What the future look like?
Introduction to Web3, NFTs and the Metaverse.
One of the most important philosophers of all time, Aristotle once said – “Man is by nature a social animal”.
Since the beginning of society, humans have tended to live and grow together in their communities and as by nature, we are always wishing for the best for our family, friends, and relatives.
People used to live in small villages and these were strategic points where locals could trade value and information to others. But time passed and these villages evolved into urbanized cities and towns where populations grew rapidly.
In addition, these places operated as a front door for all of the people who lived nearby and who were willing to transact value and information along with their fellow citizens.
Once again, the world evolved and society started to merge globally, and this allowed for big corporations to trade around all the world. However, everyday people were left out. That is until the internet appeared in all its glory.
With advances to the world wide web, people could now also participate, and this paved the way for Web1.0, and its evolutionary predecessor Web2.0 to appear on the digital landscape.
Between 1992 and 2004, we witnessed the Web 1.0 era, and at this time most online pages were static or as the online community at the time said, “read-only” pages.
Then social networks appeared, instead of companies providing content to users, they also began to provide platforms to share user-generated content and engage in user-to-user interactions.
This was the beginning of the Web 2.0 era, spanning from 2004 to now. Habits changed and websites began to collect data from users to follow the advertising-driven revenue model. While users could create content, they didn't own it or benefit from its monetization.
With Web2.0, people were able to transact information and value, but they did so via a third party, albeit still a great enhancer of globalization. The problem with Web 2.0 is that there was an abuse of user info and privacy which then led to high intermediary costs.
And all of this then brings us to the arrival of Web3.0 (also known as Web3), with the principal aim of reversing all of these unwanted issues.
Web 3.0 can be defined as the following:
“Web 3.0 is trying to take control of the internet from centralised networks and return it to users through decentralised networks, such as blockchain technology. Web3 means users’ data will no longer be stored by those big tech companies but reside in the blockchain, ensuring data and information are safe and secure.”
This essentially means that the online paradigm has changed, with the main aim of Web3 making users owners and not products. This is achieved by using decentralization to avoid third parties, and cryptography to protect data.
By using blockchain and AI technologies as tools, Web3 allows you to transact value and information just like how we do in the physical world (Peer-to-Peer).
So far, the websites constructed under the paradigm of Web 3.0 have the following benefits:
Permission is not required, i.e. anyone on the network has permission to use a specific service. These are open-source platforms.
Censorship Resistance: An account cannot be blocked or deleted because there is not any centralized authority.
Decisions are made by network participants, which will always evolve for the benefit of the participants.
This paradigm opens the door to the existence of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).
In this new era, some websites and decentralized applications are constructed in the form of open-source projects, and with this change comes the following benefits:
A good cause creates a good initiative.
Right now, there are many Web3 projects with good principles being constructed. For example, decentralized financial applications are generally created by developers to help people use tech to effectively manage their assets and improve finances.
Freedom + Autonomy = More competitiveness.
As Web3 projects are open-source, the many developers who are eager to improve the code, have learned that being fast is not the only required skill needed.
Creativity, simplicity, and good use cases are just some of the skills that can help a developer’s code stand out from the rest and perform better.
Web2.0 vs Web3.0:
As Web 3.0 is currently driving the latest paradigm internet shift, we are constantly getting asked – “what is the difference between Web2 and Web3”?
To help you understand, here are the main distinctions between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0:
Read-Write Web
Read-Write-Own Web
Centralized
Decentralized
Sharing
Owning
Few large corporations
Multiple communities with all types of sizes
Servers for gig-economy apps are vulnerable, they could go down and affect worker income
Web3 servers can't go down – they use a decentralized network of computers or tokens in stake as their backend
As touched on, the tendency of societies has been to evolve and improve the ways in which we communicate. Web 3.0 is the latest way in which we can communicate with each other in the globalized digital world.
The privacy and data issues we saw with Web 2.0, are the driving force behind this upgrade and/or evolution. Web 3.0 is the new online paradigm, with decentralization as its driving force allowing online communities to change their habits.
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