Partnered With:

Web3 is what the internet should have been

Read this article in 61 Minutes

In the age of Web2, people will tell you not to be evil. In the world of Web3, you can't do evil!

Original title: "Three Revolutions of Web3"

Original source: Mending the Sky Remains Stone

This article is based on Google's product design Organized from the text version of the lecture given by teacher Tony Aubé at WAQ2019. The article expounds the three evolution logics of Web3, summarizes the three fundamental characteristics of Web3, and especially emphasizes that most of the changes in Web3 will occur at the infrastructure level. For most people, this will be a slow and almost invisible process. change. In addition, from the perspective of the historical pendulum cycle, the author points out that Web 3 is not intended to replace the Internet, but to push the Internet back to a more balanced and democratic Web.

Table of Contents:

1 Brief History of the Web

1 Web History

1.1 web 1.0

1.2 web 2.0 1.3 What is web 3.0?

2 The web is broken

2.1 Advertising 2.2 Data Leakage 2.3 Monitoring Review 2.5 Data Loss

3 Web 3

3.1 Value Native

3.2 Dapp

3.3 Data Sovereignty

4 Summary

5 The Pendulum of History

6 Internet of Things

Last year, the Internet celebrated its 30th birthday.

The inventor of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee Berners-Lee used the opportunity to express his displeasure with the direction the internet has taken in recent years.

The Internet is 30 years old, but this is not the Internet we want. - Berners-Lee

To understand his point, and why it matters, have It's worth looking back at the history of the Web.

1 A Brief History of the Web

Before the web, yes the Internet.

The Internet was invented in the 70s, at the height of the US-Soviet Cold War.

At the time, the United States had a central computer that controlled its nuclear weapons.

The US government is concerned that a single attack could make the The computer system was paralyzed, making it impossible for them to fight back.

So the U.S. government built a decentralized system with many computers spread across the country. In the event of an attack, the defense system will continue to operate, ensuring that the two countries can destroy each other.

This is a dark history for the Internet. But this is also where the idea of decentralization comes in.

Then, in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee created the Web (World Wide Web).

The Web was one of the first applications on the Internet. It enables people to easily browse content. However, it is a highly specialized tool, mainly used by researchers and students.

But that quickly changed.

1.1 Web 1.0

Five years later, new browsers like Mosaic and Microsoft Internet Explorer brought the Web to mainstream audiences.

These are the good old days. We surf the web. The web design is terrible. We have a dial-up connection. It took a long time to download a photo or a video. This is Web 1.0.

Web 1.0 is decentralized. It is powered by a normal computer. This is a computer photo of Tim Berners-Lee. It has a sticker on it that says DO NOT TURN OFF. Because this computer powers the Internet.

Web 1.0 was open source. This means anyone is free to build on top of it. This made possible new businesses like Google and Amazon, which couldn't have happened if the Web was private.

Finally, Web 1.0 was read-only. This means that for every thousand users browsing the web, only a few have the technical skills to publish content.

1.2 Web 2.0

/p>

This all changed around 2005 when new sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter brought Web 2.0.

For the first time, anyone can publish content online, regardless of their technology How is the level. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are all easy ways for people to create their own web. They have led to the massive popularity of the Web today.

But by then, people were already starting to see problems with these new sites. While they make our online lives more convenient, they are slowly building walled gardens on the open web. We started to stray from the original vision of the web.

Additionally, the computers that formerly powered the Web evolved into the large centralized data centers required to power these platforms.

The invention of the smartphone accelerated this phenomenon. Today, we have incredible devices that allow us to do so many things. Yes, they allow us to browse the web through apps like Safari, Firefox, and Chrome.

Unfortunately, these apps are drowned in a sea of other closed, private, opaque apps.

1.3 What is Web 3.0?

First, understand that the term Web 2.0 is a buzzword.

It was created by Tim O'Reilly, who, upon seeing these changes happen, Created Web 2.0 Summit. This is a large conference that brings engineers and researchers together to discuss the future of the web.

With the widespread spread of Web 2.0 ideas, an inevitable problem has emerged: Web 3.0 What will it be like?

People had a lot of speculation at the time. People speculate that Web 3.0 will be the Web of artificial intelligence or the Web of virtual reality. While I think these are exciting technologies, I don't think they will redefine the Web.

Last year, there was a big conference called Web 3.0 Summit (Web 3.0 Summit).

