What is web 3.0 ?

The World Wide Web has had an amazing transformation since Tim Berners-Lee created it in 1989. The Web has had a significant effect on how people acquire and share data, communicate, and interact with one another, from its initial days as a rather static storage of information to its transition into a global platform for interactive experiences and services. And now, because of recent advancements in blockchain and other emerging technologies, the Web appears to be about to experience another paradigm upheaval. The final version of the Web may be Web 3.0.

History of web or internet

To truly understand what Web 3.0 is, you must first understand what Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 were and are.

Web 1.0

Consider the early years of the web, if you can.Websites tended to be static text pages with minimal to no design. Most of them were walls of text, occasionally broken up by a picture or dancing baby animation. Web 1.0, however, isn't truly characterised by its few moving visuals or extraordinarily slow load times. Instead, it's defined by how communication was conducted there.

In the dawn of the Internet, websites were static. There weren't many ways to communicate with one another. Emails existed, to be sure, but only the recipients could see the content. There were no social media groups for people who shared interests, blog comment sections, or Twitter Spheres where you could tell your ideas into other people's feeds.

To reply to a blog, you could, at most, create a blog, link to the blog you wished to respond to, and then compose a blog post in the hopes that the original blogger may read it. As forums eventually gave way to the world of Web 2.0, all of this would alter.

Web 2.0

A fundamental shift in how people utilise the internet is referred to as "web 2.0." Web 2.0's interactivity, social networking, and user-generated content have totally supplanted the uninteresting webpages of Web 1.0 over the last 15 to 20 years. User-generated material has exploded in popularity in recent years thanks to Web 2.0's unequalled reach, which nearly instantly allows millions of people across the world to watch it.

Key technological advancements like social media and mobile internet connectivity, as well as the almost universal availability of potent mobile devices like iPhones and Android-powered devices, have all contributed to Web 2.0's exponential expansion. These advancements made it possible for apps like Airbnb, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Uber, WhatsApp, and YouTube to dominate in the second decade of this millennium, considerably enhancing online engagement and usability.

Many Web 2.0-focused businesses, like Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta (previously Facebook), and Netflix, are among the largest by market capitalization firms in the world as a result of the amazing revenue growth of these dominant platforms.

Web 3.0

Web 3.0 is the third stage of the evolution of web technology (Web3). The foundational layer upon which the internet is constructed is known as the "web," which provides website and application services.

Because Web 3.0 is still being developed and defined, there isn't a single, agreed definition that applies to all instances. However, it is evident that Web 3.0 will heavily rely on blockchain-based technology and place a major emphasis on decentralised applications. In order to enable more intelligent and adaptive apps, Web 3.0 will also make use of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).

Another component of the growing definition of Web 3.0 is the notion of an internet. One of many people who has campaigned for semantic technology to be incorporated into the web is its creator, Tim Berners-Lee. It took more than ten years to adapt from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, and it is estimated that Web 3.0's full adoption and redesign of the web would take at least as long.

If the trend of change is followed from Web 1.0, a static information provider where people read websites but rarely interact with them, to Web 2.0, an interactive and social web enabling user collaboration, it can be presumed that Web 3.0 will modify both how internet sites are developed and how people engage with them.

Key features of web 3.0

The ubiquitous qualities, semantic web, and AI may all be considered in the design of Web 3.0. Giving individuals quicker access to more accurate data is the justification for using AI. An AI-powered website needs to be able to shift through the material and deliver the stuff that it thinks a certain visitor will find relevant.

Social bookmarking as a search engine can produce better results than Google because the results are websites that people have voted on. However, human manipulation of these results is also possible. Using AI, it may be possible to discriminate between real and fraudulent results, producing results similar to social media and social bookmarking but without criticism.

Virtual assistants, which are currently becoming more prevalent as features integrated into devices or through third-party apps, will also be made available on an artificially intelligent web.

The goal of the semantic web is to organise and store data in a way that teaches a system what certain data means. To put it another way, a website should be able to comprehend the words used in search queries just like a human would, allowing it to produce and distribute better information. This approach will also employ artificial intelligence (AI); the semantic web will educate a computer what the data means, and AI will then utilise the knowledge.

The key components of Web 3.0 that help define what the third generation of the web is anticipated to be like are as follows:

1.   Cryptocurrency enabled-Use of cryptocurrencies, which largely replaces the use of fiat money, is a key component of Web 3.0 services. 

2.   Decentralized-Web 3.0 will be decentralized as opposed to the first two generations of the web, where governance and applications were mostly centralized. Applications and services will be available in a distributed manner without a central authority.

3.   Blockchain based- The development of decentralized applications and services is made possible by blockchain. Blockchain uses a distributed method to disseminate data and connections across services as opposed to centralised database architecture. Blockchain can also provide an immutable ledger of transactions and activities in a decentralised setting, assisting in the provision of verified authenticity. 

4.   Autonomous and artificially intelligent-A key aspect of Web 3.0 is more automation overall, which will mostly be driven by AI.