Web3 and original Web
Web3 and blockchain technologies have become one of the breakthrough things over the past decade. Free software began its development from the beginning of the development of the Internet, but under the influence of the monopolies of large corporations, the Internet has lost a significant part of its freedom and independence. But the enthusiasts have not lost faith in the freedom of the Internet and have continued to develop free and open source software.
With the launch of Bitcoin, the open and free software movement has gained a new round of popularity and an influx of new enthusiasts. Over time, Web3 has taken over many of the ideas of the original Internet.
Ethereum technology continued what Bitcoin started and offered a new vector of development for decentralized and free technologies.
What is Web3.0?
Today’s world wide web, or the internet, has two key missing properties:
- It doesn’t hold “state”, independent of trusted operators
- It doesn’t have a native mechanism to transfer state
Lack of state is a result of the simplicity of the protocols that the web is built on, such as HTTP and SMTP. At any moment, if you were to query a node (a device connected to the internet) about its history or current state, it has no idea. From a user’s perspective, this would be like using the internet for the first time from a new browser (no history, favorites, saved settings or auto-complete), every time you use anything connected to the internet. Imagine having to submit your user information every time you’re trying to use a service or downloading all your favorite apps every time you open your device. The internet would not be useable, or at least extremely inefficient.
State, however, is crucial to the development of services and applications as it can represent value. As such, two key developments have remedied the state drawback. First, as Brendan Eich highlights, cookies were invented in order for web based applications written in JavaScript to preserve state on each local device. The problem with cookies however is that they are created and controlled by service providers, not the user. The user does not have any control over which provider is giving them state or has access to their state.
The second development that addressed the lack of state is centralized service providers that hold user state on their own machines. Today’s large internet companies like Google and Facebook all hold the state, and hence the value created, by billions of people. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, as their users have benefited from services and value created by the same companies. The problem lies in how the internet benefits these centralized companies way more than it does the public.
The second key missing property of the internet, the lack of a native mechanism to transfer state, is partly a by-product of the first issue. If you can’t hold state (and the value it creates), you can’t transfer it. The ability to easily and efficiently transfer value is at the heart of economic development and modern finance. Any improvement in how efficiently you can transfer value has cascading positive effects. Today’s internet has made it easier to transfer information by orders of magnitude and thus has created immense potential for new businesses and services. However, if there’s no easy way for businesses to trade value, they need to find another way to profit from their services.
This is why, over the years, the web’s incumbent business model has become advertising, as advertising businesses are the only ones that can efficiently store and transmit the state of billions of users. Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with advertising. But the problem, this time, is three-fold:
- Third-party intermediaries facilitate and profit from every single advertising transaction;
- Advertising favors established businesses, which puts new businesses at a disadvantage, limiting the economy’s growth potential;
- A richer advertising economy is reliant upon more user data (which feeds ad models), creating misaligned incentives with users and bad UX.
This part is about what the Web 3 stack looks like today, and likely in the future:
The layers in the framework above start from the top and get built down the y-axis. Colors represent compatibility between modules in the different layers. For example, today’s Crypto Goods (yellow), as depicted above, are compatible with EVM (blue to yellow) but not with the Bitcoin Script (green to red). EVM, in turn, is compatible with the Ethereum Blockchain (blue), but not with the Bitcoin Blockchain (green). This allows us to place in to the framework a future Crypto Good that is compatible with the Bitcoin Script and hence is recorded on the Bitcoin Blockchain (although this is highly unlikely due to technical challenges). Such a modularity is crucial to the robustness of Web 3, as upgrading one of the layers should not require a complete rewrite of everything below it. It’s also important to note that although the modules within each layer may end up looking completely different in 5 years, the layers themselves are intended to be comprehensive and cover all the pieces that make up Web 3.
Web 2.0 vs Web 3.0
Web 2.0 vs Web 3.0 Architecture
A simplistic version of today’s Web 2.0 architecture includes a client software, usually a browser or a self-contained application, and a suite of servers providing content and logic, which are all controlled by the same entity — let’s call it Game Co. In this model, Game Co. has sole control over who may access its servers’ contents and logic, as well as the track record of which users own what and how long that content is kept live. There are many examples in the pages of technology history of how internet companies have changed the rules on their users or stopped their service, with users having no power to preserve the value they’ve created.
Web 3.0 architecture leverages what’s enabled by a universal State Layer. It does this by allowing two things:
- Allowing applications to place some or all of their content and logic on to a public blockchain. Contrary to standard Web 2.0, this content and logic can become public and accessible by anyone.
- Allowing users to exert direct control over this content and logic. Unlike Web 2.0, users don’t necessarily need accounts or privileged API keys to interact with what’s on the blockchain.
Why i believe in TheGraph
TheGraph project is one of the most modern and breakthrough projects in Web3. TheGraph enhances the user experience of Ethereum and helps other projects integrate into the Ethereum ecosystem. The TheGraph project makes Ethereum more attractive for mass use. I think TheGraph will help Ethereum reach a new level of adoption. I’m a believe in TheGraph. TheGraph is Great project for the Great Web.
