Web 3.0

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The World Wide Web now has billions of users thanks to the strong, reliable infrastructure that centralization has built. At the same time, a small group of centralized organizations control a sizable portion of the World Wide Web, making decisions on what should be permitted and what should not.

This conundrum has a solution in Web3. Web3 emphasizes decentralization and is created, run, and owned by its users rather than a Web dominated by major technological firms. Instead of placing power in the hands of businesses, Web3 gives people that authority. Let's examine how we arrived at this point.

The Early Web

The majority of people believe that the Web was created and has only been a part of modern life since that time. But the Web that most of us use now is far different from what was first intended. Breaking the brief history of the Web into two broad time periods — Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 — will help you comprehend this better.

Web 1.0: Read-Only (1990–2004)

Tim Berners-Lee was hard at work creating the protocols for the World Wide Web in 1989 at CERN in Geneva. His notion was to develop open, decentralized protocols that permitted the exchange of knowledge from any location on Earth.

From around 1990 until 2004, Berners-Lee's invention, commonly referred to as "Web 1.0," underwent its first development. Web 1.0, also known as the read-only web, was mostly made up of static websites controlled by businesses. There was almost no user involvement, and people hardly ever created content.

Web 2.0: Read-Write (2004–now)

Social media platforms' introduction in 2004 marked the start of the Web 2.0 era. The web developed into a read-write medium rather than a read-only one. Instead of offering consumers material, businesses started to offer platforms where users could exchange user-generated content and communicate with one another. As more individuals went online, a small number of leading businesses started to hold a disproportionate percentage of the traffic and value produced on the internet. The advertising-based business model was also created by Web 2.0 — users could generate material, but they didn't own it or get paid when it was made.

Web 3.0

Gavin Wood, a co-founder of Ethereum, came up with the concept of "Web 3.0" immediately after Ethereum launched in 2014. Gavin articulated a solution to a concern shared by many early cryptocurrency adopters: the Web demanded too much trust. The majority of the Web that people currently use depends on their faith in a select group of private firms to behave in the public's best interests.

How does Web 3.0 work?

The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) standard governs the design and delivery of web pages with Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. With Web 3.0, HTML will still be a core layer, but how it relates to data sources and where those sources are located may change.

In the Web 2.0 age, most websites and almost all apps rely on a centralized database. With Web 3.0, apps and services employ a decentralized blockchain instead. The fundamental notion behind blockchain is a type of distributed consensus rather than an arbitrary central authority.

In the blockchain and Web 3.0 communities, the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is an emerging form of governance, offering self-governance in an effort to move away from centralized control over platform operations.

Web 3.0 also functions fundamentally with cryptocurrencies, all constructed on top of blockchain technology, enabling a decentralized form of payment. The web's tremendous expansion has created a need for additional internet addresses, which IPv6 offers (Web 1.0 and 2.0 extensively used IPv4).

Some examples of Web 3.0 applications:

• Bitcoin — The original cryptocurrency, around for more than ten years; the protocol itself is decentralized.
• Diaspora — Non-profit, decentralized social network.
• Steemit — Blockchain-based blogging and social platform.
• Augur — Decentralised exchange trading market.
• OpenSea — A marketplace for buying and selling NFTs, built on Ethereum.
• Sapien — Another decentralized social network, built on Ethereum.
• Uniswap — Decentralized cryptocurrency exchange.
• Everledger — Blockchain-based supply chain, provenance, and authenticity platform.