The web as we use it today results from its evolution over so many years, just like “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, so was the internet. Most people tend to divide this evolution into 3 stages - Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0
Each of these stages is a version up from its previous stage but also comes with its own set of problems which is most likely solved in the next stage-pretty obvious right! After all, evolution without addressing previous issues is not really an upgrade.
This was the first iteration of the web where the users were mostly consumers of the information on the internet. Web1 comprised of just static websites which were read-only. The websites were not interactive at all and the sites were hosted using a file system.
The Web as we use it today is Web2. It is extremely interactive and social. CRUD (which stands for Create Read Update Delete) operations are the basis of all websites. There are apps and services which make it easy for anyone to voice their opinions and share them with everyone in the world.
Web2 is great because it has made resource sharing so easy. Obviously this “resource sharing” is made possible by intermediary services. Consumers use the platform provided by these service providers (like Twitter, Facebook, Apple, etc.) to share information. One would have to trust these services as the information is stored by these service providers. Web 2 has also seen several data breaches which happened on the stored data of consumers. Users have to give up their private information to the platform providers (like Facebook, youtube). Also, these platform providers can censor certain users if they wish to.
As it is evident, most of the power of sharing information is controlled by a central authority which is these platform providers.
Web3 is a highly decentralized version of the web. It has the potential to provide a platform that no single entity can control, yet can be trusted by everybody, since everybody will follow the same rules known as consensus protocols. It will work on the same lines as the current decentralized networks of bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains.
To know about how decentralized networks and blockchains work, refer to my previous blog on blockchains.
The fun part of Web3 is that everything which is executed would be open source and can be accessible by anyone in the world.
As mentioned, the Web3 apps will be built on a decentralized network of blockchains. These apps are commonly referred to as dapps- which stands for decentralized apps.
Now coming to the main question.
Listing down the cons of Web2 and how Web3 is going to solve them
| Cons of Web2 | How Web3 will solve this |
|---|---|
| Platforms like Twitter can censor any user | No censorship, since there is no central authority |
| Users have to provide their service provider with confidential data to participate in Web2 | Sharing personal information is not required to participate in Web3 |
| Payment services don’t allow payment for certain types of work | Payment can be done easily using native tokens like Ether or crypto |
| The central platform providers can control user activity | Decentralised so no one person can control any platform |
| All apps are not open-sourced, so we don’t really know what is going on under the hood | The apps which are executed are public and open-sourced |
Despite so many benefits, Web3 has some limitations:
And that’s a wrap! Hi, I am Gourav Dhar, a software developer and I also write blogs on Backend Development and System Design. Subscribe to my Newsletter “The Geeky Minds” and learn something new every week - https://thegeekyminds.com/subscribe
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I am Gourav Dhar, a 2019 graduate from IIT Roorkee where I pursued my bachelors in Electronics and Communication Engineering.
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