Web 3.0 is the semantic web, and Web3 is the decentralized web. Those are essentially the definitions in their simplest terms.
I see some people considering these as separate things, but I never saw it that way. I’ve always felt that what we call Web 3.0 became the framework and foundational ideals for what grew into Web3.
Web 3.0 said, “let’s make everything machine-readable. let’s create parity between the physical and the digital.” The goal being to digitize the offline world so as to facilitate using the digital to support the physical.
But how do you do this? The more centralized a technology is, the less exposure it has to the wider world (with scale working to counteract the effect until a certain point). On the other hand if you decentralize the technology you can give it to everyone and let it be everywhere, and then use the decentralized network as the summed total potential for the platform.
Web3 is developing into this kind of technology. People started simple, recreating currencies like we use but digitally and decentralized, and then built ramps so that they could be converted to fiat and other goods and assets. Then the cloud storage concept was translated to a decentralized framework and we got IPFS. Then the currency tech was modified so that non-fungible assets could be delineated. This tied together blockchain and IPFS as a storage solution to allow blockchains to overcome bandwidth limitations.
Now we have people working on things like linking house titles to NFTs. Regardless of the how this would be used, I find that this is directly relevant to Web 3.0. More and more real-world objects are becoming digitized and machine-readable. Of course there are weaknesses in our current solutions: Lack of two-way functionality, limited decentralization of many databases & code, immature incentives for maintaining data integrity, limited polling ability for many data sets, and so on. But just because it isn’t perfect, doesn’t mean that it isn’t the semantic web. Web3 is what Web 3.0 looks like when it has come to life.
This causes me to consider the criticisms of Web3 in regards to Web 3.0. Some resistance is clearly due to the natural friction of new technologies being adopted by society. Some of it is also political, though - crypto and IPFS are often associated with the far-right, for example. Some of it is memetic transfer through social interactions which extends the discussion into communities that aren’t clearly identifiable stakeholders. Some comes from the authoritarian mindset, since these technologies enable dual power that is often discussed in the context of undermining states.
The criticism that I finding missing on Web3, is the Luddite criticism. We hear a lot of fear about AI making our jobs redundant. However I haven’t seen that same economic anxiety expressed around Web3 yet. Instead the major discussions (in terms of socioeconomic factors) seem to reflect a focus on “scams” and the idea that cryptos are “lottery tickets.” There also seems to be some schadenfreude, often targeted at the perception of well-to-do individuals investing their excess wealth and losing it quickly. But no objection from workers worried about becoming redundant. I do think the technology makes that possible in the big picture.
The web was always decentralized though. In fact Web 3 brought more centralization. Everything is in the cloud now, which is really just two or three main data center operators. That’s my techno luddite take.
Web 3.0 is the semantic web, and Web3 is the decentralized web. Those are essentially the definitions in their simplest terms.
I see some people considering these as separate things, but I never saw it that way. I’ve always felt that what we call Web 3.0 became the framework and foundational ideals for what grew into Web3.
Web 3.0 said, “let’s make everything machine-readable. let’s create parity between the physical and the digital.” The goal being to digitize the offline world so as to facilitate using the digital to support the physical.
But how do you do this? The more centralized a technology is, the less exposure it has to the wider world (with scale working to counteract the effect until a certain point). On the other hand if you decentralize the technology you can give it to everyone and let it be everywhere, and then use the decentralized network as the summed total potential for the platform.
Web3 is developing into this kind of technology. People started simple, recreating currencies like we use but digitally and decentralized, and then built ramps so that they could be converted to fiat and other goods and assets. Then the cloud storage concept was translated to a decentralized framework and we got IPFS. Then the currency tech was modified so that non-fungible assets could be delineated. This tied together blockchain and IPFS as a storage solution to allow blockchains to overcome bandwidth limitations.
Now we have people working on things like linking house titles to NFTs. Regardless of the how this would be used, I find that this is directly relevant to Web 3.0. More and more real-world objects are becoming digitized and machine-readable. Of course there are weaknesses in our current solutions: Lack of two-way functionality, limited decentralization of many databases & code, immature incentives for maintaining data integrity, limited polling ability for many data sets, and so on. But just because it isn’t perfect, doesn’t mean that it isn’t the semantic web. Web3 is what Web 3.0 looks like when it has come to life.
This causes me to consider the criticisms of Web3 in regards to Web 3.0. Some resistance is clearly due to the natural friction of new technologies being adopted by society. Some of it is also political, though - crypto and IPFS are often associated with the far-right, for example. Some of it is memetic transfer through social interactions which extends the discussion into communities that aren’t clearly identifiable stakeholders. Some comes from the authoritarian mindset, since these technologies enable dual power that is often discussed in the context of undermining states.
The criticism that I finding missing on Web3, is the Luddite criticism. We hear a lot of fear about AI making our jobs redundant. However I haven’t seen that same economic anxiety expressed around Web3 yet. Instead the major discussions (in terms of socioeconomic factors) seem to reflect a focus on “scams” and the idea that cryptos are “lottery tickets.” There also seems to be some schadenfreude, often targeted at the perception of well-to-do individuals investing their excess wealth and losing it quickly. But no objection from workers worried about becoming redundant. I do think the technology makes that possible in the big picture.
The web was always decentralized though. In fact Web 3 brought more centralization. Everything is in the cloud now, which is really just two or three main data center operators. That’s my techno luddite take.