The Internet has so far had two phases: Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.
The next stage is naturally Web 3.0 (Web3 for short). This article talks about some of my preliminary understanding of Web3 and what it is.
1. Historical review
In the Web 1.0 stage, users are pure content consumers. Content is provided by websites. You can read whatever the website tells you. A typical example is a news portal.
In the Web 2.0 stage, users are the producers of content, and the website is just a platform that provides services to users. Typical Web 2.0 platforms include Wikipedia, Douyin, WeChat, etc.
2. Characteristics of Web3
Many features of Web3 are still unclear, but many foreign articles believe that it is related to the blockchain.
I have never been able to figure out how this conclusion was obtained. I recently readan article and suddenly I figured it out.
Web 1.0 is for usersread the Internet, Web 2.0 is for userswrite the Internet. live on the Internet, Web3 is where users
Entertainment, work, study, consumption, and communication all happen online. The website not only provides services, but is also a living space. Part of people's lives can be completed online.
Study on educational websites, hold meetings on conference websites, make friends on social networking websites, and have fun on gaming websites. All websites together form an all-encompassing online world.
3. Virtual world
If the life functions of all websites can be connected together to allow users to seamlessly enter from one scene to another, it will form a virtual world. This is probably what the recently popular metaverse looks like.
At that stage, users no longer visit the website, but enter the virtual world and live a virtual online life.
4. Web3 is distributed
Such a virtual world obviously cannot be monopolized by one or a few giants, otherwise we will rely on these giants and have to abide by the rules they set. When your life is in the virtual world, and one day the giant suddenly decides to close your account, your virtual life will come to an abrupt end!
This is why many people propose that Web3 should be distributed. This has two meanings:
(1) It is not centralized, so no single company can control it;
(2) There are multiple providers of any kind of service, connected through distributed protocols, and users can transfer from one provider to another at a very low cost.
5. The role of blockchain
If Web3 is determined to be distributed, then blockchain is simply a natural infrastructure. Because blockchain is an implementation of a distributed database, it is distributed itself, and once the information is on the chain, it cannot be modified.
This solves the core problem of Web3: data exchange between different websites. Different websites can freely read and write the same user's data, and these data are trustworthy, thus ensuring that users entering another website feel like entering different areas of the same world.
Once Web3 is built on the blockchain, according to the design of the blockchain, users need to have a digital wallet, which is your ID card and bank account in the virtual world. Your identity, property, and consumption are all identified through this digital wallet. Websites use your digital wallet ID to identify who you are.
On the other hand, with digital wallets, banking and finance have become virtual, making the virtual world more like the real world.
6. Digital assets
Blockchain allows arbitrary data to be written, so it is inevitable that all digital records of our virtual lives can be placed on the blockchain.
If each virtual item has its own number and is recorded on the blockchain, then their owner can be determined (that is, linked to a digital wallet).
For example, each digital toothbrush in the virtual world can have a unique number on the blockchain, which will not be confused with other toothbrushes, and the owner of each toothbrush can be determined by linking it to a digital wallet.
I don’t know why you should put the toothbrush on the blockchain. I just gave an example to show that the blockchain can do this.
We can even trade the toothbrush, register it to another digital wallet, and make its owner someone else. The NFT that is very popular now is done in this way, except that it is not a toothbrush registered on the blockchain, but a digital collectible.
Entrepreneur Chris Dixon not long ago said publicly: "Web3 is ownership", and that's what he means.
If everyone, all items, and all transactions are registered on the blockchain, then the ways to play Web3 based on it are simply endless and unimaginable now. The possibilities in the virtual world are 100 times or 1,000 times more than those in the real world.
It is currently only the initial stage of Web3, the infrastructure has not yet been built, and the gameplay is still being explored, but progress is rapid. Countless innovations and opportunities should be born in this area, and it deserves close attention.
(over)