What is ‘Web3’? Gavin Wood who invented the word gives his vision

It uses metadata and artificial intelligence to provide meanings (semantics) to user-generated data. Crypto companies counter that tokens should be treated as a new kind of asset, not covered by existing securities laws. And if U.S. web3 start-ups are required to treat their tokens as securities, many of them may have to shut down, change their products or move to a different country. “Web3 will house our financial institutions, social interactions, personal identities and much, much more in the not-so-distant future,” Lior Messika, a crypto investor, told TechCrunch recently. Of course, this is a highly idealistic version of web3, sketched mostly by people who have a financial stake in making it happen.

He says that content on centralized platforms is siloed from each other, which stifles the web. „[Centralized platforms] use the internet, but they’re not the web. The web is the open ecosystem.” Not only is it a way to manage your data, but web3 is a way to redistribute ownership of the internet. „The whole point of web3 is getting ownership and decision-making away from a small group of people, into the hands of the community. It’s very democratic,” says Josh Neuroth, head of product at Ankr, a web3 infrastructure company.

Will it be the end of tech giants?

Learn more about Consensus 2024, CoinDesk’s longest-running and most influential event that brings together all sides of crypto, blockchain and Web3. Head to consensus.coindesk.com to register and buy your pass now. Andreessen Horowitz is also predicting voters may favor pro-crypto candidates. https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ “Web3 has emerged as a major political force,” it said last month, based on one survey it paid for. Remember those tokens we’re all reputedly going to have with web3? Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz blocked Dorsey on Twitter, causing a mini soap opera in the tech world.

It’s the belief that something will happen, that the world will work in a certain way, without any real evidence or rational arguments as to why it will do that. So we want less of that, and we want more truth—which what I really mean is a greater reason to believe that our expectations will be met. And especially when they work closely with the industry, oftentimes there’s a bit of a revolving door relationship between the industry and the regulator. And that works reasonably well, because it’s difficult and very time-consuming and expensive to move between towns.

AI and data: Honing hyper-personalization to build the bank of the future

Web3 is still largely theoretical and has a pretty steep learning curve. Currently, anyone who wants in has to educate themselves on blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies. That’s a step not everyone wants to take just to use another version of what they already have, especially if they can use apps like private browsers to get around privacy concerns. According to technologist Matthew Ball, Web3 refers to decentralized databases and systems architecture, whereas the metaverse is a new paradigm of computing and networking.

Since the internet we have now is already so bad at controlling these issues, it’s hard to say if Web3 would be better or worse. For a visual breakdown on the concepts behind Web3 and the history of the internet, check out this video from crypto education YouTube channel Whiteboard Crypto (embedded above). The first version of the internet that was publicly available to use, the World Wide Web, is referred to as Web 1.0. Dating back to the early 90s, it was largely made up of static web pages connected by hyperlinks. Stephenson also said that there will be user-friendly onboarding for the Web3 users, as it has been too intimidating and confusing in the past. He said that Avalanche has done some much with its best-of-breed engineering platform.

Centralized infrastructure

Web3 could change how information is managed, how the internet is monetized, and even, maybe, how web-based corporations function. Mintable is an NFTs-as-a-service provider built for simplicity, security, and trust by a team of experienced leaders, backed by international investors. Polygon Labs, for instance, has joined forces with Google Cloud to make it easier for developers to build, launch, and grow Web3 products and decentralized apps (dApps) on top of the core Polygon protocols. One of the first steps will be to bring Blockchain Node Engine, a fully managed node hosting service, to the Polygon ecosystem, helping to reduce many of the time-intensive and costly overheads that often slow developers down. In addition, Google Cloud will serve as a validator on the Polygon Proof of Stake (PoS) network, contributing to its security, governance, and decentralization. Beyond accessing the power of cloud infrastructure, the cloud offers many other opportunities to help developers speed up the delivery of software and data.

Despite this, the technology now exists to restructure the internet in a way that benefits users rather than companies. Web3 has the potential to change the nature of the internet from corporate-owned networks to controlled by users while maintaining the Web2 functionalities people love today. Users can govern these blockchain-based networks through cryptocurrency tokens. As the network grows, value can accrue to the community through the rising price of tokens. Web3 is an umbrella term for technologies like blockchain that decentralize data ownership and control on the internet. Most internet applications are controlled by centralized entities that determine how they save and use end-user data.

Is this really the future?

Web2 is a name for the current state of the internet, with which users can now interact with web pages. The internet no longer just displays information, but it can change based on a reader’s preferences and users vr technology development can upload content onto the websites of others. Web2 transformed the internet to a read/write model from the initial read only. In the future, your data will be yours and you can use it to create a better life.

Traditionally, you would create an account for every platform you use. For example, you might have a Twitter account, a YouTube account, and a Reddit account. You can use social sign-ins in some cases, but this presents a familiar problem—censorship. In a single click, these platforms can lock you out of your entire online life. Even worse, many platforms require you to trust them with personally identifiable information to create an account. At a basic level, the idea behind Web3 is to take the world wide web as we know it and add blockchains – the technology behind cryptocurrencies like bitcoin – to everything.

People are leaving Big Tech for this?

Since then it’s become a catch-all term for anything that has to do with the next generation of the internet being a decentralized digital infrastructure. Maybe it was a faint buzz about a new technology that would change everything. Perhaps you felt a tingle of FOMO as the folks who got in early suddenly amassed a small fortune — even if it wasn’t clear what the “money” could legitimately be spent on (really expensive pizza?). Maybe you just wondered whether your company should be working on a crypto strategy in case it did take off in your industry, even if you didn’t really care one way about it or the other. A pre-requisite of the test transaction was that the Ethereum wallets of both the buyer and seller, as well as the NFT marketplace smart contract, were ‘allow-listed’ within the platform. With all other transfers of the wrapped pilot CBDC blocked, it successfully demonstrated the platform’s ability to implement controls – even on public blockchains.

• Governments will often shut down servers or seize bank accounts if they believe a person is voicing an opinion that goes against their propaganda.
• He echoed the notion that game developers have the skills to build the metaverse.
• Axie Infinity has attracted millions of players, including a number of people in the Philippines who make a full-time living from playing the game.
• In fact, companies often track and save user data without their users’ consent.
• The web was once seen as a utopia in which anyone could do anything, but proponents of Web3 say it is now dominated by big corporations and proprietary algorithms.

Someone comes up with an idea, but in order to start building they need money in order to support themselves. Often the constraints of taking on things like venture capital negatively affect the life cycle, and eventually the user experience, of many applications that we use today. Others don’t like many of the current proposals for web3 due to the fact that they are built on blockchain, which can sometimes be very energy-intensive, contributing to carbon emissions and climate change. The Bitcoin blockchain, for example, is estimated to consume around the same amount of energy as Finland. Other blockchains – such as those that are built on proof-of-stake algorithms rather than proof-of-work, are not as energy-intensive.