As seen on Forbes Technology Council.
Web 3.0, comprising AI-driven services, decentralized data architectures and edge computing, is the next big trend. AI determines what you’re looking for and puts additional ideas in front of you. Decentralized data architectures reshape peer-to-peer transactions. Edge computing, along with the rise of 5G, accelerates user connections. As these three come together, the next industrial revolution will be upon us.
The Internet is evolving. Web 1 was a start. Static websites. Few big companies are creating content. The usage context is utility. Boom! Computers are now more affordable. More households have access to the Internet. Connection is much faster. Platforms have evolved, allowing people to create their own content. Suddenly, there are Wikipedia, social networks, and the whole world of bloggers, vloggers, streamers, and influencers. The amount of information being posted every minute is rising every second. This is Web 2 — the internet of creators. And it’s just too much already. So, Web 3 is coming.
There are several aspects that define Web 3, and each of them is so important it deserves to be a separate topic. Let me highlight a few that I find most interesting.
Semantic web
The amount of content on the Internet today is overwhelming. This creates a lot of trouble. Finding the right answer becoming harder and harder. Fake news is indistinguishable from the real ones. Every topic rises so many polarised opinions, that it’s almost impossible to land your mind on something. Targeting technologies are amplifying this separation between different groups. Web 3 is supposed to solve this, with a different approach to the back-end, AI, and deeper connection across content on the semantic level.
Digital ownership
So, we are in the era of content creators. There are a lot of people who are living in the online world already, with the content being their main and only source of income. The Internet still doesn’t follow all the rules of the real world. The biggest gap here is the ownership. You can create a popular YouTube video or come up with a new world-favorite meme, but do you own them? In a way, but not exactly as this is intended to be. It’s quite hard to move a person out of his house and destroy the building. It’s super easy for some platforms to ban the video or just close the whole account. Web 3 will address this. You’ve probably heard of NFT already. That’s just the start.
Decentralization
All this is impossible without one fundamental shift. Many experts name decentralization as the primary criteria of the new formation. Today the Internet is run by Big Tech — a few companies (e.g. Facebook, Google, etc.) owning most of the traffic and content. In opposite, Web 3 will be owned by people. Three concepts that are being discussed the most:
- Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) seek to enable many people to have equal ownership and governance in an organization.
- Decentralized finance (DeFi) is another key concept, in which users exchange currency without bank or government involvement.
- Self-sovereign identity allows users to identify themselves without relying on a centralized authentication system like OAuth.
Immersive experiences
Web 3 is often referenced as 3D web, but I would argue here. Yes, we are craving more immersive experiences. Innovations in AR and VR spaces are breaking the wall between us and the magical virtual world. Still, Web 3 and the metaverse are different trends in my perceptions, where the first one is a prerequisite to the second. The easiest way to think about is to perceive Web 3 as a concept and set of rules, while the Metaverse is one of the forms of their implementation.