What is Web3 and how the world is transitioning daily

The talk of the so-called Web3 is everywhere. But what is Web3 after all, and how is it going to change the world we live in? How many Webs have we known and why should people understand the changes that are coming? Stay tuned and know all about it.

What is Web3?

Also known as Web 3.0, the promising Web3 is an idea for a decentralized internet built with blockchain technology. It promises a new iteration of the World Wide Web, incorporating token-based economics.

But to better understand Web3 and why it is revolutionary, you first need to know what came before that. And yes, that means learning about Web2 and Web1.

What came before Web3

The beginning: Web 1.0

At the beginning of the connected world we know today, the internet was much simpler. It was the early 90s, and we finally had new and revolutionary technology, the World Wide Web. This is what we call Web 1.0. And it was nothing less than static web pages connected by hyperlinks.

In this first stage of the evolution of the World Wide Web, the vast majority of people consumed online content but did not create it. It was a content delivery network (CDN) with static pages where even advertisements were banned.

Evolving: Web 2.0

Then the World Wide Web evolved into Web 2.0. This new age of the internet is known as the Participative Web, and it coincided with a complete shift in the way people interacted and created content online.

Websites had become increasingly interactive and had left behind the static features of old websites. It was on Web2 that people were able to use the World Wide Web to communicate easily and create communities. Here people have also taken on the role of content creators on social networks, forums, blogs, and video sharing platforms.

As people took a more active role in what they consumed and made to consume online, the internet played an increasing role among people. Opinions, politics, economics, social problems, became widely discussed online, and it didn’t take long for institutions to take advantage of it. Marketing and commerce had grown exponentially in the digital world, and bots and hackers had often shaped public opinion.

Also, although users consumed and produced content eagerly, they didn’t own anything. Big internet companies became the most powerful in the world with services that for the average user were free. And why? Because the users were what brought profit. Even the data of their navigability were traded by some of the biggest names in the market — whether they knew it or not.

A new breakthrough: Web 3.0

Now we understand a bit better the road we took to get here. The world went through a pandemic, and Blockchain technology and decentralization were repeatedly a topic of conversation. But how is this new Web3 going to change the way things work?

Precisely because Web2 sees the problems arising from the centralization of power in a few large companies — which control not only the markets but also the people — Web3 is based on a decentralized ecosystem on a blockchain.

In what’s also called the Semantic Web, platforms and apps can be created without being manipulated or controlled by a central gatekeeper. Instead, it is the users who own them, can develop the services, and can take advantage of their profits in a much more just and even democratic way.

Gavin Wood, the co-founder of the Ethereum network who coined the term Web3 in 2014 explains in an interview with Wired:

“Web3 is actually much more of a larger sociopolitical movement that is moving away from arbitrary authorities into a much more rationally based liberal model. And this is the only way I can see of safeguarding the liberal world, the life that we have come to enjoy over the last 70 years. It’s the only way that we can actually keep it going 70 more years into the future. And at the moment, I think we are very much flirting with quite a different direction.”

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations in the new Web3

DAOs, also known as Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, are the backbone of this new era of the World Wide Web and our society. They are tokenized, that is, they have a token-based economy, revolutionizing organizational structures.

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations offer real and liquid ownership to stakeholders while aligning incentives equally. So they are, basically speaking, internet communities with a shared bank account.

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This article was originally published on the Lady Nakamoto blog on March 25, 2022.