Let’s talk Web3. If you skipped the Technology part, welcome back. Let’s try to summarize what Web3 actually is. Web3 isn’t a clearly defined set of technologies or protocols or workflows, but Web2.0 wasn’t either really. Just like Web2.0 Web3 has certain technological foundations and assumptions but is just as much an aspirational term, a set of overlapping visions, ideologies and goals. In a lot of ways Web3 is doing something and calling it Web3. But with all the contradictions and unclarity a few things are foundational to Web3.
Let’s try a quick first attempt of a description:
Web3 is a blockchain based backend and infrastructure layer on top of existing network technologies that aims at restructuring the internet in a radically decentralized and individual way. Services required for individuals to be able to act within that new infrastructure (like identity management, content storage, etc.) are provided by decentralized smart contracts or services built on them. While frontends to use the Web3 Internet still look similar to current ones (browser based apps) they no longer get their content from centralized servers but from blockchain based content providers giving individuals enforceable ownership of the data and content they create or buy.
Web3 is not intended for you to throw your browser away. In fact many things are not supposed to change: You can for example write a comment under someone’s blog article. But that comment will not live on the server of that person but is stored in a blockchain and attached to one of your identities meaning that it can never be fully deleted. The original post might no longer show it but it’s still there and linked to the original content.