Understanding Web 3: A New Era of Internet Development

The new term Web3 was born in 2014. In the beginning, it was used to describe a new type of protocol that realizes decentralized consensus. Now, it has become a general term for public chain ecology, applications and even design concepts. Like the philosophical question "Who am I?", the question "What is Web3?" has many people's answers, and it seems that everyone's answer is different. However, for some people, this new term may feel unfamiliar to them, so we wrote this article to explain the 9 things people need to know about Web3, hoping to help people understand what Web3 is :

Web3 is the trendy nickname for the decentralized web.
Web1 reads only information, Web2 reads + writes information, and Web3 reads, writes & owns information.
Web3 is the monetary layer of the Internet.
Web3 is the identity layer of the Internet.
Web3 is a response to social networks not keeping our data safe and selling user data for profit.
Web3 is a way for artists and creators to own not only what they create on the platform, but the platform itself.
Web3 is the new incentive model of the Internet.
Web3 makes it easy to establish cooperative ownership and governance structures.
Web3 is still not fully decentralized.
Web3 is the trendy nickname for the decentralized web

Since 2015, ConsenSys founder and CEO Joseph Lubin has been giving talks, writing articles, and supporting teams building Web3 and the decentralized web. The Web3 philosophy has been the "touchstone" that guides all of ConsenSys' early investments and projects.

MetaMask is now the primary way to get people onboard to use the Ethereum blockchain, with more networks on the way. It's a way to securely generate a public key on your phone or computer, but it embodies a new principle in how users interact with the web - only you can access your accounts and data, and choose what to share, what to hide. Some people also call MetaMask the Crypto version of the consent manager (customer authorization manager).

When we refer to the decentralized web, we also refer to decentralized currencies and other stacks beyond identity. Other aspects of the decentralized web, such as decentralized storage are just becoming the infrastructure of the stack for persistent storage (like IPFS and Arweave), decentralized storage (Golem, W3BCloud and others), and decentralized data indexing (Graph Protocol).

Now, Web3 is the track most frequently followed by a16z and other large venture capital firms, and it is also full of lengthy discussions on Twitter, and many people who do not understand Web3 are still sneering and mocking it. It is foreseeable that in the future, when Web3 will occupy more voice in the discussion of the public Internet, at that time, those who laugh at Web3 will go back and learn what Web3 is.

Web1 read only information, Web2 read + write information, Web3 read, write & own information

When I asked a Web3 developer friend how he would interpret Web3, he said "Web1 is read-only, Web2 is read-write, Web3 is read-write-own". The original web was built on open source protocols like TCP, IP, SMTP, and of course HTTP. A protocol is a standard way for multiple computers to agree to communicate with each other. These underlying protocols govern the flow of information and information on the Internet, and if you want to build an application or service using their rules, you don't have to pay for access.

Web2 is an iterative product built using free open source protocols on the Internet. Compared to the static, read-only Web1, Web2 brought about a major shift in the ability of individual users to publish content to the Internet. It started with likes on Digg's message boards, then grew to Weibo, and now has more than 2 billion individual users on Facebook. At the same time, another subtle shift is quietly taking place. People are starting to feel that instead of maintaining their own servers to keep their websites up and running, they should leave the hassle to Web2 companies. On the other side of the deal, Web2 has also created an island of user data and behavior, a social graph that is valuable to advertisers. In the age of Web2, the individual user is the product.

Web3 ownership means that the builders, operators and users of the platform do own a portion of what they use. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the earliest examples: ETH and BTC are in return for honestly keeping the ledger up to date and other contributors who keep the network secure for what they do. Token-based networks built on Ethereum and blockchain even introduce new ownership models that are not necessarily the same as cooperative or shareholder equity models. For example, ownership can be in the form of tokens, which you earn when you provide a service, such as providing liquidity for transactions or voting on governance for the future development of the network. The grander vision is that participants in any network will be able to "own" a portion of the products and services they use every day.