Like the Web 2.0 Summit, this conference brought together a large number of engineers and researchers. The message from this is clear: Web 3.0 is about re-decentralizing the Web.

Why Decentralize the Web?

Unfortunately, the web is broken today.

2 The Web has crashed

Why do you say the Web has crashed? The reasons are as follows:

2.1 Advertising

As you know, the web today is full of advertisements.

Why are there so many ads? Back in the early days of the web, it had no native way to pass value. People are cautious when using credit cards online. Therefore, the best way to make money online is to offer your services for free and then earn money through advertising.

This is where companies like AdWords and DoubleClick come in. By providing an online advertising platform, they are able to start a business of providing content for free.

Over time, advertising became the default business model on the web.

This has led to today's web where everyone uses ad blockers and the media uses ads Interceptors for interceptors.

Publishers are losing revenue because online advertising is not as profitable as print advertising.

To remedy this, the media relies on inappropriate things like clickbait, fake news and misinformation means to make better use of people's attention. It's a vicious cycle largely caused by the web's reliance on advertising.

2.2 Data Leakage

As early as 2017, The Economist declared that data was the new oil.

People are racing to collect as much data as possible online these days. It started with the idea that user data would lead to better advertising. Since then, the rise of artificial intelligence has only intensified that need.

Unfortunately, this data is collected on these large central servers which It is a favorite target of hackers.

During the 2018 Equifax hack, 143 million people had their information stolen, including their social security numbers and driver's licenses. People blamed Equifax, saying their security was extremely poor.

But companies like Facebook and Google that employ the best engineers in the world are also A data breach occurred that same year.

The lesson here is that no system is truly secure. Once you start storing data in a centralized server, there will be an incentive for someone to steal the data. Every system can be hacked.

In 2017, 6.3 billion accounts were hacked. This is close to having an account for every person on the planet. I can assure you that number will rise in 2019.

2.3 Monitoring

Unfortunately, businesses aren't the only ones hoarding data. Governments do the same. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we saw it all in 2014.

In addition to the United States, there are government social credit reporting systems in other countries, which can use the collected citizen information to score citizens.

This is similar to the concept of a credit score, covering your entire civic life. If your score is too low, you may be banned from buying plane and train tickets etc. This is a worrying direction.

2.4 Review

Next, review. With centralized servers, it is easy for governments to block access to them.

Turkey, for example, has banned access to Wikipedia for almost two years. Because, as we know it, Wikipedia is a threat to national security.

There are also firewalls, and countries such as Russia and India are also building their own firewalls.

2.5 Data loss

Two thousand years ago, the library of Alexandria was burned down. The fire destroyed thousands of precious documents from our history.

Everyone thinks this is a human tragedy. However, this kind of thing happens every day on the web.

Everyone has had this experience. You tried to visit a link and got a 404 error. Links are broken, pages are lost.

The average lifespan of a website is about 100 days.

Every month, 2% of all links online are lost forever.

When you think about how important the Web is today in terms of culture and information, these numbers are devastating.

Non-profit organizations like the Internet Archive foundation are trying to back up the entire The Web, but given the speed at which the Web has grown and disappeared, that's an impossible task.

In short, the situation is bad.

The Web has a lot of problems. What can we do for them?

< img _width="100%" src="https://image.theblockbeats.com/upload/2021-01-27/bca69f4617d4a99ddb773392bfc9076d04ae3387.png" alt="Image">

When preparing for this speech, I read a book called "Designing the Internet", The author is David D. Clark, one of the founders of the Internet.

The title says it all: Designing an Internet.

After reading this book, I understand that the Web we know today is the only possible explanation. The web is made of components, and those components are created by people like you and me.

The development of these components over the past 30 years has not been able to solve the problems facing the Web today.

Web 3.0 aims to update these components to fix the problems I mentioned above.

3 Web 3

Web 3.0, referred to as Web 3, will bring three major changes:

Money will become an inherent feature of the Internet

Decentralized applications (dapp) provide users with new functions

Users will have more control over their digital identities and data

Front I mentioned that advertising became the default business model on the Web because there was no trusted way to deliver value on the Web.

Thankfully, a recent invention has solved this problem. I believe this invention will have a significant impact on our society for decades to come.

