Some of you may remember the early days of the World Wide Web. The era of AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail. Their sole purpose was to display information and they only linked to each other via hyperlinks. These web pages were not responsive and there was very limited user interaction. You could not even render every website using every browser because there was no universal standard. With the introduction of broadband Internet, the enhancement of web browsers and our urge to connect, started the era of what Tim O'Reilly called The Web 2.0. Collaboration became the focus and users started to consume, as well as to contribute information through blogs, social media platforms like Facebook, and content platforms like YouTube. We could call this the Read- Write- Publish era. According to the International Telecommunication Union, the number of Internet users increased from 738 million to 3.2 billion over the period of 2000 to 2015. These users were willingly giving away their data to be allowed to participate for free in this shiny new world, or just out of convenience. Big digital corporations realized that they could make a fortune by collecting personal user information, their browsing behavior, or their preferred online shops, and then sell it to the highest bidder. While most people still claim that they do not mind, and actually like the personalized advertisements they receive, others started worrying about the possibilities of user manipulation through targeted content distribution. They envision a more user-centered and private Web, which is fair and transparent. Rather than concentrating the power which is essentially the data in the hands of huge data repositories with questionable motives, It would be returned to the rightful owners, the users. Where the Web 2.0 created new opportunities, the economic engine is largely privatized and monopolized. Entities like Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb for example, have created private networks for public infrastructure which they dominate. It is easy to see how this can be considered undesirable amid the increasing concerns of data privacy. Web 3.0 is slated to bring about a paradigm shift that will change not only how developers create websites, but also how people interact with those websites, ultimately allowing individual users to share value across a more open, a fairer, and more transparent network. Let us now discuss a few key advantages that define Web 3.0. First off, under Web 3.0, there will be no longer a central point of control for user-generated data. Large corporations and government entities will no longer have the power to function as gatekeepers of information. User data is controlled by the users who can grant access to third parties according to their privacy needs. With technologies like Ethereum, it will become possible to provide trustless environments to store data, where the data is securely encrypted and rules cannot be broken. At present with Web 2.0 still dominating, it is usually all or nothing when it comes to ownership of data. For example, once you sign up to Facebook, all content you share there belongs to them according to their terms and conditions. But this data does not necessarily stay on their service only as we saw with the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018. Some website could even sell your information to advertisers and marketers. Web 3.0 provides users with encryption that ensures they will regain complete control of their data. Users will be able to control who and under what conditions third parties will have access to their data according to their privacy needs. Because data is not stored centrally anymore but is decentralized and distributed throughout the network, in order to succeed, hackers would have to compromise the entire network. This would be computationally infeasible and as a result, reduce hacks and data breaches. Web 3.0 would also solve the problem of state security agencies looking to impede on the privacy of users. In 2013, the secure email provider Lavabit, chose to shut down rather than to hand its SSL keys over to the US government to protect Edward Snowden. Incidence like this will become a thing of the past. The next key feature of Web 3.0 is interoperability. Currently software is usually tied to an operating system increasing development costs tremendously. Using a platform like Ethereum that comes with its own virtual machine, decentralized applications also called dapps can run on any device while being highly customizable. If you recall one of the key features of blockchain, is permissionless participation. On any block chain, anyone can create an address and participate on the network. Web 3.0 will have the ability to leverage this design feature and provide users with an experience where they will not be discriminated by country of origin, by sex, gender, income, or any other demographic aspect. The Web 3.0 will also leverage one of the key benefits of distributed networks. The absence of a central point of failure means that there is a very small chance that services will be interrupted due to system failures. Incidents like denial of service attacks will become virtually impossible. Now, how is this fantastic Web 3.0 implemented and coming to life? For the end-user, nothing would change much. The Internet will still be accessed through a browser. It might just not be Google Chrome, Firefox or Safari anymore. Instead of logging into any platform with the username and a password, it is likely that private keys will be used to sign in. This also highlights the importance of the private key. Once lost, it's gone and all the data is without an owner. Therefore, a secure backup is crucial in the Web 3.0 world. Behind the scenes, there will be a gigantic change. The whole technology of storing data will move towards a decentralized system where documents are encrypted and distributed, stored on peer-to-peer computers instead of a centralized server. Decentralized file-sharing systems like IPFS and StorJ and social networks like Acacia are already emerging. Encrypted instant messaging is not that new anymore. Even WhatsApp does it by now. But the data is still stored somewhere on their servers. Status on the other hand, office encrypted peer -to- peer messaging. While Whisper which is a part of the Ethereum peer-to-peer protocol suite. It allows for messaging between users via the same network that the blockchain runs on. There are even decentralized operating systems like EOS being developed. The transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 will be slow and steady. It will take time to integrate 3.0 applications with our existing infrastructure. But once it is adopted, we will regain the ownership and control over our data while having a system that does not discriminate and is almost unfavorable.
