Web3

The evolution of the Web is often divided into three stages: Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0. The Web has evolved significantly over the years, and today’s applications are a lot different from the early days.

Web 1.0

This was the first version of the web. Most of the participants were content consumers, and the creators were developers building websites that contained information presented simply in text or image format. It lasted from approximately 1991 to 2004.

They are basically static content instead of dynamic HTML(including actions and databases). The data and content was provided from a static file system rather than a database, and the sites didn’t have a lot of interactivity at all. This can also be regarded as read only web

Web 2.0

You can think of web2 as an interactive and social web. Most of us also are also interacting with web 2 nowadays.

You don’t have to be a developer to participate to be a creator. Many apps are built to make it easy for anyone to become a creator. If you want to create an idea and share it with the world, you can simply do using many platforms. If you want to upload a video or post and millions of people can watch, interact with, and comment on it.

Web 2 is really simple, and because of its simplicity, more and more people around the world are becoming creators. The current form of the web is really cool in many ways, but there are some down sides

Web 2.0 Cons

When a company releases a popular application, the user experience is usually very sophisticated as the application continues to grow in popularity. At first, many companies don’t care about monetization. They have a strict focus on growth and new user acquisition, but in the end they started making profits.

Investors often expect a return on investment and push the companies onto advertising or selling personal data instead of choosing an organic sustainable growth.

Data breaches occur often in Web2 applications. You also have no control over the data or how the data is stored. In fact, enterprises often track and store user data without the consent of the user and are managed by the enterprise responsible platforms.

On the other hand, users living in countries that have to worry about the negative effects of freedom of speeches are also at risk. Governments and other authorities often shut down servers or freeze bank accounts if they believe that a person has expressed an opinion that is going against them.

Web 3.0

Web3 improves the Internet as we know it today and has several other benefits. Self-control, trustable, no permission, decentralized, robust, etc. With web3, developers don’t create and deploy applications that run on a single server or store data in a single database.

Web3 applications run on blockchains, distributed networks of many peer-to-peer nodes (servers), or a combination of both. These applications are often referred to as Dapps (Decentralized Applications).

You will find that cryptocurrencies are usually part of a conversation on web3. Cryptocurrencies play an important role in these protocols.

People can participate in the protocol and earn a living in different ways, both technically and non-technically. Consumers of the service often pay to use the protocol. For example, you would pay a cloud provider like AWS now for a single dedicated node. But with web3, money is sent directly to the participants in the network. In these decentralization scenarios (there are other forms of decentralization as well), many unnecessary and inefficient intermediaries are no longer needed.

Let’s look at another example of organizational structure. There are projects that are becoming more popular and anyone can participate in or invest in these projects. The company announces the launch of x tokens, offering 10% to the first builder, selling 10% to the public, and booking the rest for future payments of contributors and project fundings.

Stakeholders can use the tokens to vote for future changes in the project, and those who help build the project can make money by selling some of the holdings(tokens) after the tokens are released.

People who believe in the project can buy and hold ownership and those who think the project is going in the wrong direction can lead this by selling their stock.

There are still many stuffs if we are talking about web3 but let me stop here for now. If I have any chance, I will talk about more in future.

Yuuma