Editor's Lead: Since Berners proposed the concept of the World Wide Web in 1989, it has experienced Web1.0, Web2.0, and Web3.0. So, how did it develop from Web1.0 to Web3.0? Based on this, this article launched a series of analysis, interested friends come and have a look together.
The web has evolved over three decades, slowly taking us from the early days of Web 1.0 with static text and images, all the way to the rise of Web 2.0, to the Internet we know today—a network dominated by centralized platforms. the Internet.
Regarding what exactly is Web3.0, no one can clearly define it at present, and it exists more as a conceptual vocabulary.
In some people's eyes, Web3.0 represents a new trend in the future development of the Internet, involving decentralization, and users have actual control over data and information.
Musk also recently talked about his views on Web 3.0. He believes that metaverse and Web 3.0 are more like marketing terms at present, and they are bubbles created by speculators.
From Bitcoin, blockchain, NFT, to Ethereum, various public chains are constantly rising, and new concepts such as DApp, DAO, IOT, and earn have also emerged as the times require.
1. From Web1.0 to Web2.0
In 1989, Berners proposed the concept of the World Wide Web.
This has fundamentally changed the perception that Internet services are just assembled from "information islands".
To be precise, the static pages of Web 1.0 are the first stage of the development of the World Wide Web. The media forms are mainly portals such as Sina, Sohu, Yahoo, and Baidu. Some specific groups or companies publish information one-way to the Internet. , and feed it to the user for browsing and reading.
In other words, Web 1.0 only solves the needs of users to obtain and read information. During this process, users can only passively receive undifferentiated information released by the website, but cannot upload their own feedback, conduct real-time online communication with other people, etc. Communications, websites and audiences are on a wildly unequal scale.
By Web2.0 (after about 2000), it has become a readable, writable, and highly interactive Internet.
At this time, users are both receivers and publishers of network information, and people can conduct two-way and multi-way communication through the network.
From website portals to personal portals, from online information to online users, Web2.0 has formed a people-centered communication and interaction method, and has also boosted the rise of social networks.
Software also began to jump out of the PC side, and APPs such as WeChat, Weibo, and Douyin appeared one after another.
But in fact, Web2.0 is still a centralized network form. The Internet platform controls user data and information and manages user groups. There is a certain risk of information leakage and loss. Collecting user data has become a standard practice—usually hidden in Behind the seemingly "free" service, another normalization problem is that the virtual and physical information under the centralization is not easy to trace, and there is inevitably the possibility of fraud.
Second, what about Web3.0?
In addition to the outer packaging of the Semantic Web, Web3.0 is a new Internet form developed by combining blockchain technology. Its core lies in decentralization-"giving users the ability to truly own the Internet."
In the era of Web 3.0, the rights of data and information on the Internet are confirmed from the moment they are published, so there is no need to worry about being stolen or data being deleted due to database loss.
However, the significance of Web3.0 is not limited to this.
Whether it is Web1.0 or Web2.0, users need to register different accounts on different platforms, and the information is isolated from each other.
To give a simple example, we cannot register an account only once between the Alipay App and the WeChat App, because different platforms need to build their own huge user groups and take security precautions.
Web3.0 has undergone a paradigm reversal. Through the underlying logic of Web3.0, users and platforms exist independently. When registering or logging in to a website, there is no need to fill in identity information and agree to a privacy agreement, but through a decentralized The network directly creates accounts and has a token agreement to maintain the Internet.
Ideally, you only need to use your own digital wallet and key to log in to any website, and at the same time use the key to manage your own assets and obtain economic incentives.
In short, Web 3.0 is a decentralized Internet that aims to create a new contract system and subvert the way individuals and institutions reach agreements.
Web 3.0 reproduces the decentralized infrastructure of the first version of the Internet (i.e. Web 1.0). The feature of Web 1.0 is that users set up blog sites by themselves.
On this basis, Web 3.0 also combines the rich interactive experience of Web 2.0, such as social media platforms.
The combination of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 forms the digital ecology of Web 3.0, in which users can truly own their own data, and transactions are guaranteed by encryption technology.
Users no longer need to trust brand endorsements, but can rely on certain software code logic to strictly enforce the agreement.
3. Practical obstacles to building Web3.0
The current infrastructure environment cannot support the demand for decentralization.
On the one hand, many self-described decentralized applications are far from truly decentralized, and it is not uncommon for these services to be front-end running on cloud servers, which means that access to them still relies on legacy infrastructure and differentiates Blockchains are only occasionally used to send or receive data.
Even the blockchain networks themselves, designed to be decentralized, lose this distinction if most of them run on Amazon Web Services or a similar centralized enterprise cloud.
Another common problem is that many Web 3.0 services currently run on Ethereum with high transaction fees, low throughput, and inability to scale without external infrastructure.
4. How will we reach Web 3.0
Many people's expectations for Web 3.0 come from the more possibilities brought about by its decentralization.
But for now, the idea of Web3.0 is indeed utopian, but the actual implementation is still open to question.
Since value and control are not held by a centrally located company, but are distributed to the people who actually build the web, what Web 3.0 requires is the ability to market itself.
The emergence of social media provides impetus for the transition from Web2.0 to Web3.0. When people in the community actually own certain Tokens to obtain economic benefits, they will actively spread them in the community. On the one hand, the user loss rate will be reduced; On the other hand, under good circumstances, the structure of the entire network will be stronger.
But the so-called "good situation" here is also a pain point of Web3.0 at present: the current technology has not yet fully realized the requirements of Web3.0, the number of participating users is limited, and the degree of division of labor in all production and life in the human world has not been refined To a certain extent, AI has not achieved an absolute dominant position, and the limitations of the mobile terminal are also difficult to carry blockchain information and high concurrency needs of users. The low efficiency and security of the transaction process cannot meet the needs of commercial applications.
The birth of a new thing will inevitably experience the bubble of capital speculation. Due to the chaotic status quo of the cryptocurrency market, many people are noncommittal about the blockchain, but the technology itself should be innocent, and new technologies should also be encouraged. "Short-sighted "It is the normal state of human beings. Even if it is useless at this stage, it will be used by later generations one day.
Even if a theory, a scientific research achievement, or a technology proves to be a wrong path, it is still "useful" because it can save time for later generations.
Make a technology to the extreme, regardless of whether it is advanced or not, whether it is useful or useless.
When Apollonius wrote "Theory of Conic Sections", it was not for human beings to explore space in the future, but for the exploration itself, just to satisfy his curiosity.
To some extent, we really cannot predict the success of a new technology or a new network ecology, and there is no need to generate FOMO emotions driven by capital. Whether it is Web1.0 or Web3.0, they are just Internet technologies. A trend that continues to deepen and refine, that's all.