My daughter asked me recently that you have written a series of articles about virtual human, metauniverse, digital collections (NFT), digital currency and so on this year. Why don't you write another article about Web3.0? This is the most popular word in America recently. She has been listening to others talking about Web3.0. It seems that she knows this, but after careful consideration, she doesn't seem to know what it is.
So I asked her, if I write an article with the theme of Web3.0, what do you want to know from my article? She sent me the following five questions:
Question 1: What is the biggest change of Web3.0 compared with Web1.0 and Web2.0?
Question 2: Why did Web3.0 rise at this time point? Is its rise related to the COVID-19 epidemic?
Question 3: Is there any practical application of Web3.0?
Question 4: What are the drawbacks of Web3.0?
Question 5: What would you say if there was Web4.0 in the future?
I wonder if you have similar questions? But these five questions of my daughter really forced me to think about them and put my scattered understanding of Web3.0 into the following words, in order to teach readers of the surging technology column "The future is foreseeable".
Question 1 In fact, it is to answer what Web3.0 is, which is the starting point for quickly understanding a concept. At the same time, we should also review the development process from Web1.0 to Web3.0, that is, the past and present of Web3.0.
Since the emergence of the Internet in 1989, the development of the Internet has gone through the Web1.0 stage characterized by "computer+web page", the Web2.0 stage characterized by "mobile phone+platform application", and now it has entered the Web3.0 stage characterized by "diversified entrances+decentralization".
stay Web1.0 At this stage, there are only a few professional content creators on the Internet, and most users are content consumers. In the United States, the representative companies in the Web 1.0 phase are Netscape, Yahoo, AOL, etc; In China, it is the portal Web represented by Sina, Netease and Sohu. These comprehensive websites dominate creation, integrate information and provide services to users, while users can only passively browse text, pictures and a small number of videos.
here we are Web2.0 At the stage, the network added a writable feature on the basis of read-only, that is, users can create content independently. The representative companies in the United States at this stage are Internet platform companies such as FAGMA (Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon); The typical applications in China are service intermediary platforms represented by Taobao, Meituan and Didi, and content social platforms represented by WeChat, Weibo and Tiaoyin. Users are both consumers enjoying services and workers providing services (the so-called UGC - user production content).
And here we are Web3.0 The stage is not only read+write, but also adds a concept of ownership. It emphasizes that users have autonomy over identity (ID), content and data. For this reason, Web3.0 is a new generation of Internet with the concept of de trust, de intermediation and digital asset, the underlying technology of blockchain, and the main economic form of digital production and consumption. At this stage, it is particularly emphasized that users can really own their own content and network data assets (data no longer belongs to a few platforms), realize the content and get corresponding remuneration.
To summarize:
Web1.0 It is the information Internet (static Internet), and what you see is what you get (read-only).
Web2.0 It is the platform Internet (mobile Internet), and what you recommend is what you get (read+write).
Web3.0 It is the Internet of Value (decentralized Internet), and what you build is what you get (read+write+ownership).
After answering question 1, you can go on to answer Question 2 This is actually strongly related to question 1. When we understand the concept of Web3.0, it is not difficult to understand why it appeared and why it rose at this time.
The emergence of a new concept and new thing is mostly caused by the dilemma brought by the development of this industry. When the dragon slayer turns into a vicious dragon, another dragon slayer will be born. The large-scale Internet platform in the Web2.0 era has intensified its monopoly by virtue of its technology and channel advantages, forming a "winner takes all" situation. It is a common tactic of Internet platform companies in the Web 2.0 stage to burn money to help them seize the market and defeat their rivals to gain monopoly. The final result is that a large amount of data and business activities are concentrated on a small number of closed platforms of technology giants, and problems such as unbalanced benefit distribution, platform oligopoly, personal privacy leakage, algorithm hegemony and so on also arise.
In the book Cathedral and Market, the author Eric S. Raymond (the initiator of the software open source movement) divided software development into cathedral model and market model. The cathedral model is a top-down closed source business model in the Web 2.0 phase. It is developed by a commercialized centralized team. Users need to fully trust the platform to manage funds and execute services. The market model is a distributed open source development paradigm in the Web3.0 phase. Users no longer trust people, but trust the technology itself.
