Hello guys! In this post we'll be looking into the web and internet, the problems of the current web, blockchains, web3, and how web3 and blockchains works together.
Let's dive in!!.
What is internet
Internet is a decentralised network of computers interconnected together for different purposes.
This purposes are defined by what we - the users of internet, use it for; example communication, providing services, watching videos, playing games, etc.
Then what is Web/World Wide Web/W3
The World Wide Web or Web or W3 was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 as a system of information communication built on top of the internet, where information is communicated through webpages made of HTML(Hypertext Markup Language) and other web resources like images, documents, all delivered by a web server and rendered by the web browser, and interlink to one another via hyperlinks.
The Web is just one way of information communication that relies on the internet. Email is another way in which information meant for a specific user - identified by an email address, is sent to an email server which then relays the information to the identified user's email client.
The internet and the web from their origins has been decentralised in nature.
No one one entity controlled most of it. Anonymity and privacy was built into its nature, users would dial up to a specific server to get or share information and that's all - no data tracking, no data privacy violation, no data black markets.
But as the web and internet evolved, innovations and improvements came in, some companies dominated the web space, and so did issues and problems. Let's talk about the problems a bit - Centralisation
Centralisation in itself is not a problems as it has its advantages. But it turns out the disadvantages are more critical.
Because a handful of companies now own larger portions of the services that run on the internet, they have more control.
Google for example has services that run on the internet and with very large user and data base, think Gmail, Google cloud, Google Search Engine, etc.
Same is true for other companies like Facebook, think WhatsApp, Instagram,
They've dominated almost the entire space and it's now almost impossible to compete with them as they consistently buy out or copy features of other growing services which means more control and data.
So what happens is that they're in control of most of the data people put out on the web and internet at large and as such, centralisation and it's disadvantages have come in picture.
The following problems have emerged.
They decide what to do with your data.
They do what they like on the space as nothing can stop them.
They control what you can do on the internet since they're the providers of most of the services you use.
They experience outages and downtimes in which case there's almost nothing else you can do except wait.
As all the data is stored in one place, attacks are attracted, so your data may end up in the wrong hands.
You can't really compete with them on the space as they have the resources to buy you out or copy you when you walk in their steps.
Because they run a centralised architecture, when they experience outages or server failures, all the websites and softwares that depends on their services stops working.
The Solution
With all the above problems, the solution to most of it would be to decentralise the Web we have now, and that's what Web 3.0 or web3 has come to do and in a moment, we'll understand how.
Based on the history of internet and how the Web has being used, the Web can be split into two generations or eras.
Web 1.0
This is the era of the beginning of internet, when the web mostly consisted of static webpages that the user just read information from. No interaction. Only the website owners created information and the web was decentralised at this time. It's also called reading era.Web 2.0
This is the era we are in now. The era where interactivity has being incorporated into the web. Now users can read and as well as create contents on the web. It's the social interaction era. It's also called reading and writing era. It's in this era that all the above problems have emerged because of centralisation by the big players.
And now the third era Web 3.0 has kicked off.
This is a new era of the web. This era is supposed to deliver the web from the shackles of the disadvantages of centralisation and solve alot of the problems web 2.0 is facing currently like ones mentioned above.
Web 3.0 is an idea for a new iteration of the web based on blockchain technology.
Because of how blockchain works, it'll be the backbone of web3; let's see how.
So what is Blockchain
Blockchain is a network of peer-2-peer connected computers aka nodes, where each node maintains and updates a copy of a distributed ledger or record which is synced across the network.
Blockchain is much like every other network that forms the internet, except that in this network, they share a record of data among the computers (nodes) on the network, and each node can update the record.
When the record is updated by a node, the updated record is then shared across the other nodes; which means at each point, all the nodes has to have an up-to-date version of the record.
Blockchain network is said to be decentralised because there's no central control of the network. If one node goes down, the other nodes will still be active. And other nodes can freely join the network.
The record or ledger shared on the blockchain is also decentralised because there's no single source of truth. All the nodes are sources of truths. Each node has up-to-date version of the record.
It's because of the decentralised nature of blockchain along with the features that decentralisation brings like transparency and security, that Web 3.0 would be based on it.
There's more...
Adding to the decentralisation of blockchains, some blockchains also allow for running codes on the network.
They allow computer codes to be added to the network's record, and those codes would be executed, on-call, inside one computer(node) on the network.
These codes are called smart contracts and amazingly, these smart contracts can read/write data to the shared record/ledger on that network. These are what makes web3 amazing.
In web3, things still look same as in web2; web browsers would still be used to access apps on the web3, apps can still have backend and frontends, webpages will still be made up of HTML, you can still use regular frontend libraries and frameworks.
But in web3 though, apps are now called dApps(decentralised apps), and their backend codes would be smart contracts which will run on the blockchain. This is why they're called dApps.
Summary
The fact that dApps have their backend codes running on a decentralised network (blockchain) paves the way for new ideas, opportunities, and innovations.
Your dApp can leverage on that feat and shock the world....
Thanks for reading and your corrections are welcomed...😃😃
Top comments (2)
Shock the world that someone's actually come up with a use for it?
I mean shock the world in a positive way 😉