What is Web3?

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0:45Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. The future of the internet is here. Or it might be. So far, the web has gone through two major stages. Web 1.0, which you may remember from the 90s, was largely a read-only medium. That is, it was a decentralized collection of static web pages you could read. But you couldn't easily add your own voice. Web 2.0 changed things up in the early 2000s, taking the internet from read-only to read-write. Now you could post to your own blog, leave comments, or more recently, have a Facebook page or Twitter feed.

1:33While Web 1.0 was sprawling and disorganized, 2.0 was concentrated around a few large platforms. These platforms owned your posts, your data, and, well, you. Now Web 3.0, or Web 3 as it's known, promises to hand some of that ownership back through tokens and voting rights by rewiring how the web works. Proponents say it would create a read-write own system. Built on blockchains, which are shared ledgers or databases, it would, in theory, be decentralized, democratic, and peer-to-peer. The best known example of what this might look like is cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ether, and Tether.

2:19There are also non-fungible tokens or NFTs, which allow ownership of digital objects, and distributed autonomous organizations or DAOs, which help groups of people organize and make decisions. Instead of trading their data for free services, Web3 users would earn tokens and crypto coins for their online contributions, like reporting bugs or validating transactions, also called mining. They could then trade these crypto coins and tokens directly with other users. All of this could add up to a web where users have more ownership of their data, their online identity, and a say in how the internet actually works.

3:00It'd have the functionality of Web 2.0 and the decentralization of Web 1.0, plus be community-driven and self-governing. Sounds neat, hmm? None of this, however, is inevitable. Despite VC investments and bold proclamations, there's no guarantee people will adopt Web3's vision. Crypto has major problems with energy consumption. There's a ton of scamming and swindling. It's unclear if these technologies can work at scale. And blockchain and decentralization might make innovation harder. So, while Web3 has promise, there are also quite a few red flags.

4:04I'll see you next time.

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