As for the relationship between Web3.0 and COVID-19, which my daughter is concerned about, I personally think there is no necessary or causal link, but it happens to occur at the same time and has some relevance. After all, Web3.0 will promote the development of the digital economy and provide the necessary digital infrastructure for people's online life, which is very necessary in the post epidemic era. Especially when people's rights to work, live and play offline are affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, Web3.0 has found an opportunity window for users to enjoy the same experience online and offline. Personally, I think the epidemic has promoted the development from physical form to digital virtual form, from digital migration to digital original development, and is also promoting the rise of Web3.0 in a disguised form.
Question 3 In fact, it is also my concern. To make a thousand comments, Web 3.0 can't just be a big pie. As mentioned earlier, if Web3.0 is a user oriented new network that returns data rights to users, decentralizes, co creates value, and distributes according to contributions, the first step should be to let users understand what kind of network this is, and let users know that the simplest way is to have a super application.
It's like answering Question 1 When I said that Web1.0 is Sina, Sohu, NetEase, etc; Web2.0 is WeChat, Today's Headlines, Tiao Yin and so on. You can understand it when you hear it, because you have more or less visited these pages and used these applications.
In some forums where I discussed Web3.0, I saw many people posting a paper titled "Decentralized Society: Finding the Soul of Web3.0". It is said that this is an epoch-making paper comparable to "Bitcoin: A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System" (the author is Nakamoto Nakamoto, the father of Bitcoin), which will lead mankind to open the big sailing world of virtual reality integration. To tell the truth, I don't know what to say just by reading the summary of the paper, let alone reading the original text.
Let me take a short excerpt here to see if readers of surging technology can understand the profound meaning:
The paper expounds that SBTs represent the commitment, certificate and attachment of "soul". They can code the trust network of the real economy to build source certification and reputation, create a new market with decomposable and shared rights and permissions, and then Establish DAO to form a decentralized society based on rich and diversified ecosystems.
To tell the truth, I know every word of the above "imperceptible" summary of the paper, but when they are put together, I really don't know what they are talking about. This is also where some people criticize Web3.0. In December 2021, Elon Musk published a tweet stating that "Web 3.0 does not really exist at this stage, it is more like a marketing term". Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter, also criticized that "Web 3.0 is just a conceptual tool for venture capital institutions to make money".
Therefore, if Web3.0 is only propaganda oriented, not product oriented; It is very difficult to be an investor oriented, rather than user oriented, future of mankind, and it will only become a short-lived technological concept.
To develop Web3.0, we must say goodbye to the stock thinking of Web1.0 and Web2.0. Just as the first two stages gave birth to online shopping, mobile payment, bike sharing, WeChat and other applications, Web3.0 must have a large number of new applications driven by incremental thinking that have a wider scope of application and higher frequency of use. However, we have not seen many of these applications at present.
Here, I want to introduce a DeFi (Decentralized Finance) application that I can understand. Its English name is Pool Together, and its Chinese name can be translated as "decentralized loss free lottery". Before we bought lottery tickets, there were fewer winners and more losers. PoolTogether claims to be a lottery game without losers. If the participants win the prize, they can get a higher multiple of the bonus; If you fail to win the lottery, you can return all the funds invested by the participants after the draw.
I went to see the website of this application, and its promotion is just three sentences:
1. Save more to get a higher chance of winning the lottery;
2. Draw prizes every day;
3. Even if you don't win the lottery, you can keep all your money!
You must ask: where does the winner's bonus come from when everyone doesn't lose money? This is indeed the first question in Q&A on the Pool Together website: Where does the price money come from? The answer is simple: all the funds bet will earn interest in another DeFi lending application during the lottery, and the bonus will be drawn from this interest. During the whole process, the platform did not draw any commission.
The reason why I introduce this application is that I think its significance lies in:
1. Simple enough, It can be seen clearly at a glance, and the difference between it and illegal fund-raising can also be distinguished: no middlemen earn price differences, no illegal appropriation, and the whole process of smart contract execution.
