What is Web3, you ask? Well, in this article we go over some good and bad things around the Web3 world and it should help answer a few of your questions.
The World Wide Web's dependable, robust infrastructure was made possible by centralization, which also assisted in bringing billions of people online. At the same time, a small group of centralized organizations control a sizable portion of the World Wide Web and make unilateral decisions over what should and shouldn't be permitted.
The solution to this problem is Web3. The Web3, which supports decentralization and is being produced, operated, and owned by its users, is not a Web that is monopolized by big tech firms. Web3 gives people the ability to make decisions rather than companies and really puts the power back in peoples hands
Gavin Wood, a co-founder of Ethereum, came up with the concept of "Web 3.0" immediately after Ethereum launched in 2014. Gavin articulated a solution to a concern shared by many early cryptocurrency adopters.
The Web demanded too much trust
- Gavin Wood
In other words, the majority of the Web that people currently know and use depends on their faith in a select group of private firms to behave in the public's best interests.
The phrase "Web3" has come to represent the idea of a new and improved internet. In essence, Web3 leverages blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs to return ownership and authority to the consumers. Web1 was read-only, followed by Web2 which is read-write and Web3 which are read-write and own.
Although it's difficult to give a precise explanation of what Web3 is, a few fundamental ideas serve as its guiding principles.
Although Web3's key features aren't isolated and don't fall neatly into any particular category, we've attempted to categorize them for clarity's sake.
Web3 offers you control of your digital assets. Let's take the scenario of playing a web2 game. An in-game item that you buy is linked to your account immediately. You will lose these things if the game's developers terminate your account. Or you lose the value of the in-game stuff you purchased if you quit playing the game.
Direct ownership is possible with Web3 thanks to non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Nobody, not even the designers of the game, has the authority to revoke your ownership. Additionally, you may sell or trade your in-game possessions on open marketplaces to recuperate their worth if you decide to stop playing.
In addition to owning your data in Web3, you can also use tokens that function like stock to collectively own the platform. DAOs enable decentralized platform ownership coordination and future platform decision-making.
Technically speaking, DAOs are predetermined smart contracts that automate decentralized decision-making over a resource pool (tokens). Users who own tokens can vote on how resources are allocated, and the code executes the results of the vote automatically.
However, a lot of Web3 communities get mis-labeled as DAOs due to a like minded group of people getting together, but that's not exactly what a DAO is. Different levels of decentralization and coding-based automation exist in each of these groups. A community is a group of people with similar interestes and a DAO is the same thing but you have to buy into it or perform tasks/actions and then buy into it.
Because Web2's payment infrastructure is dependent on banks and payment processors, it does not accept payments from those without bank accounts or from those who happen to reside outside of their country of residence. Web3 eliminates the need for a reliable middleman by using tokens like ETH to transmit money straight from the browser. This is also where your digital wallet comes into play! You can purchase ETH, BTC, STX, MATIC, etc. and store it within your digital wallet. You can then use those specific funds to purchase things online or within a game that you might be playing.
Web3 has many advantages, but there are still several restrictions that the ecosystem has to overcome if it is to grow, and this is simply because it's so new that there are a lot of things that still need to be built before everything can flow together seamlessly.
Important Features of Web3, such as purchases with Ethereum, are currently freely used by anybody. However, many people still find the relative cost of transactions to be excessive because of high gas fees for some chains like ETH. Due to high transaction costs, Web3 is less likely to be used in developing countries with lower levels of wealth. These issues are being resolved on Ethereum via layer 2 scaling techniques and network updates. The technology is prepared, but in order to make Web3 widely accessible, layer 2 adoption must increase.
Web3 presently has a too-high of a technical entrance hurdle. Users need to be able to navigate confusing user interfaces, comprehend security issues, and understand sophisticated technical documents. This is being addressed by wallet providers in particular, although further development is required before Web3 is widely embraced.
In contrast to Web2.0, Web3 presents new paradigms that call for acquiring new mental models. A similar push for education took place in the late 1990s as Web1.0 gained popularity. Proponents of the internet employed a variety of instructional strategies to teach the public, ranging from straightforward metaphors (the information highway, browsers, and web surfing) to television broadcasts. Web3 is not challenging, but it is unique, and sometimes takes a different thought process to really understand how things flow. Its success depends on educational programs that teach Web2 users of these Web3 principles.
Ethereum.org is taking great steps to help educate people on these things, but we're still in the wild west of Web3, so it will likely take some time.
The Web3 environment is still developing and changing fast. Because of this, it presently relies on centralized infrastructure (GitHub, Twitter, Discord, etc.). Many Web3 businesses are scrambling to close these gaps, but creating dependable infrastructure takes time.