This invention is Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Revolution

In 2018, I gave a talk on Blockchain and Bitcoin. In my opinion, it doesn't matter whether Bitcoin is ultimately a blip or not. Because Bitcoin has a snowball effect. Bitcoin revolutionized the way we think about digital currencies.

Bitcoin brought two major innovations.

It allows digital scarcity. For the first time in history, we can create items that are both digital and unique.

It allows you to spend online without any intermediaries.

These two innovations will bring people the Internet of Value.

Value Internet

To understand how big the Internet of Value is, consider how Web 1 and Web 2 revolutionized the free flow of information.

Technology has changed every medium: newspapers, telephones, television, books, radio, photography , encyclopedia, etc.

Information Revolution

These are all integral parts of our society, however, over the last 20 years technology has completely changed.

Overnight, anyone can, at any time, Send messages instantly, anywhere, for free. This completely changed our world.

Today, we live as if in the future. We can talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

But, if you look closely, strangely enough, it's not the technological revolution that we're going through. Rather, the rest of our society has strangely remained the same despite this massive technological revolution.

Parts of our society have had very little in the past 50 years evolution.

A lot of what hasn't changed has to do with value.

Just as Web 1 and Web 2 brought about an explosion in the free flow of information, Web 3 will also Bringing an explosion of free flow of value.

Like information, the transfer of value will be global in the coming decades Sexual, instant, free, available to everyone.

While Bitcoin may upend cash or gold (depending on who you ask), the revolution in value goes far beyond that.

Think that every part of society needs scarcity – stocks, bonds, identities , real estate, etc. All of this can be transformed by Web 3.

This is huge.

The idea behind decentralized applications (Dapps) is to take Bitcoin's innovations—blockchains, cryptography, peer-to-peer networks, and consensus algorithms—and add them to web applications.

As I explained, Bitcoin lets you transact without any intermediaries . Why can't we use the same idea to build other applications?

For example, when I use Chat apps like Messenger. Like the previous example, if I want to chat with my friend like a child, I need to raise my hand and ask for permission. In the end, companies like Facebook controlled my conversations with my friends.

Isn't it strange? On the other hand, I can use a decentralized chat app like Orbit. It's a simple app that you can use right now. It allows you to chat with your friends without any intermediary.

So here's the crazy idea of putting every app we use today in on the web.

For example, Airbnb, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube all have decentralized versions with no central authority or power.

From top to bottom: PeepEth, Minds and DTube

There are many decentralized applications today:

This is a movement. In all domains — whether it’s currency, banking, payments, advertising, supply chain — people are building decentralized versions of the applications we use today.

How do we build decentralized applications?

As I mentioned earlier, this is about changing the web infrastructure itself.

Web infrastructure will have its own native payment layer with projects like Bitcoin (Of course, Bitcoin is not the only project, there are many other competing cryptocurrencies).

Then there are virtual machines like ethereum. These platforms will run the code that powers decentralized applications.

On top of this, we can also add a decentralized storage layer. This will store the source files required by the application, such as images, videos, text, etc. In this regard, the IPFS project deserves a mention.

IPFS

IPFS (Interplanetary File System) is a project developed by Protocol Labs and Juan Benet. Its goal is to be an alternative to HTTP.

Broadly speaking, IPFS allows you to create a local web. What does this mean?

Today, if I want to download a picture, I will probably download it from the cloud.

IPFS leverages the networking capabilities of these devices, such as Wi-Fi, to create an interconnected network. With IPFS, I can still download files from the cloud, but once I have it, anyone can get that file from my device.

This brings a lot of benefits.

1. Anti-censorship. Earlier I mentioned that Türkiye has blocked Wikipedia for almost two years. Hacktivists have created a decentralized Turkish version of Wikipedia, running on Turkey's unblockable IPFS network. This is an innovation designed to address the censorship issues I mentioned earlier.

2. More durable. I did a lot of preparation for this speech. I keep these links in my bookmarks. I can assure you that if I try to go back to these links in a few years time, some of them will be lost.

However, with IPFS, I can decide to save these pages to my device, and anyone can access them from my computer. Even if YouTube or the media disappears, as long as there is one device in the world that holds the file, it will still be accessible.

Additionally, IPFS has a built-in version history.

This is similar to features like Time Machine on the Mac. This is a popular feature of many software today. It allows you to browse previous versions of files. This is built directly into IPFS.

This is also a project aimed at addressing data loss.

