Imagine an internet that functioned for the sole purpose of pleasing its users and was not dominated by data collecting giants like Google and Facebook. One that was not being used as a means to harvest our personal data, but rather was built and governed by its users. Now stop imagining, this is Web 3.0.
Web 2.0 was in its way magical, it turned the one-dimensional first version internet into a two-dimensional place to play, work and communicate. Web 3.0 intends to go the next step and turn the internet into a three-dimensional place, where we can “visit” people wherever they are in the world, where we can interact, conduct transactions safely and privately, and where no organization will ever collect our private data or track our activities.
What is Web 3.0?
The difference with Web 3.0 is that it will be based on the blockchain, consisting of a network of different chains that are interoperable, allowing us to deploy smart contracts for smart transactions. The blockchains themselves are built from codes, compiled and authenticated across thousands of decentralized nodes globally, giving no power to any intermediary or middleman, rather run and governed by everyone. All activity is authenticated and automated directly onto the blockchain, which makes transactions or interactions tamper-proof and non-manipulatable.
The real challenge that Web3 faces are adoption by those individuals who do not really comprehend what it is, how it works, and the benefits and are perhaps used to hearing the terms NFT, DeFi and Metaverse but really don’t know what this all means. There will be a need to educate many people on this and the values of the blockchain but as more and more protocols come online and can be used from inside people’s current browsers this will be a step-by-step process. In the meantime, many forward-thinking and often quite revolutionary projects, apps and ecosystems are maturing and being developed, so by the time Web3 sees mass adoption, the industry will be ready and mature enough to cater for its B2B users.
All users will need to have a wallet and a means to purchase cryptocurrency tokens in order to be able to take advantage of the many opportunities they will offer on the blockchain. Many gamers are already realizing the benefits of on-chain gaming, where they can engage in the new play-to-earn model, where they are rewarded for participation, rather than the former models of Pay to Play or Play to Win. Other apps are giving users rewards just for engagement, eg. India’s answer to TikTok, Chingari is rewarding users for both watching short videos and creating them too.
Projects built especially for Web 3.0
Other teams developing purely for Web 3.0 include, SelfKey, an Ethereum based project, builds digital identity systems for users in order to transact over the blockchain, making users ready for Web3 activity. It offers a wallet that enables users full control over their digital identity. It is non-custodial, meaning the user retains full control over their data, documents and digital assets. It allows users to securely store and manage identity docs and digital assets and gives access to various marketplaces to both compare and sign up.
Their other products give access to fintech products and services, bank accounts, residencies, and management of cryptocurrency portfolios of Ethereum-based assets. The project is expected to grow from $90.4 Million USD in 2018 to $2 Billion USD by 2023, at an annual growth rate of 84.5%.
Partisia Blockchain, is a network built for Web 3.0 that has been developed for trust, transparency, and privacy. The Partisia Blockchain Foundation is a non-profit foundation that supports the development of a public blockchain, Partisia Blockchain, with the goal of interoperability and opening it up to a Web3.0 future. According to Partisia, “To us, Partisia means “Distributed Trust”. Our mission is to establish a WEB 3.0 infrastructure with no single point of trust for generic coordination of public and private information to be used by all applications across all platforms.”
Meanwhile, one venture capital fund that is laser-focused on investing in Web 3 projects said, “Web3 has become the latest buzzword for what crypto and blockchain are all about. It’s the next revolution that will enable us to interact with and dramatically change a lot of the applications which we’ve been seeing emerge in the past 10-15 years”.
