Since the late 1980s, when Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist, invented it, the internet has evolved in stages. The general understanding, especially among computer scientists, is that the web has gone through two major phases and has just entered the third. So what is Web3 vs. Web2?
The three phases are Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0 (Web3). It is important to point out that Web3 and Web 3.0 do not refer to the same concept. However, the two refer to the next phase of the internet after Web 2.0, but with different approaches.
The term Web 3.0 became popular in the early days of 2006, especially after Tim Berners-Lee increasingly used it to describe the upgrading of core internet protocols so that machines can read and understand data with contextual capability like that of humans. Indeed, the concept is also referred to as Semantic web.
Meanwhile, the term Web3 was coined by Gavin Wood in 2014. Gavin is a co-founder of Ethereum and also the Founder of Polkadot, another blockchain with smart contract capability. The primary feature of Web3 is decentralization.
Indeed, there was no Web1 and Web2, but only Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Nevertheless, Web3 is meant to follow Web 2.0.
This phase of the web existed until the early 2000s. It is characterized by the content being mostly text on static web pages. The content was also mostly read-only, meaning besides scrolling and reading, there was hardly anything else that one could do—It was not interactive and there was not option for user-generated content. Indeed, due to this, most users were primarily content consumers.
The internet transitioned to Web 2.0 in the early 2000s. This transition was particularly facilitated by the emergence of programming languages that enabled more capabilities on the web. The most notable of these languages are Javascript, HTML5, and CSS3 that reshaped static pages enabling more dynamic content.
Web 2.0 is characterized by its ability to support multimedia content, particularly images, videos, and audio. It is highly interactive, making the average user easily both a content consumer and producer. The advances in Web 2.0 allowed for message boards, forums, and social media platforms that democratized content generation and emphasized user interaction.
This web phase is also characterized by the ability to customize and personalize the web experience for the average user. This is possible thanks to the capacity, especially in internet browsers and mobile applications, to collect and process user data.
The power of Web 2.0 is in its ability to create an interactive environment for its users. However, this capacity is made possible by big tech companies and corporations building and managing the foundational infrastructure. The cost of this is the significant centralization of the internet and a monetization model that requires users to give out their data.
Web3 is designed to reverse this centralization of the web and, at the same time, give the average user control over their data.
The next phase of the internet upgrade (Web3) seeks to add to the experience of the average user and also fix some of the weaknesses of Web 2.0. The most notable of these weaknesses are many central points of failures, infringement of user privacy, and vulnerable databases.
The main differences between Web 2.0 and Web3 are both in the front end and the back end.
In the front end of Web 2.0, the common aspects include support for multimedia content, including the ability to stream it in real-time. It also has the capacity for interactivity, which has made Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other popular social web applications possible.
Of course, all these front-end features are possible due to capacity in the backend. Unfortunately, this capacity has been made possible through massive centralization and more advanced web browsers.
Web 2.0 turned an average user from being just a consumer into being both consumers and content creators. These advancements also changed the way that many internet users accessed online content. It also made highly personal and customized curation of content for the average user through collecting personal data using cookies.
Another critical aspect of Web 2.0 is the use of mobile devices, particularly smartphones installed with applications that perform different functions. Indeed, the evolution of mobile telephony in Web 2.0 made the internet accessible to more people and the web broswers were now available on the go.
Perhaps the most disruptive part of Web 2.0 is the capacity for social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. These social webapplications have enabled interaction between humans on a scale not achieved before.
Meanwhile, they have also enabled internet intermediaries to collect personal data on internet users in volumes never reached before. Users share personal information on these platforms, and the application can pick even more user data such as the location, calls and text messages, the websites visited, and other applications used.
All the features of Web3 are designed to either fix the critical weaknesses of Web 2.0 or create new possibilities.
The major shift that happens in Web3 is decentralization. In Web3, it becomes possible for many stakeholders to form a consensus on critical processes such as transmission and storage of data and digital assets.
Before Web3, the transmission of value over the internet had to go through trusted intermediaries. Blockchain technology allows two strangers online to transact using digital currencies and smart contracts directly.
The decentralization of the internet in Web3 leads to many benefits for the end user. One of those is the improved securing for any data that is shared. In Web3, information is stored in shared and immutable ledgers that can only be edited through a consensus mechanism on large peer-to-peer networks.
When data has to be stored on centralized servers, it can still be secured using timestamps, hash functions, and cryptography.
Meanwhile, users get more control over the data that is collected from them. With this control, they can decide who to share it with and whether they need compensation for its use.
Indeed, for the most part, users can engage others, including in commercial transactions, without having to disclose their identities. All this is made possible through peer-to-peer networks, consensus protocols, and public-private key cryptography.
Web3 offers new opportunities that could not be achieved in Web 2.0. For example, it is becoming possible to build a virtual world augmented with the real world (metaverse) where people can create, use and trade non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are sovereign digital assets.
The foundation of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 are the World Wide Web protocols such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Telnet, and Usenet. While these protocols will remain critical in Web3, they will be joined by blockchain protocols and decentralized networks. Indeed, the future internet could be created out of numerous interoperated blockchain peer-to-peer networks.
The team behind Casper is conscious of the emerging Web3 and the critical role that blockchain technology will play in it.
With this understanding, Casper is not only building the foundational infrastructure but also applications, in particular smart contracts, that make it easy for the average user, enterprises, and institutions to transition to Web3.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.
