Decentralizing The Internet: Web3

If you are reading this blog, you have taken part in the downright biggest network of the world, the web, which has evolved a lot in the past decade and Web3 is considered to be the supposed next iteration of the internet, but before we dive into the question of what exactly web3 is, we need to understand what the previous iterations offered, hence-

What are Web 1.0 & Web 2.0?
Web 1.0(1991-2004) was just a network of static pages that could be considered a content delivery network (CDN) which enabled the users to read information displayed on the website. Web 2.0(2004-Present Day) made the web interactive allowing user interoperability creating a high volume of user generated content.

Now that we know exactly what Web 1.0 & Web 2.0 brought to the table it’s time to delve into                                                                                                                             Why web3?

Web3 can be considered a bunch of varying ideologies based on a decentralized ecosystem working on the basis of blockchain that capitalizes on the obvious disadvantages of the current world wide web, including, but not limited to loss of privacy, users being the products, and power concentrated into a handful of powerful organizations like google and facebook.

One of my favorite examples to quote the drawbacks of web2 is what I like to call, “The pregnancy”, when a guy started to receive ads based on imminent parenthood just because his girlfriend searched up symptoms of pregnancy on the internet.

Although this incident is humorous on paper, it showcases exactly what is wrong with the internet today and how companies use our data to find out what’s happening in our most intimate, private lives.

And this is where web3 steps in, providing us our precious privacy back, but since there is no structured web3 as of now, instead of talking about web3 as a whole, we shall discuss it’s core ideologies one by one.

Core Ideas of web3

1. Decentralized

Perhaps the biggest advantage(or disadvantage) of using web3 is the lack of a central authority, hence decreasing data breach and privacy issues since data is not stored on a single centralized server but on all nodes of the network. But this can also be a backfiring gun, considering lack of a central authority means lack of rules and regulation, providing anyone with unlimited freedom.

2. Read-write-own

If web1 can be considered the read version of the internet, then surely web2 would be the read-write version, where users could interact with webpages. What web3 brings to the table is that users have complete rights over whatever they post, hence, they “own” what they put up on the internet, unlike web2, where, “what comes to the internet, stays on the internet”.

3. Trustless & Permissionless

Trustless basically means that any transaction can take place directly between two parties without the need of a central third party, hence removing the users’ need to trust in the goodwill of the centralized authority, also decreasing the extra cost of transactions levied by the third party. Similarly, permissionless refers to the fact that neither party has to take permission from the central party for transactions. This happens because the whole ecosystem is based on a blockchain and transactions can occur directly on that blockchain.

4. Modification of Identity

As we have noted time and again during the course of this blog that the violation of users’ privacy is the biggest drawback of the internet we use today, web3 provides us the ability to be completely anonymous on the web. Through the cryptographic encryption techniques used in blockchain, one can easily have one identity in the real world, while a completely different alibi on the internet, much like what we saw in the movie “Ready Player One”.

How will we see web3?

But enough of the technical clitter-clatter for the adults, I know what you, my dear readers, would all like to know is that how would web3 look from the comfort of your homes and the answer is, changes would be gradual but for the initiation at least, it would basically mean that you could shop on Amazon using Ethereum or Bitcoins or like a friend’s post on instagram completely anonymously.

Is it too soon?

Although web3 seems to be a utopia in the world of the internet, we have been here before. Several cycles of decentralization and  centralization have taken place already. The personal computer decentralized computing by providing a commodity PC architecture that anyone could build and that no one controlled. But Microsoft figured out how to recentralize the industry around a proprietary operating system. Open source software, the internet, and the World Wide Web broke the stranglehold of proprietary software with free software and open protocols, but within a few decades, Google, Amazon, and others built huge new monopolies through the use of big data.

Although the developers of this new technology seem to be firm believers of the fact that they have finally found a structural way to decentralize, I tend to take it with a pinch of salt and the jury shall be out until web3 is implemented in the real world.

Regards,
Ansh Kanotra

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