by Jacob Gri. in Blockchain 101

Data is the new ‘Gold’. Unfortunately, in today’s world, only a handful of organizations are in control of this gold aka data.

From Facebook to Google, the multi-billion dollar organizations have one thing in common. They have made their billions by accessing their user’s data in a way that is not morally correct. In the past few years, this scene has become even more apparent.

Centralized Organizations & Its Control On Web

Today, almost 90% of people across the globe use google’s search engine to type a query. However, while we are putting our trust in an oval-shaped bar, how much of it is justified?

Be it Facebook or Google or Whatsapp, the centralized servers have always kept their users in shadows. The so-called ‘Terms and Conditions’ are nothing but a curtain to what is happening behind the scenes. The opaqueness in these centralized models has generated billions of dollars in the form of advertising revenues. Retrieving and analyzing a user’s private information to monetize them is the central source of income for these centralized organizations.

Moreover, the cases for data breaches or manipulating search results by these organizations have lately become extremely common. Whether it is last year’s data breach on Facebook that exposed the personal information of 50,000,000 individuals or this year’s investigation on Google for suppressing conservative voices- nothing seems surprising anymore.

But things seem to have taken a turn now. The emerging technologies like blockchain and A.I. have given us a ray of hope for a user-controlled decentralized Web 3.0.

Web 3.0

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A future world developed on Web 3.0 is made of self-driving cars, A.I. based digital assistants and decentralized browsers, which optimize user experience instead of weeding out our private data.

Moreover, the decentralized great web will be much more ubiquitous with the most relevant data displayed to the search query. The database under Web 3.0 will be unified to form a single bundle of data. This further eliminates the need for conducting multiple searches on different platforms. More importantly, the Great Web provides security to our private and confidential data which till today, the centralized organizations have failed at.

Semantic Web

The Great Web pushes for a more semantic web that focuses on enhancing the experience. The semantic web consists of comprehending and analyzing the user’s search phrase to drive better and efficient results. The internet infrastructure of Web 3.0 is streamlined, focused on interactive user experience.

InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)

Another feature of Web 3.0 is a peer to peer interactions with a distributed storage of data on an InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). IPFS fingerprints data that is further identified by a cryptographic hash. The blockchain ledger only stores the hash (pointing to the data), hence utilizing considerably less storage space. This further increases the network’s bandwidth along with optimizing user-experience.

A project named Cyber is a search engine that is built with the help of IPFS. Based on the principles of Web 3.0, Cyber protocol is an inter-planetary search engine that utilizes knowledge graphs and consensus mechanisms to access a decentralized database. Additionally, the protocol uses IPFS to conduct a ubiquitous search for a document even without an internet connection.

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Transparent and Open Search Results

Our Web 2.0 made of centralized operators influence search results to generate paid ad revenues. While Web 3.0 displays higher quality and more relevant search results at the top of the page.

A project called Presearch is developing a decentralized and open search engine that employs a community-driven and transparent process of displaying search results. The open ranking system on its platform gives the choice of the data to utilize to a user.

Combining Technologies

Web 3.0 will combine technologies like blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (A.I). These emerging technologies will completely revolutionize the interactions and transactions between humans as well as devices.

Cutting-edge technologies like A.I. will help in understanding and analyzing human requirements. These machine learning algorithms will be user-centric focussed on improving and automating a user’s decision.

Ocean Protocol, focussed on building an eco-system for trustful data sharing, is developing Web 3.0 services through A.I. It wants to build a tokenized ecosystem such that the data and services absorbed by A.I. are incentivized and fairly accessible to all.

Concluding Thoughts

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The centralized organizations have built their entire empires by using our data for their personal needs. Aside from it being a violation of our privacy, the activity itself is morally incorrect. The next-gen decentralized web built on blockchain can restore the power lost to us. Moreover the future, that will be more data-driven than ever before, the decentralizing web will become more of a necessity rather than an optional choice.

Blockchain Today’s Editorial Team was not involved in the creation of this post.