There are many buzzwords flying around: Industry 4.0, Web 3.0, AI, VR, Quantum Computing… Some of them don’t make as much sense as the others, some of them make surprisingly much sense and somehow are inclusive of some of the other buzzwords.

So what is Web 3.0 (actually what .0 means in this context? basically nothing, let’s use Web3, like Ethereum guys do). This is something that comes after Web 2.0 (let .0 stay, people loved that stuff of 1.0, 2.0 and so on when the term was invented). This is the best definition for Web3 actually, something which replaces Web2.0, and therefore is something different.

So let’s understand first what Web2.0 is. This is the Internet that we have now, with all those features that seem so nice but are meant to collect and control as much of your data as possible. They are bells and whistles that turn out to be the hammer and the anvil.

Have you ever thought about where the immense wealth of Internet giants such as Google or Facebook comes from? In pre-Internet times such wealth used to be accumulated through an access to some resource and its explotation. It could be natural resources such as oil and gas or gold, manpower and automation in manufacturing and so on.

So what resource do web giants exploit? This is the data they collect. This is the gold of the 21th century. The gold which smart people started extracting without asking any permission from anybody. The gold which is basically taken from YOU.

Web 2.0 came after the original Web 1, a collection of static documents, hardly monetizable. Web 2.0 is the Internet of corporations and monopoly, which comes straight from the early stages of industrial revolution where huge corporations could control everything. This is the Internet of making as much money as possible and making use of as much data as possible. Due to being overly centralized it is vulnerable, manipulative, and prone to manipulation.

Do we need a world where the data you own and produce can be turned against you because of greed or pure malice? It’s not even about your privacy, it’s about control. We hand control over the vast amounts of precious data over to companies and individuals who just happened to be at the right place at the right time. That sounds scary and irresponsible.

So what is the alternative? We need some technical solution here, besides our desire to make things right. And we can see the shape that this solution could take now.

Web3 concept was proposed at the end of the last century, with the major focus on so-called Semantic Web (the web where computers and humans basically have some common language somewhere between natural human language and computer code). But already then the idea of accountability, and distribution of control was proposed. Basically Web3 is the architecture which can’t exist without decentralization of control.

Only with emergence of blockchain the whole puzzle of Web3 came together. Blockchain is a paradigm shift that allows us to create systems which run “on their own”, by the protocol agreed before their launch. We can construct decentralized systems which can become that layer on which you don’t have to give up on control over your data, where all your data belongs to you.

Web3 products are just emerging. But it’s clear what the will and won’t do. You will be able to explicitly allow access to your data. You won’t need to trust third parties with storing your passwords. You won’t let anybody erase your data either. Governments will finally understand that you can’t solve all the problems by just banning things, you need to dig deeper and fight the root of the problem.

Web3:

Will let you control your data.

Will be essentially decentralized.

Will still be monetizable; but the monetization will be more transparent.

Should (and hopefully will) be essentially unbreakable.

Will be a consortium of different technologies merged through blockchain (or other decentralized tech, should it emerge)

Web3 goes beyond Internet. This is a new paradigm of connected technologies (IoT, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence) which run on a decentralized layer, which brings them together and give them new synergistic meaning. It goes from technology to the structure of society, shaping and improving it.

Web3 is the future that begins today. Let us make it come true.