Is Web 3.0 coming?
One of the newsletters which I subscribe to is from CB Insights, a market analytics company. In this week’s issue, there was mention of an upcoming version of the Internet: the Web3.
They know how to get my attention.
From the newsletter, I've learned how some are thinking of a new version of the Internet:
Web 1.0 was about consuming content (think the internet of the ‘90s and early 2000s)
Web 2.0 (today’s internet) features consumer-created content centralized in platforms like Facebook and Google
Web3 (or Web 3.0) is where the internet gets decentralized
It’s a big idea. Until it collides with reality,
Where we have the first collision is the fact that Web 3.0 has been proposed before. That was the working name for the Semantic Web. But that's not my main point.
Rather than arguing about versions, I was wondering what the term “Decentralized Internet” means. I thought that the Internet was already decentralized. No further work is required for it to be so.
Upon reading further, I learned that to these new visionaries, decentralization meant '... based on public blockchains.'
'It means that big tech companies are no longer the main guardians of the web’s data, but rather blockchain tech enables data to be controlled and hosted collectively by users.'
And therefore 'In other words, apps built on the blockchain — like a social network, marketplace, or search engine — will enable users to participate, transact, and create without the need for an intermediary as in Web 2.0.'
If wishes were fishes I wouldn't have to work and I could eat sushi all day.
Why is this not going to work as hoped? Security, stability, reliability, scalability and trust. It’s going to fall short on most of those counts.
Let's take Bitcoin as an example. There was a paper published in October, 2008 describing Bitcoin as A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. First adopters started using it in January 2009, using their machines to begin to mine the first Bitcoins. The usage at first was quite limited (2010, Laszlo Hanyecz bought two Papa John's pizzas for 10,000 BTC) until black market website SilkRoad declared Bitcoin as its preferred method of payment in 2011.
That is one of the reasons why Bitcoin is frequently associated with illegal activities.
(If interested, you can read here more about the history of Bitcoin)
Fast forward to 2021 and Bitcoin is traded on exchanges like FTX, Gemini, Coinbase and many others in volumes of hundreds of millions of USD a day.
Bitcoin mining is now big business, where companies like Riot Blockchain(NASDAQ:RIOT), Marathon Patent Group (NASDAQ:MARA), Canaan(NASDAQ:CAN), HIVE Blockchain Technologies (OTC:HVBTF) are trading on regular stock exchanges. Meanwhile, major investment firms are facilitating the purchase of Bitcoin for their clients using platforms like AmiPRO.
From worthless digits, Bitcoin went to being worth a few dollars and now it is trading at over $50,000. Some predict that a single Bitcoin is going to be worth over $100,000.
The point of all this?
So many things start as an idea, taken up by a few enthusiasts with an idealistic mission about how things will change. They believe that there will be no control by big companies or governments and life will be beautiful.
Perhaps Web 3.0 will enable users to participate, transact, and create without the need for an intermediary as in Web 2.0. It could be like in the early days of the Internet, where people like myself bought their first dotcom addresses, exploring a new sense of what was possible. Web 3.0 will be dominated by big companies which don't exist today - though we cannot yet know the wonderful things they will create. And you can bet that, where there is any form of commerce, governments will take their cut and try to regulate it.
You might not like how Web 3.0 turns out in the end. You might be against that. That's why the next generation will create Web 4.0, which will fix the broken Web 3.0. The process will bring more ideas and innovation to make our lives better. And that's the recurrent pattern.