For context, I heard the term “Web 3.0” be used for the first time for everything being put on the blockchain. Then, it reminded me of a post on Mastodon saying that the fediverse is Web 3.0. After that I looked it up on the internet, and the definition included A.I. with crypto.
So I’m wondering, what is actually Web 3.0? What does it mean to you? Or maybe is Web 3.0 just another attempt at making investors pay up?
“Web3” is the crypto stuff. “Web 3.0” is federation.
Obviously, no one has a trademark on these names, anyone could make up a meaning, but yeah, these two definitions/names exist already.
They’re aspects of the same thing: decentralization/federation. The idea of Web 3.0 is to transition from massive centralized services to distributed federated services. The Fediverse is on the social media side of things (displace entities like Facebook), crypto is on the finance side of things (displace entities like Bank of America), NFTs are supposed to be on the distribution side of things (displace entities like Ticketmaster).
It’s a buzz word.
Web 1.0 is just websites. They envisioned everyone had their own web site to blog on. Geocities, ISP hosting, web rings, link aggregators, and simple human curated search engines. That kind of thing.
Web 2.0 basically meant APIs. You could stitch a weather API with a map API and make a weather map app. This kind of came true, but it wasn’t as free and open as people hoped for.
Web 3.0 is supposed the intersection of the web and distributed apps. Think games on the block chain like crypto kitties. It’s mostly been a flop since blockchain based decentralization is slow, expensive, and difficult for users. That being said there are successful use cases like online wallet management and distributed exchanges (defi).
One of the most distinguishing features of “web3” is the sheer level of handwaviness surrounding it. While you can find no end of press releases, crypto evangelists on Twitter, and venture capitalists extolling the virtues of web3, you will have a much harder time finding any definition that’s not so full of buzzwords that it becomes meaningless. That’s because “web3” is first and foremost a marketing term.