2. Have gimmicks, We are willing to try to break through our traditional understanding of lottery.
After talking about what Web3.0 is, why it appears at this time (Why, When), and what applications it has (How), you should answer Question 4 Has. I can understand my daughter's subtext. In the first three questions, you will definitely say the good aspects of this emerging thing. Then you should also tell me what are the shortcomings of Web3.0? It can't have only advantages and no disadvantages.
On March 12, 1989, Sir Tim Berners Lee proposed the concept of the World Wide Web. Now the address of every website begins with WWW. For this reason, Tim is called the "father of the Internet". He once published an open letter on his website, suggesting that the 30-year-old Internet needs to rediscover its advantages and further mature. In his view, "If we give up building a better Internet now, the Internet will not fail us in the future, but we will fail the Internet. This is our journey from Internet adolescence to a more mature, responsible and inclusive future."
In my opinion, the decentralized transaction processing mode of Web3.0 is what Tim said about how to make the Internet more responsible and inclusive. Its original intention is to "improve science and technology". It is an attempt to solve the problem of platform monopoly and unbalanced benefit distribution, a solution to effectively avoid the chaos of "information cocoon room", "one out of two", "algorithm discrimination", "big data killing", and a force to curb the continued expansion of "network imperialism" formed by data monopoly. However, all these things seem "too good to be true".
This may be its biggest disadvantage. The design is perfect, but the implementation is very difficult. For example, the "decentralized" infrastructure required by Web3.0 challenges the existing infrastructure provision methods. Technology companies have proposed the so-called "Blockchain as a Service" (BaaS for short) scheme, which can constitute the infrastructure of Web 3.0. If this can really be achieved (not to mention the difficulty of implementation), it will just form a new center. In depth, the monopoly power of Web2.0 comes from data, and the monopoly power of Web3.0 will come from computing power. In fact, the two are the same.
Question 5 It can be said that it is the most difficult or easiest to answer. The most difficult thing is that through the explanation of the first four questions, most people, including myself, still see Web3.0 in a fog, and there is no one authoritative one. The easiest answer is that Web4.0 is pure guesswork. There is no standard answer for analyzing the growth paradigm of science and technology and judging the development trend of the Internet.
First of all, Web4.0 will not appear for a long time to come. Even if it appears, it is a coexistence relationship with Web3.0, rather than a substitution relationship. Just like the current Web1.0, Web2.0 still exists in parallel with Web3.0.
Secondly, although Web3.0 and the metauniverse are not the same thing, nor are they necessarily connected, they appear in this era at the same time, so I think the two are likely to come out hand in hand and help each other. The core technologies needed for the development of Web3.0 include blockchain, digital assets, cryptocurrency, NFT, smart contract, distributed storage, privacy computing, distributed autonomous organizations (DAOs), decentralized finance (Defi), user created content applications (UGC Dapps), etc. (limited to space, I will look forward to the "future" of how these technologies will develop in the future The construction of decentralized identity and credit system is highly consistent with the metauniverse, which can help build its ecosystem on the decentralized platform and optimize the sharing of user experience and co creation value.
Web3.0 does not need 3D, real-time rendering, low latency, synchronous experience, holographic projection, motion sensors, spatial computing, digital twins and other core technologies required by the metauniverse. However, if companies on the Web3.0 track introduce these technologies, they can also realize the integration of the physical world and the digital twin world of companies, communities, cities, countries and even the world from another perspective. What I want to express is that all roads lead to Rome, Web3.0 and the metauniverse, or any other technical route, can lead to the future.
Third, how to judge whether human beings have entered the era of Web 4.0 is a criterion, perhaps the allocation of time. When people and property are highly digitized, people will spend more time in the digital world. At present, we are only gradually moving things from the real world to the digital world to achieve the integration of reality and reality. If one day, we create the digital world, connect with the real world, and recreate the real world, that is the integration of reality and reality. This era may be a new one.
(The author is Hu Yi, a big data worker who likes to imagine the future. "The future is foreseeable" is an exclusive column set up by Hu Yi in Pengpai Technology.)
