There’s a lot of talk about web 3.0 and the big changes it’ll bring to the industry, but few people really understand why it’s happening and what it’ll mean. It’s necessary to go back in time and look at its ancestors, Web 1.0 and 2.0, in order to comprehend this.

The origin of the web began when a british computer scientist name Sir Tim-Berners-Lee co-invented the World wide web with Robert Cailliau in 1989. He discovered that documents on different computers could be interlinked by hyperlinks and are accessible over the internet, A Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) could be used to transfer Web resources, which can be accessed by users through a software application called a web browser and published by a software application called a web server. The World Wide Web is constructed on top of the Internet, which was created more than two decades before the Web. He wrote the first web browser in 1990 which gave birth the first version of the web which we know as web 1.

The Web 1.0 was not given a name until it died, much like the Middle Ages. The ‘World Wide Web,’ as it was then known, was nothing more than a collection of static webpages with a lot of information but no interactive features. Connecting meant using shaky modems and preventing anyone else in the house from using the phone. It was the internet of AOL chat rooms and MSN messenger, of AltaVista and Ask Jeeves, of AltaVista and Ask Jeeves. It was excruciatingly slow. Streaming music and videos? Forget about it. It would take at least a day to download a song. Web 1 was basically just a content delivery network(CDN) that enables the showcase of the piece of information on the websites.

Web 2.0 Begins

The memories dull UI have mostly faded. Faster internet connections cleared the way for interactive content; the web was no longer about watching and reading , but about taking part. The age of ‘Social Media’ began with the global exchange of information. Youtube, Wikipedia, Flickr, and Facebook offered the voiceless a voice and provided a platform for like-minded communities to flourish.

It will take me 30 seconds to publish this blog post, a significant improvement over the days when making a simple website change required a coordinated effort between designers, developers, and administrators. This is the Read-Write-Publish era, in which spreading information is as easy as saying those three words.

Web 2.0 had a weakness, as fantastic as it sounded.

Data Privacy and Ownership

The number of the internet users began to grow enormously and this inturn increased the amount of data that was realised by the day. Big digital firms began to discover that personal data is a highly valuable asset. As a result, the vast storage of data in centralized servers began, with Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter serving as the primary custodians. People gave up security for the ease of these services, and their identities, browsing habits, searches, and online purchase information were sold to the highest bidder whether they realized it or not.

Security

The Web 2 is centralized in the sense that it has a single point of control and a single source of data. The network would be offline in the event of a security compromise, and people could lose valuable information. Even huge digital organizations’ centralized servers have downtimes from time to time, which might disrupt people’s day-to-day activities.

Web 3.0 Starts

While Web 2.0 has helped to democratize many power structures and create new possibilities, the economic engine has been mostly private and monopolized. Facebook, Uber, and AirBnB have developed private networks for public infrastructure that they control. Web 3.0 is the polar opposite of this, with several profit centers exchanging value over an open network.
It’s not difficult to see a not-too-distant future in which crypto-based phones, VPNs, decentralized storage, and cryptocurrency wallets are commonplace. A future without the need for network and cellular carriers to halt or monitor our data. These are the tools we’ll need if we don’t want to sleepwalk into a Black Mirror-style privacy dystopia.

Web 3.0 represents the next iteration or phase of the evolution of the web/Internet and potentially could be as disruptive and represent as big a paradigm shift as Web 2.0. Web 3.0 is built upon the core concepts of decentralization, openness, and greater user utility.

A Decentralized future

Major Difference between web3 and web2

The main difference between the web2 and web3 is the decentralized nature of the web3, where instead of having a central database that contains all of the data facilitated on a particular platform by users, the data is then distributed along the users on their mobile devices, with everyone having a piece of the database on his or her device (node). Web 3.0 aims to give individuals more power, similar to how the internet was democratized, by giving everyone choice over how their data is seen and utilized.