Who would have thought that there was a sequel to the Internet?
Look at the reports on cryptocurrency, NFT and metauniverse in recent years. There is always a word that we are familiar with and unfamiliar with——
Web3
This word comes from the co founders of Ethereum and also represents the so-called "next stage of the Internet" in the mouth of supporters.
We have
Two ways to define Web3
In a simple and fast expression, Web3 is the Internet integrated by blockchain, or the Internet integrated with cryptocurrency and NFT on the use platform. In a more complex expression, Web3 is the so-called "Internet owned by users". Proponents of cryptocurrency especially like the latter statement, and think that the real equal Internet will be pieced together with blockchain technology.
The logic is this: the current Internet is mainly controlled by a few companies - including Facebook, Amazon and Google. Oligopoly has resulted in electronic feudalism, and Internet users can only operate on the assets of a few large factories.
The solution is Web3
Use decentralized technology to eliminate the living space of these "middlemen".
Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, once mentioned in his blog post in 2018, "Take our online payment method as an example, users themselves have no right to make payments and must contact financial institutions to make payments on our behalf. Even for such simple and ordinary things as paying water fees, we have no right to operate them ourselves. On the Internet, everyone is a juvenile with no capacity to act, and can only rely on a third party to do things. "
In contrast, Web3 supports payment through cryptocurrency, in which the open source protocol will replace financial institutions, allowing us to transfer money from one place to another on our own.
Some people go further,
Imagine a future Internet that decentralizes the overall ownership to every user
Taking Facebook as an example, its Web3 version will not log into the stock market, but will design a cryptocurrency token and be subscribed by early users. With word of mouth, the influence of media platforms is growing, and users can also get token rewards in communication. These tokens can also correspond to certain governance functions, such as voting on content review or other policy issues.
Since the ultimate value of tokens is determined by the success of the platform, each holder has the incentive to make Facebook as peaceful and comfortable as possible.
So don't be confused by "decentralization",
Web3 supporters are talking about such a simple logic:
The Internet, which was originally controlled by a few enterprises, was broken up and handed over to every user. However, critics believe that this is a daydream and technically impossible.
What are Web1 and Web2?
If there is Web3, there must be Web1 and Web2. Fortunately, the latter two definitions are relatively easy to understand.
Web1
The first iteration of the Internet refers to the Internet in the 1990s and early 2000, also known as the "read-only" Internet. At that time, most of the websites we saw were static websites. We could only view and download some information slowly, and there was almost nothing else to do. At that time, the Internet was still trying to replicate the previous media: magazines, newspapers and newsletters. But the important point is that the protocols running on the Internet were open source.
Web2
It is the "can read and write" Internet that emerged around 2004. "Can read and write" means that you can both download information and upload information, such as sending photos on Facebook and videos to YouTube. The emergence of Web2 has also opened the era of social media, freeing the Internet from the shackles of traditional media and providing its own form of presentation. At this point, it began to really break out and quickly overwhelmed all previous media carriers.
Chris Dixon, partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a famous Silicon Valley venture capital company, said in the autumn of 2021, "We are at the beginning of the Web3 era, which will combine the decentralization and community management spirit of Web1 with the modern advanced functions of Web2 era."
Is Web3 related to the metauniverse?
Of course.
Just like Facebook, YouTube and other platforms are the products of data upload, cloud storage and other technologies, many people believe that the universe will also become an inevitable product of the mature blockchain technology. Facebook announced that it was renamed Meta last October, representing the upgrade from a Web2 enterprise to a Web3 enterprise.
At the same time, the prototype of the metauniverse such as Decentraland and Sandbox also reflects
The spiritual core of Web3
These virtual worlds contain a fixed number of virtual lands, which cannot be added or deleted. People can buy land here and use it freely: create games, shops and fashion blocks, use them as advertising spots to attract investment or build houses. (Snoop Dogg owns a mansion in Sandbox, and once held parties and concerts here.)
But the land in the virtual world is not cheap. The price of a plot varies from several thousand dollars to millions of dollars. The reason why it can be realized is that everything in the meta universe belongs to users. For example, when we create a project in Sandbox, we can hold it in the form of NFT and sell it as cryptocurrency. We can also design games and charge other users who participate in the games. The most important thing is that this space belongs to you completely. You can do whatever you want.
We might as well compare it with the centralized metauniverse such as Second Life or Fortress Night. In these virtual worlds, the creator can completely control the virtual appearance and who can enter. Meta, which has already made bold statements, will the future meta universe be centralized or decentralized? People have given their own guesses and inferences.
Web3 has both advantages and disadvantages
If you want to ask what the shortcomings are, it depends on which angle you analyze them from. Many people believe that the virtual world token behavior of Facebook, Twitter and other platforms at all costs will eventually poison the entire environment. Elon Musk even directly questioned the existence of Web3. The Tesla and SpaceX founder said, "Compared with reality, the current Web3 is only a marketing term."
except
Divergence at the conceptual level
In addition, we cannot determine whether Web3 is technically feasible. Critics believe that the Web3 utopia described by supporters cannot be realized without a certain degree of centralized elements as support.
As the most respected underlying blockchain of the Web3 camp, Ethereum has always been known for its low efficiency, high transaction costs and exaggerated energy consumption. People are studying solutions, hoping to build applications on Ethereum more efficiently, and even turn to carbon neutral blockchains such as Solana. However, in the view of most people, the idea of putting all activities on the chain is still not technically feasible.
Programmer Stephen Diehl once pointed out in a discussion last December that "from the perspective of computing, the blockchain network cannot be expanded at all, and the only way is to transform it into the traditional centralized solution that they most despise. The maintenance cost of the blockchain solution is far higher than the centralized version, and its efficiency of providing data to customers is far less than the centralized facilities."
Others worry about what Web3 emphasizes
Is there any economic benefit from decentralization
Major venture capital companies have successively invested huge amounts in Web3 technology, nearly 18 billion dollars in the past year alone. Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, believes that these financially strong enterprises will eventually dominate the entire industry.
Dorsey emphasized in his tweet in December last year, "This will ultimately only constitute a centralized entity with the label of decentralization, which is no different at all."
