What is ‘Web 3’? Gavin Wood who created the word offers his vision

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What is 'Web3'? Gavin Wood who invented the word gives his vision

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Computer researcher Gavin Wood created the term “Web 3.0” in 2014, setting out his vision for the future of the web.

The expression, likewise reduced to “Web3,” has actually ended up being a web buzzword just recently with prominent technologists, consisting of Twitter creator Jack Dorsey and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, disputing the significance of the term.

Wood, who is among the co-founders of Ethereum and creator of blockchain facilities business Parity Technologies, spoke with CNBC on an episode of the “Beyond the Valley” podcast to discuss his Web 3 vision.

What’s incorrect with the present web?

Proponents call Web 3 a decentralized variation of the web– one that is not controlled by a handful of effective gamers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Web 1 started with the concept of an open and decentralized web, however Web 2– the web we understand today– caused the birth of trillion dollar innovation business that have a strong impact online and own a great deal of the facilities the web is developed on.

“The big problem with this is … sort of the same thing as placing all your eggs in one basket, if something goes wrong with one of these services, you know, the service is suddenly unavailable for an awful lot of people,” Wood informed CNBC’s “Beyond the Valley” podcast.

“Furthermore, the keyword here is trust. We’re having to trust the people behind the services. We’re having to trust the owners of the companies that run the service … And so yeah, we kind of managed to architect ourselves into this, somewhat like dystopian version of what the world could be.”

So what is Web 3?

For Wood, Web 3 is really decentralized and a more democratic variation of the present web.

“Web3 is really sort of an alternative vision of the web, where the services that we use are not hosted by a single service provider company, but rather they’re sort of purely algorithmic things that are, in some sense, hosted by everybody. So it’s like, it’s very peer to peer, right? … The idea being that all participants sort of contribute a small slice of the ultimate service,” Wood stated.

“And thus, no one really has any advantage over anyone else … not in the same sense, at least as, as you know, when you, for example, go to Amazon or you go to eBay or Facebook, where the company behind the service really has absolute power over what it is that they do in providing the service.”

Web 3’s essential terms and tech

Blockchain is a crucial innovation behind Web 3. It is most-often connected with the cryptocurrency bitcoin and is the innovation that underpins it. The bitcoin blockchain is a public journal of activity of the bitcoin network. But bitcoin is not owned by a single business or individual and it is not released by a main authority like a reserve bank. Instead, it is decentralized and the network is kept by a worldwide group of individuals running specialized computer systems.

So blockchain is a crucial innovation and decentralization an essential expression.

Web 3 is based upon the concept of a “trustless” design. Right now, we need to trust business to provide the service they guarantee. But if Web 3 product or services are developed on blockchains and are decentralized then you ‘d just need to rely on the underlying algorithm to provide that item.

That brings its own dangers naturally.

What could a Web 3 variation of Twitter appear like?

Wood offered the example of a Web 3 variation of Twitter which he stated would provide more users manage over their posts and make validating identities much easier, for instance.

“So it’s much harder for someone to like, fake my identity, because we have … cryptographic-based proofs that I have done this, and only I could possibly have done this,” Wood stated.

“We have probably elements of sort of greater, like freedom of speech … in the sense that the system isn’t going to inherently have gatekeepers that in the same way that you know, there are Twitter employees that act effectively as gatekeepers to the system.”

Where does cryptocurrency enter this?

Web 3 supporters recommend cryptocurrencies will play a crucial function in the future of the web. An example might be where there is a Web 3 application that works on a specific blockchain that utilizes a particular digital coin.

For example, services that work on the Ethereum blockchain might need ether-based digital tokens.

Read more about cryptocurrencies from CNBC Pro

There have actually been countless virtual currencies that have actually turned up over the previous couple of years. But Wood stated that Web 3 the method he visualizes it, might not rely greatly on cryptocurrencies.

“I suspect that currency will continue to play a role in services. But I think … overall, we’re going to start seeing services be delivered without the need to use tokens,” Wood informed CNBC.

“And I think that’s going to be a big jump. And I think it is one of the key factors that’s going to open the door to the mainstream,” he included, recommending many people most likely will not wish to purchase great deals of various tokens to utilize a service.

How will guideline work?

Bitcoin itself has actually never ever been managed due to the fact that it’s extremely challenging to do provided the truth it is not owned by a single entity. However, organizations that touch cryptocurrency in some method, such as exchanges, frequently discover themselves under some sort of guideline.

So if a Web 3 service is developed on the very same theory of decentralization as bitcoin, how will regulators approach it?

For now, nations all over the world are still attempting to find out how finest to manage cryptocurrencies and associated innovations. Web 3 belongs of that discussion.

Wood recommends it will be challenging for authorities to manage the Web 3 services themselves. Instead, it might be in an app’s “own self interest” in regards to their item to generate guidelines that line up with regulators, Wood stated.

He included that regulators might want to manage the “users of the service rather than the service itself.”

Will it be completion of tech giants?

Web 3 supporters recommend that with Web 3, the power of innovation giants might be challenged.

However, those very same business like Microsoft and Twitter are likewise buying Web 3.

Wood stated it will be “hard to make a dent … in these Goliaths” however he compared their possible predicament to Microsoft in the late 2000 s and into the coming years.

“It didn’t matter that you were running the Windows operating system, or authoring your document in Microsoft Word … we use the web as a platform, and the web could be used on any operating system,” Wood stated.

“Ultimately … I would hope that Web3, fulfils the needs of the future in a way that can never really be fulfilled by these centralized service providers,” he included.