I am sure most of us by now have been wondering what is this Web3 that is the talk of the tech town for a while now. We live in an age where technology is a major building block of the world which is turning into a global village. Something that has played a major part in connecting people across nations is the Internet and, a service that operates on the internet viz. World Wide Web, WWW or the Web.
The humble beginning of Web
It all began in 1980 when Tim Berners Lee who was working at CERN in Switzerland on a project called Enquire played with hypertext. Enquire was a simple database of people working at the same place, but then Tim Berners Lee created hyperlinks on each page of the database, referencing other relevant pages within the system. This sparked the idea of creating a centralized database that contained links to other documents all over the world. In 1989, Berners-Lee wrote a proposal for "a large hypertext database with links" which did not garner much attention from the community then. With the support of his boss, Mike Sendall, he started implementing his idea, this new system was given a lot of names like The Information Mine, Information Mesh but finally settled on World Wide Web.
By the end of 1990, major components like HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and the first Web browser were developed and ready to be put to use. On August 6th, 1991 the world's first webpage was launched. A copy is of it is still available, it looked something like this.
Now let us see the different versions of the web which you all have been waiting for:
Web 1.0: The first generation of the web mainly consisted of static web pages retrieved from web servers and lasted approximately from 1991 to 2004. This was a type of read-only web where content creators were few, and almost no type of interaction was possible with the website.
Web 2.0: The term was first coined by Dale Dougherty at Tim O'Reilly and associates, which referred to a paradigm shift in how the internet is used. The main features of this version of the web are usability, interoperability, and user-generated content. Most of us have interacted with this form of the web where we consume and make content for global forums with the use of applications like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and many others.
Even though Web 2.0 has many good uses in the current form, it still has many downfalls thus leading to the birth of Web 3.0 Let us look at some major concerns with Web 2.0.
Monetization: Whenever we log in to an application, the basic procedure is to sign-up with some personal information. Now, this information is collectively stored and then used by companies to earn money, for example, it may be through personalized advertisement campaigns based on the user data collected leading to a huge ad revenue depending on the onboarded user-base.
Security and Privacy: With no data being safe and secure when being stored on centralized storage of multinational companies, the frequency of data breaches observed has grown tremendously. All the personal data is stored by companies and often tracked without user consent, thus letting them own and control the data freely.
Web 3.0 aims at solving a few of these shortcomings and building a safer and secure future for the web.
Web 3.0: This version of the web mainly focuses on decentralization and self-governance. Web3.0 is based on the new technologies with Blockchain being the front runner to enable and build upon the core concepts of decentralization, openness, and greater user utility. The applications developed on this version of the web run on a decentralized network of many peer-to-peer nodes, rather than a single server or central storage as observed in the traditional web architecture. Some features of Web 3.0 are as follows.
Decentralization: This mainly refers to storing data over a wide variety of peer-to-peer network model rather than one place, thus preventing the hoarding of data by large conglomerates. It also allows users to retain ownership control of their data, thus valuing their privacy more.
Trustless and Self-Governing: Instead of needing information or a regularized id, all you need is a completely anonymous wallet address. Any creator, contributor on the network has privileges thus creating a self-governed ecosystem.
Web 3.0 is often closely linked with cryptocurrencies and blockchain. So let us have a deep dive into the current Web 3.0 lingo to gain a better understanding and also to reduce your FOMO 😉.
Blockchain: The simplest definition of blockchain according to me is to equate it with a public ledger that keeps a permanent record of transaction data. This data is stored in blocks and each block is interlinked to the previous ones through some defined cryptographic hash.
Cryptocurrency: A cryptocurrency is a collection of binary data, stored and built on blockchain to act as a medium of exchange. It uses an online ledger in the form of blockchain to handle secure transactions. Bitcoin and Ethereum are well known by now in the world of cryptocurrencies.
Dapps: The acronym for decentralized applications which are built on blockchains, are decentralized in nature, and make use of cryptocurrencies tokens for transactions.
Along with these words, we often hear words like NFT's, DeFi, and DAO's when talking about Web 3. We shall take a deeper dive into this beautiful decentralized world of web 3.0, so stay tuned for more articles.
Thank you for reading and making it through here! I am pretty new to the space of Web 3 and will be dropping in more views as I explore and learn more about it, till then, stay safe and keep learning 😄!