Chris Potter-Walker
Web3 could be the future of the internet.
Allan Swart is with Alamy.
The internet is excited about a new term, but what is it? Everything you need to know is here.
What is Web3?
The idea behind Web3 is to take the world wide web as we know it and add the technology behind cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to everything.
Why would you want to do that?
The web was once seen as a place where anyone could do anything, but now it is dominated by big corporations and proprietary software. People could own their presence on the internet with the help of the scrutineers. The loss of a once possible great future for the internet is the subject of web3
What about Webs 1 and 2?
Tim Berners-Lee launched the world wide web in 1989 to allow people with technical know-how to put information online in a decentralised way. Web 2.0 was first named in a 1999 magazine article, and it was the development of easy-to-use tools that let anyone to create content online, not just experts, but at a cost of centralising into the tech giants we have today.
Web3 will allow the best of both worlds by abandoning the ".0" and a space, and will allow easy-to-use, decentralised tools.
What does it involve?
The core of Web3 are distributed applications built using the ethereum block, which pays out to users who help keep the network online.
The App Store did a great job of opening up the potential of the iPhone, according to the founder of Bodacious and a Web3 proponent. When more third-party developers start to release more dapps built on top of the speach, we need to remove the friction to create wide-ranging use cases.
Why is everyone talking about a metaverse?
At the moment, what dapps are there?
The most popular dapp at the moment is one that allows people to swap cryptocurrencies, while another is for trading NFTs. The other three games are similar to the ones on the App Store, but with a difference: you can get paid in cryptocurrencies for playing them.
I don't know how the internet will change.
Proponents say it is a bold new future that is designed to wrest control away from big tech platforms and to put power in the hands of everyday citizens: a decentralised internet. A failed attempt to buy a copy of the US Constitution was the same concept.
It sounds like a throbbing head.
Some people don't like the idea of a Web3 utopia. Ten Oever says that web3 is not solving any real problem. Sceptics think that a lot of the claims behind Web3 are better achieved without the use of the internet.
Ten Oever says that if you build a distributed architecture on a centralised infrastructure, you are not decentralising the infrastructure. He says that while web infrastructure is nominally decentralised, in practice most of the internet is hosted by a few companies, such as Amazon.
So are the sceptics correct?
The promise of Web3 has yet to be fulfilled, and the word has been used by those trying to make a quick buck. Even its boosters, like Scaman, have warned of scam and pump and dump schemes. There will always be people trying to make a living, but there are also incredibly talented people building amazing things.
There are more on these topics.
