What Is Web 3.0, And What are its Significance?

The Internet is filled with buzzwords like web3, blockchain, and crypto, but what do they mean? What is the whole hype, and why do they matter a lot? You might be wondering, what is web 3.0? Is web 3.0 a scam? Why is Web 3.0 being hyped? This article answers all your questions. 

The technology that benefits over 3 billion people every day for 80 percent of their waking hours is the web2. 

Between 1999 and 2004, Web 2.0, popularised by O’Reilly and others, shifted the world away from static desktop websites built for information consumption and provided from expensive servers to interactive experiences and user-generated content, giving birth to Uber and Airbnb, Facebook, and Instagram. The advent of Web 2.0 was powered by three main layers of innovation: mobile, social, and cloud.

We evolved from dialing the Internet a few hours a day at home on our workstations to an “always connected” condition. The web browser, mobile applications, and personal alerts were now in everyone’s pocket.

Until 2004, when Friendster, MySpace, and finally Facebook were founded, the Internet was virtually dark and anonymous. From encouraging people to post images online with particular friend groups to surrendering our homes to unknown tourists on Airbnb, and even jumping into a stranger’s automobile with Uber, these social networks enticed users into positive behavior and content development, including recommendations and referrals.

So What is This Web3?

Gavin Wood, the co-founder of Ethereum, coined the phrase Web3 to describe how centralization is not socially sustainable in the long run. Web3, also known as Web 3.0, replaces and eliminates the central authority and “gatekeepers” of Web 2.0, such as major search engines and social media platforms.

“Web3 breakthroughs will propel the internet into new worlds and enable applications never before imagined,” says Avivah Litan, Distinguished Vice President Analyst at Gartner. “However, Web 2.0 still offers scalability, customer service, and client protection benefits.” 

When it comes to web 3.0, it’s a leap forward to an open, trustless, and permissionless network.

• They’re ‘open’ in the sense that they’re made of open-source software developed by an open and accessible community of developers and performed in full view of the public.

• The network is “trustless” in the sense that it allows members to communicate publicly or privately without any requirement for a trusted third party.

• Anyone, including users and providers, can engage without the need for permission from a controlling organization.

The ability of these new open, trustless, and permissionless networks to coordinate and incentivize the long tail of work, service, data, and content providers who are the disenfranchised backdrop to many of the world’s most acute challenges, such as health, food, finance, and sustainability, is the outcome.

Web 3.0 is primarily based on three new layers of technological innovation: edge computing, decentralized data networks, and artificial intelligence.

But Why Does This Matter?

Web 3.0 will significantly extend the breadth and scope of both human and machine interactions well beyond anything we can now fathom. These interactions will be possible with a far broader range of potential counterparties, including frictionless payments, richer information flows, and secure data transfers.

Without paying a fee to an intermediary, Web 3.0 will allow us to communicate with any person or machine on the earth. From global cooperatives to decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and self-sovereign data marketplaces, this change will open up a whole new universe of previously unimagined enterprises and business structures.

• Disintermediation of industries, the elimination of rent-seeking third parties, and the direct transfer of value to consumers and suppliers in a network can all help society become more efficient.

• Through their new mesh of more adaptable peer-to-peer communication and governance ties amongst members, organizations can be intrinsically more resilient to change.

• Humans, organizations, and robots may be able to exchange more information while retaining more privacy and security.

• To future-proof entrepreneurial and investment activity, we can virtually eliminate the platform dependence problems that we see presently.

• We can own our data and digital footprints using proven digital scarcity of data and tokenized digital assets.

• Through modern cooperative ownership and management of these new decentralized intelligence systems, as well as sophisticated and dynamic economic incentives, network participants may collaborate to overcome previously intractable or ‘thinly dispersed’ difficulties.

Web 3.0 will have far-reaching ramifications that will go well beyond cryptocurrency’s initial use case.

Because of the scalability of interactions now possible with web3 and the global scope of counterparties available, it will cryptographically connect data from individuals, corporations, and machines with more efficient and effective machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence, which will result in the emergence of fundamentally new markets and business models.

The outcome is something close to a “return to the global village” — daily immersion in the human-centric, highly personalized interactions that we used to enjoy, but are now provided at the global scale of the Internet and enabling an ever-increasing range of human and machine skills specializations.

Is Web3 a Scam? Is It Worth the Hype?

No, Web3 is not a scam. It’s an internet-based technology that will change how our daily life functions in multiple ways. It opens up countless opportunities and lets you experience something that was way beyond imagination till now. 

All the hype that Web3 is receiving now is real. Technology deserves all the attention. 

Of course, there are still some concerns. Artists have noticed their work suddenly appearing in someone else’s drop, indicating that copying and thievery have grown prevalent in NFTs. Many NFT applications aren’t even decentralized completely.

So you’re just purchasing a JPEG on a web server. And significant problems with the legislation, intellectual property, copyright, and so much more will abound in 2022.