So far, the government has been issuing passports and Driver's licenses to manage our identities.

Strangely enough, in recent years, private companies have also turned into identity management company. Today, we receive all kinds of forms online all the time asking us to provide all kinds of personal information.

Identities can be difficult to manage for small companies. So, recently, big tech companies like Facebook and Google have facilitated various operations by becoming the custodians of identities on the web.

again , isn't it a little odd that private, profit-seeking corporations now control our identities?

This is something our friend Tim Berners-Lee has been trying to fix for a long time. He wrote many lectures on the subject.

Last year, he announced a new project aimed at changing that. The project is called Solid, which stands for Social Linked Data.

Here is a quick introduction to how Solid works.

The idea of Solid is that users store their personal information in a personal online data storage pod , rather than providing the information to private companies. Users can store their names, addresses, phone numbers, etc. In other words, any information related to your online identity.

Pods are encrypted and can be hosted anywhere the user wants: on their device, on the server, possibly even on the blockchain.

The idea is to be able to connect to a web application through such a button. However, since we still control our data, we can control exactly which application has access to which information.

To understand what I mean, consider how you currently manage your list of notifications on your phone. You have this list of apps, and you can choose what type of notifications each app can send. Imagine having the same control, but with who accesses information instead of notifications.

Solid is a recent project. It's still under construction, but you can try it out here.

To be honest, it's not very good now, it's not very easy to use. However, there are many other projects in the field of cryptography, such as uPort and Blockstack, which both aim to solve the same problem in slightly different ways.

Some projects focusing on decentralized identity

Despite the many projects, the core idea remains the same: people are in charge of themselves The data. This brings a lot of benefits.

1. No more tables

The first one is no more tables. I don't think anyone likes filling out forms. It's repetitive and frustrating. The idea of decentralized identity is that you only fill in your information once and all services connect from there.

2. One-way data flow

Credit cards are a completely outdated payment technology. When you use a credit card, you give the merchant your card number, expiration date, and security code. In other words, you give them the password to the money.

With this information, merchants can bill you without your consent. This is why there are so many credit card scams.

On the other hand, when you send a bitcoin, instead of giving your password, You cryptographically sign the transaction. The signature is unique and valid only for that transaction. Therefore, it is impossible for the merchant to charge you again without your consent

If you think about it, we have the same problem with identity.

When I give my social security number to a website, I give my PIN. They'll keep it on an unsecured server, and after a while, it's stolen by hackers.

Why can't we use a password here? Instead of revealing my crypto to my identity, I can also cryptographically sign a transaction to prove that I am who I am. Well, no one can steal my identity.

This is the foundation for a more secure, decentralized identity.

3. Safer

Decentralization is safer.

As I mentioned earlier, no system is truly secure. There will always be data breaches and hacks. We cannot guarantee that no one can get into your pod. But because that data isn't stored on a central server, we won't see a situation where hackers break into a server and steal 150 million Social Security numbers. To steal 150 million decentralized identities, someone would have to hack 150 million pods, which is next to impossible.

These innovations should help address issues like data hacking and surveillance.

Making life easier for developers

I have shown how Web 3 will enable payment, Storage and identity bring a new native web layer. These innovations should also make it easier to develop web applications.

Consider an app like Uber. To build such an application, you need to assemble many components, such as payment, storage, and identity management systems.

Then, Another company, like Lyft, has a similar app. They need to rebuild these components. A lot of work is duplicated.

The idea of Web 3 is to take these components out, decentralize them, and give them back to the user. The users win, and so do the developers, since each component only needs to be built once.

If Uber And Lyft doesn't want to use these decentralized components, and that's okay, because the decentralized versions of Uber and Lyft will use them.

This innovative infrastructure should help prevent monopolies as it makes it easier for developers to Build web applications easily.

What does Web 3 look like?

All of this is interesting, but you might be asking yourself: How exactly do we navigate the Web 3? There are many ways:

Add extensions to your browser like @metamask.

New browsers like Brave.

Portals like MyEtherWallet.

Mobile apps such as Coinbase Wallet.

MetaMask

Let's talk about MetaMask. I believe this is one of the most elegant solutions for navigating the Web 3 so far.

It is a browser extension that you can add to your browser such as Chrome or Firefox. Once added, you'll see this little icon in the upper right corner.

