d virtual worlds where you can do all sorts of things. So you have worlds that can look quite a lot like ours, like TheSandbox or Decentraland, but also scifi worlds, computer generated worlds that don't look like ours at all or ancient civilizations. An important aspect in these worlds is that you can be in possession of all kinds of NFTs. A NFT is a non fungible token, or non-exchangeable token, that is unmistakably owned by a particular individual because ownership is fixed on a blockchain and the private key is in his possession. Technically speaking, you can make almost anything non fungible tokens and sell them online, even your house and car. After all, ownership is fixed via your private key and when you transfer, the private key goes to the new owner. Can you make that real estate agent look down his nose. At the Metaverse you can usually buy land, buy user items that are important in a game and work on your appearance, giving you a very personalized experience. There are even doctor's offices, billboards and stores where you can buy branded shoes and the like. Also, you can often do quests there and win small prizes with play to earn, but earning a real income from it is rare.

6. AI. Artificial intelligence will certainly play a big role in Web3. Obviously, this is still in its infancy now, but at some point it will AI taking over more and more tasks, because it is better suited for that than the static versions of all sorts of much less interactive aspects of Web3. Examples are Siri and Bixby, which can use what you say to them to launch all sorts of things, like a road map or something. The WWW will behave more and more like an organism that wants to go in a certain direction. The usual science fiction stories will again be written about this new possibility. The boundary between reality and the virtual world may begin to blur. An important part of this may become the semantic web. This refers to the linking of data on the Internet through machine learning, among other things.

7. Open source. This has been going on for a while, with Wordpress being one of the first programs to release their source code. This has ensured that not only has creating a website become a piece of cake, but also that it has been tinkered with a great deal and its capabilities have exploded. Open source ensures that developments are much faster and that there are no patents and other obstacles to expanding applications. Many cryptocurrencies have also used open source or are open protocols.

8. Peer to peer. More and more things will start happening between peers (peers) instead of the usual client-server model. More and more applications make it possible to establish direct communication between two parties who want to interact for whatever reason without permission or cost. Then you don't have to log in anywhere.

9. Ubiquity. Ubiquity means ubiquity. Your personal input into the Web environment today has expanded not only to log in from anywhere and have access to all your identities and files, but also to your smart devices. With the IoT (internet of things) you can now remotely turn on your thermostat or see who is at the door when the doorbell rings.

Benefits of Web3

• You own your data. Right now your personal data is sold by companies so you can be bombarded with ads. If you share your data you could charge for it yourself.

• Linking devices and identities. This gives you anytime, anywhere access to all your accounts and IoT devices without having to log in to do so.

• The power of Big Tech, such as Google and Facebook, is greatly limited when people can take back their privacy and these giants have nothing left to sell.

• Freedom from patronization of all kinds of organizations. You can post things on the Internet without any government or company being able to deny you access. This is good news for whistleblowers, dissidents and others who are often denied access to post content. You will probably still have to abide by a country's laws, though, so this will bring back new regulation.

• AI will increasingly be at the user's beck and call. Perhaps at some point it will understand us better than we understand ourselves. A nature lover will not see a car for the search term duck. That may also have something creepy for some people.

• Open source will allow Web3 to develop much faster than Web2 ever could.

Disadvantages of Web3

• Because there is a lot of new technology involved, you will have to keep up with the times as a user. Before you know it, you will lag behind and no longer understand how it all works. This can create a large group of laggards who don't want to have anything to do with it. This can cause a split.

• With new technology comes new devices with more capabilities. You just have to go out and buy them all. This can cost a lot of money and resources.

• If it requires a fair amount of technical know-how, it could also end up not getting off the ground at all, if at all. If Web3 is not rolled out in a super simple way, so that joining is as easy as making an account on Facebook or something, then it could well become a niche market. A small group of enthusiasts who know all about it, but quickly lose the conversation partner when they start talking about it.

• The limitations of blockchain, in the case of Web3, are not mild. Working with blocks that need to be validated is just really not useful when the whole world is participating and there are large amounts of transactions. Even though you can rush 1 million transactions through it per second, what good is it if 100 million people happen to use your app and there are 25 million transactions per second? This limited scalability needs to be solved before this technology can become mainstream. Buying coins isn't exactly easy for a layman either. Are large groups of people going to do it? Are people going to pay a small amount for every fart to do it on a blockchain? Or would they rather pay a fixed amount per month, as they do now to central providers?

• The Web3 has been called the decentralized Web. But to make this "decentralized" Web work, you still need "some" devices. Providing these decentrally will be rather difficult. There will have to be a company that will make all these devices. Then won't you just get a shift of central players?

• Who is going to develop the Web3? If it's decentralized you have to have a reason to do it. Improving open source software takes a lot of time, but you also want to make money. Where is the revenue model? How do you get it so that you can earn as much from upgrading open source software as you do from upgrading proprietary software? That's kind of a challenge, otherwise you get an amateur Web3 and a pro Web2.

• Who is going to switch? All your friends are on Facebook and X and the like. If you switch to Web3 you're sitting there alone. How do you get enough people to sit next to you? For that, people have to be given a very good reason. There are already plenty of better networks than Facebook, for example, but no one goes there because everyone is at Facebook. There have to be hefty enticements. And what if they switch? Don't you then just get the same as now? If enough people went to application X on Web3, everybody goes there. Then you still have the same thing.

• Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, actually calls many Web3 applications a form of scam. Because a lot of venture capital is poured into all kinds of projects, you can actually be assured that the token and shareholders will put forward their own desires and not those of the users. There's something to that, of course. Perhaps the design of Web3 should be made less dependent on investment.

The future of Web3

Everyone will agree that the way Big Tech has gotten a grip on the WWW cannot be called very florid. The question is whether Web3 will be the solution to this problem.

What we see at the moment is that even the basics, blockchain and cryptocurrency, are still little used. Surely this will really have to become mainstream before we can talk about Web3. If more than half of the inhabitants of planet earth have never done a transaction in cryptocurrency, how can you expect them to briefly switch from their familiar applications to unfamiliar ones that you have to work hard to work with?

The slow roll

We expect it's going to be a very long sit. There will certainly be people who are eager to take advantage of these new capabilities and slowly more are trickling into the metaverse and controlling their thermometers with their phones, but this is going to be a tortoise and not a hare.

Most people are creatures of convenience and habit, and Big Tech companies provide this familiar environment.

Once Web3 becomes a spread, as today's popular apps offer, it may start to impress. Until then, you'd better not give up your account with these popular apps just yet. Talking to AI on your own just isn't for everyone.