Web 3.0: Decoding the era of decentralization and its Gen Z connect

As we step into a new era of internet, understanding its evolution – from syntactic to semantic and centralized to decentralized – helps us understand the past, present, and the way the future is going to take shape.

The internet is the infrastructure, and the web is the way users communicate. Web 0.0 was created in 1990 and was followed by Web 1.0, which was purely a read-only (HTML) and had?3 million websites. The interfaces were minimalistic in nature at the time. And internet was known as ARPANET, developed by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1960s to share resources & information. Web 1.0 is also referred to as the Syntactic Web, and the user’s role is limited to reading information provided by content producers.

Web 2.0 (the engaging or social web) was introduced to the world in late 1999 and it led to the era of read-write and the ability to create user-generated content with much more flexibility. This was a golden era for social companies such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube, during which users could publish and generate their own content (Style sheets were introduced for dynamic rendering). This era belonged to the FANG (Facebook, Apple, Netflix, and Google).

However, web 2.0 had its own set of problems. “Walled Gardens” aka access to first party data was restricted by platforms rather than creators. Monetization drove creators; but as compared to owners, the creators were not enjoying a large share of the pie.?Further, regulations and restrictions were introduced by platforms. As a result, valuable content and context between the influencers and fanbase were lost.

A crisis in technology leadership was looming and soon the benefits of web 2.0 were to become privy to few. With the gap in transparency and accountability widening, it was only a matter of time before the current state of internet made way for a more refined version.?

Welcome to Web 3.0 aka decentralization, disruption, and digital assets

Web 3.0 a.k.a. semantic (read-write-execute) web apps that can now connect with each other, exchange data, execute and understand your persona better. They can provide better recommendations, become intelligent with the help of AI (Artificial Intelligence), and enrich the context even further.

Web 3.0 helps you own and define your own internet. Instead of companies, we now have DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) that work between creators and consumers, and they are defined by rules and assets owned by them rather than the companies — breaking the shackles of first-party data.

Web 3.0 also has the ability to make systems more stable as they are dispersed and more equitable and allow members to participate and be resilient. This could also usher in the age of democracy-driven enterprises that are decentralized in nature.

Here are a few ways in which Web 3.0 can revolutionize the internet as we know it:

• Decentralization is powered by blockchain and blockchain brings provenance, trust, and transparency which is the key to building open communities.
• Web 3.0 has led to the rise of distributed apps or decentralized apps (Dapps) where there will be no single point of failure and no central authority. They are transparent, have a greater level of encryption, have better heuristic methods to secure, and are completely trustless.

However, transparency brings compliance and liability into question. How will the different stakeholders in this environment be regulated? Who will a consumer report to if things go wrong? Will this lead to anarchy?

This rise in web 3.0 has already occurred across different domains, including payments (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Polkadot), storage (Storj, IPFS, Filecoin), compute (Solana), enterprise blockchain (Hyperledger, Kaleido), social networks (STEEM, DTube, XR Sports) and play to earn (Axie).

Web 3.0 is still evolving. Most Dapps work on on-chain and off-chain concepts to address latency, and the throughput of the transactions is still evolving. Ownership of assets is still not completely on blockchain.

Web 3.0 has also heralded new experiences such as the metaverse, where people can create avatars and experience the digital universe. According to Gartner, it is projected that by 2026, 25% of the population will spend at least an hour in the metaverse before they buy anything physical. 30-35% of the organizations will have their own metaverse thus leading to the rise of meta-commerce. This will lead to the growth of newer business models hitherto unheard of.

What are the challenges?

On an average, a Bitcoin or Ethereum transaction can take up to 30 to 60 minutes to complete, as the protocols are evolving from proof of work (POW) to proof of stake (POS), and the number of nodes that need consensus is serial in nature.

Completing an ERP transaction, on the other hand, takes a few milli seconds.

Web 3.0 is like internet 1.0. And is in this phase – where government is at a nascent stage of charting out policies and regulations – instances of nefarious activities are not unheard of. Take the Sam Bankman-Fried case for instance. However, with every challenge, there is an opportunity to reimagine and even better the existing technology; and that’s true for web 3.0 as well.

In a way, web 3.0 is a response to the accentuated demand for decentralization, driven by the younger and informed Gen Z. This generation takes active interest in everything – from politics to environment – and transparency is a core value that takes the top spot on their list. Engaging this generation, essentially the future workforce, will unarguably mean take a leap towards a more transparent, fair, and decentralized system, powered by blockchain, and hosted on web 3.0.?