WEB 3.0 - new reality of the Internet environment

15.04.2021 | asorokin

At the beginning of the Internet, or rather the development of Web-technologies, the naming of versions, in particular 1.0 was not common. All information on the Web was contained in the form of static pages without the possibility of interactions with the user. AOL and MSN Messenger were used to exchange messages, in addition to classic e-mail, and the transfer of information was extremely slow. Nowadays, few people can remember what a 54 kbps phone line connection felt like. Everything was slow and information exchange took a very long time.

The next step up was WEB 2.0. Increased speed allowed the use of interactive content on sites. Now no one is surprised to watch the video online or live broadcasting. And Youtube, Wikipedia, and Facebook made it possible for ordinary users to express their opinions. Thus, the “mouthpiece” has become the destiny not only of the chosen ones, but also of ordinary citizens. However, even existing implementations have many disadvantages.

What’s wrong with the modern Internet

The main problem with the current implementation of the World Wide Web is commonly referred to as global centralization. Although the majority of sites belong to different companies, and a company without a web is less trustworthy, information about end users somehow concentrated in the hands of a few major players. The global leaders include Goggle (the undisputed top 1), Amazon and Facebook. In Russia, Yandex has the most data, then social networks - Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki.

Most of the data is collected from search engines, they are also the largest advertising platforms. Roughly speaking, WEB 2.0 appeared at the time of targeting – ads began to show under certain parameters of the target audience. Many consider uncontrolled data collection the modern scourge of the Internet.

The second problem with centralization is the fact that the information is located in one place. Although the sites themselves are owned by various companies and individuals, they are physically hosted on just a few spots around the world. Large cloud players with their own data centers are gradually replacing smaller hosters. This leads to one of the main problems – DDOS attacks. Although they manage to cope with them, but denial of service occurs even at large hosts. Also, we can not forget about the constant leaks of user data: although they say that hackers are responsible for it, but it becomes available due to centralization.

And the last thing is the disabling of major pipelines. For example, the recent situation with Telegram in Russia clearly illustrated this problem. For example, many sites use servers owned by Amazon and Google for their work. The messenger services are also hosted there. Thus, in an attempt to block Telegram on the territory of the country, the authorities also restricted access to ordinary sites, which caused a whole wave of indignation and ridicule at Roskomnadzor.

What is WEB 3.0 in simple words

All of the above-mentioned problems can be solved by a new iteration of the Internet. The main trigger for the development was the blockchain, or more precisely, its implementation in the cryptocurrency sphere. Thus, in the transition to a new level, information in the network will be stored in a decentralized way. There will no longer be a single server, such as a domain name server. A special meta-language describing the stored information will be created to search and exchange information. This will get rid of one of the existing problems – uniform information on different sites, which will bring high-level professionals into the industry of content creation without worrying about authorship.

Because of storing information on different computers around the world, a denial of service attack becomes unprofitable. This increases the reliability of the Internet as a whole. And most importantly, decentralization will almost completely get rid of censorship. But there is a downside to the latter - it will become impossible to remove information that violates ethics, there are several examples, ranging from drugs and weapons to terrorist manuals.

Advantages of the new Internet

• there’s more personal responsibility for content creators and users;

• privacy is increased;

• the role of monopolies in many areas of digital technology is reduced;

• no regulatory authority will increase freedom of dissemination;

• ease of proving authorship of material;

• increased difficulty of hacking attacks aimed at stealing data, and leaks through employees will practically disappear;

• ease of configuring different applications for different platforms;

• increased availability of the Internet.

Although there is not yet a full implementation of the next generation Internet, there have already been attempts to create something similar. For example, Pavel Durov tried to develop TON, a decentralized platform, with blockchain at its core, but he did not dare to go against the US SEC.

Steps are already being taken on this path anyway. Storj and Filecoin are already working to store information. Tox messenger and steemit can be used to exchange messages and maintain social pages. There are also a number of solutions for app development and physical networking devices.

But to be launched, one problem will have to be solved – who will pay for it. Right now everything is paid by “user data”, or more precisely by showing ads. And for the effectiveness of the promotion sites collect all possible data, for example, going to Yandex, the user unknowingly transmits the data about all the open tabs on the device. For the new network to work, end users will have to get used to making payments to the final producers of content. Cryptocurrency, which is increasingly developing and gaining in popularity, will be suitable for this purpose.

And although the transition to version 3.0 will take time, and the successful launch will require interaction with existing services, the process is unlikely to stop.