Then you can connect to your wallet and let your browser have the same area New functionality for interacting with blockchains such as ethereum. This enables you to use Web 3 applications such as Robert Leshner's Compound Finance or Cryptokitties' Cryptokitties.

Brave

Brave is a new project from BrendanEich, a very important figure who helped create Mozilla, Firefox, and JavaScript.

His new project is a browser called Brave that by default Block ads and trackers. This makes it the fastest browser on the market. It's four times faster than Chrome.

Brave has been developed to use a cryptocurrency called the Basic Attention Token. For example, when I use Brave to watch YouTube, I can click on the BAT icon to access the wallet.

With this, I can tip any content creator online directly through their website.

There is also an automatic payment function, which sets aside a certain amount of money every month. Once this is done, I can browse the web and Brave will automatically distribute the money to the different pages I visit.

Brave is currently available on desktop, tablet and mobile, as well as on Android and IOS use on. It has 5.5 million monthly active users. This is a great entry into the world of cryptocurrencies.

Ultimately, Brave aims to leverage blockchain And cryptography revolutionized the advertising industry.

Such projects should allow us to reduce our reliance on web advertising and allow us to directly browser payment.

4 Summary

In this article, we look at how the Web has evolved over the past 30 years.

The Evolution of the Web

We learned about Web 1.0, which is read-only and decentralized. Then, the big tech companies came along. They make the web easier to use, but they also make the web more centralized. This is Web 2.0. Now, Web 3 will allow us to interact with each other without any intermediaries. It will re-decentralize the web.

Because most of the changes will be at the infrastructure level, for most people , and it will be a slow, almost invisible shift. Maybe they need to learn how to use a wallet, or learn how to interact with the blockchain. Maybe they need to use different browsers. But overall, things will remain largely the same for web users.

5 Pendulum of History

If you think about it, the history of humanity has oscillated between centralization and decentralization.

For example, in the cave age, everyone was on his own. It's survival of the fittest.

Eventually, people realize they are stronger and more effective together. So we slowly started gathering in tribes, which gradually grew into cities and nations. This culminated in monarchies, where a few kings ruled over all, leading to horrific abuses of power.

People are fed up. They revolted and beheaded the king, leading to another form of decentralized anarchy.

After centuries of back and forth between two extremes, we have come up with a balanced system: democracy. It has both a centralized component like the president and a decentralized component like every referendum.

If you think about it, it's the same with technology. We started with these huge centralized mainframes that initially took up entire floors.

After seeing the weaknesses of such a system, we created a decentralized system: Web 1.0. It's nice, but hard to use.

Then, big players like Google, Facebook, and Twitter joined in to make the internet more accessible. This is Web 2.0.

To be clear, I don't think these companies are bad. Instead, they have made incredible contributions to the Web and our lives. I believe their existence is a net benefit to humanity.

Web 3 is not about replacing them. It just pushes the Internet back to a more balanced and democratic Web.

6 Internet of Things

It's going to be really important, like where we're going, everything in our house is eventually connected to the internet.

Like a Nest thermostat. The device collects sensitive data about you, like which room you spend most of your time in.

In 2014, Google acquired Nest. This has many people concerned about whether Google will use the data.

So Fadell, then CEO of Nest, came out to assure people that the privacy policy would be constant. I believe Sundar is sincere and well-intentioned.

The question is, why should I rely on his promise to protect myself from the thermostat Woolen cloth? Before using Nest, I didn't have to worry about my thermostat sending my private data to the internet.

We should not rely on the promises of Google, Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg to protect us from our equipment. This is what Web 3 is all about.

While Web 2.0 relied on promises like "Don't be evil", Web 3 is about changing the infrastructure itself to build a world where people and Big companies "can't be evil" Web.

This article was written by:

Tony Aubé is a product designer at Google, and his Interested in the intersection between new technology and design.

Associated reading:

Secret of Filecoin Testnet

The meaning of Filecoin global public beta

Money, blockchain and social scalability
< a target="_blank" href="http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzIzNzU4MTg5NQ==&mid=2247485216&idx=1&sn=c17599b1f7410c5a899a2137ab3abd7e&chksm=e8c72408df b0ad1e72901e352f415c51ce3ef5b995aa6368ea97fe931e127aed1916a6f615f7&scene=21# wechat_redirect" tab="innerlink" hasload="1">Blockchain: People cannot live on the bridge of pure means
Blockchain: New things under the sun

Original link

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia