- Lucia Blasco
- BBC News World

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Web3, the third era of the World Wide Web, guarantees extra safety and freedom
In our hyper-connected world, which is dominated by connections to the World Wide Web, it is arduous to think about specialists arguing that the Internet wants a “large change”.
However, it is exactly this ubiquity of the net that has led an increasing number of know-how professionals to behave as the “new part” of the Internet.
They insist that the present Internet, thought-about the “second era”, have to be modified to grow to be smarter. They argue that it ought to evolve right into a “semantic net” that, along with being extra environment friendly, provides us extra management over our information.
This is what they name the creation of Web 3.0, which many in the tech business name the “Great Revolution of the Internet.”
This new community, abbreviated Web3, will permit machines to interpret giant quantities of knowledge. This will permit us to work together extra deeply with different customers from any platform, amongst different issues.
In this “new chapter” of the Internet, we not want advanced working methods or giant “arduous disks” to retailer info, as a result of every part will probably be in the so-called “cloud”. In addition, every part will probably be a lot sooner and extra customizable.
In basic, it is attainable to say that Web 3 machines will “collaborate” with people extra successfully. However, its fundamental worth is the decentralization of the Internet: creating extra equitable networks and lowering the energy of the so-called “Internet giants” – the large firms in the digital know-how sector – behind this new idea.
This change has been working for years and is already affecting Silicon Valley. The time period Web3 was coined in 2014 by British Gavin Wood, co-founder of Etherium Cryptocurrency with Russian-Canadian Vitalik Buterin.
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Web 3 was created in 2014 by British engineer Gavin Wood
Just as Tim Berners-Lee is thought-about the “father of the World Wide Web”, Wood is thought-about the “father of the etherium”, the world’s second most generally used blockchain protocol. This know-how is the basis of Web3.
Wood, creator of the Polcadot open supply venture, started with the concept that the Internet have to be reshaped: creating new architectures with particular protocols to decentralize companies.
To obtain this, the British pc engineer created the Web3 Foundation – to “fund the analysis and growth groups that laid the basis for Web 3” – and for “Decentralized” at Parity Technologies, a blockchain infrastructure firm in Berlin (Germany). The net “
What is ‘decentralized’?
“Initially, the Internet was an open and decentralized protocol,” explains Ursula O’Quingtons, director of communications at Parity Technologies, to BBC Mundo (the BBC’s Spanish service). “It began to be concentrated in the Nineteen Nineties, with the large know-how firms you realize at present. What you need with Web3 is to return to the starting of what the Internet was: nobody largely controls the scope of communication in your every day life.
An essential a part of the Web 3 framework is blockchain know-how, which lets you create “blocks” and create a series of knowledge. Blockchain is primarily often known as the foundation of cryptocurrency.
If Web 1.0 (Web 1) is based mostly on hyperlinks and Web 2.0 (Web 2) is based mostly on social networks, then Web 3.0 (Web 3) is based mostly on blockchain know-how.
“We should be open-minded, as a result of blockchain is a lot greater than a cryptocurrency. Web 3 is much more fascinating than the worth of a token,” O’Queens stated.
In reality, the parts that make Web3 attainable have developed over the years, and in a method, it is already a actuality. However, its know-how has not but been assimilated or broadly utilized by the basic public.
‘Faster, safer and extra open’
Colin Evern has been engaged on Web 3 growth for 5 years. They level to 2 protocols, Filecoin and the IPFS ecosystem, developed by Protocol Lab, a blockchain know-how firm based mostly in San Francisco, California (USA), which additionally goals to “decentralize the net.”
“A variety of my job is to hurry up the transition from Web2 to Web3,” he informed BBC Mundo. “Our aim is to make the net sooner, safer, extra immune to assaults and extra free.”
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One of Web3’s said objectives is to provide customers extra energy over their information.
To perceive how Web3 will work and the way a lot sooner and extra versatile will probably be, you have to first perceive how the Internet was created and the way it modified over the years.
“If we glance again to the early days of the Internet – in the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies – we see that it existed earlier than the net: it was the integration of cables and networks that had been ‘linked to issues,'” Ivran remembers. “Originally there was a authorities venture referred to as Arpanet to switch info.”
In 1990, British Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web (WWW) at the CERN Research Institute in Switzerland. It was the first net to develop and the Internet reached the total world in the late 1990’s. But websites and portals of the time, reminiscent of Yahoo, nonetheless had static pages based mostly on hyperlinks – additionally referred to as simply hyperlinks, which take the consumer from one deal with to a different.
In 2000, Web 2.0 arrived. The fundamental growth of Web2, Evran remembers, is the indisputable fact that it “permits us to learn and write interactively.” “Mobile apps and the net can ‘discuss to one another’ and we can work together with them.”
The third mannequin, in keeping with Evran, will take the net into a good higher period. “The growth of Web 3.0 provides to the institution of belief, as civil liberties will probably be built-in into its underlying construction,” he argues.
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Amazon Web Services (AWS) controls greater than 40% of the information storage market
Evran additionally criticizes the “centralization” of Web 2.0. “Some cloud storage service suppliers, banks and huge governments have all the energy they usually can management and deal with information to generate profits and fulfill their pursuits,” says Ivran. “We can’t imagine that these creatures do not modify our information.”
New structure
So what modifications with Web3? “It modifications the entire structure of the net,” Evran replies. Experts say, for instance, Web3 “will permit customers to entry hundreds of knowledge facilities round the world and have the ability to select who and the way they maintain their information.”
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are presently main the marketplace for cloud information storage. The first firm, with its subsidiary, AWS, controls 41.5% of the whole, in keeping with McAfee information for 2019. It is adopted by Microsoft’s Azure 29.4% and Google Cloud 3%.
The three firms personal half of the world’s 600 largest information facilities, in keeping with a report by Synergy Research Group. Evran says there will probably be a “clear mechanism” for verifying information on Web3 and fixing points like pretend information – the so-called “pretend information”.
In the most technical half, there is the situation of protocol. “When you open Google or one other browser and go to an internet site, you utilize the HTTP protocol [nascido com a World Wide Web de Berners-Lee]. You ‘inform’ this protocol to seek out information in particular places, ”explains Ivran.
He compares the mannequin to discovering a guide in the metropolis. “It’s like, to discover a guide, it’s a must to undergo the New York Public Library. If that library collapses or the authorities places up safety guards, you’ll not have the ability to entry the contents. Centrally managed buildings.”
Web3 works in a different way. “In the world of Web3, each copy of the guide will probably be compressed right into a cryptographic algorithm that can’t be modified. And we can share it with out being linked to a community,” says Ivran.
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The present HTTP protocol was born in the 1990’s with the World Wide Web
It is a “peer-to-peer” (P2P) know-how that enables a number of customers to immediately trade assets on an equal foundation, which, in keeping with Evran, is not attainable when utilizing the present Web2 and HTTP protocols. .
Orsula O’Kuinghttons explains that Web3’s blockchain know-how is very safe and “at the second, for greater than ten years, nobody has been capable of entry it.” “The situation of safety is essential in the age in which we stay, as our lives and our information are rising on the Internet,” provides specialists.
Slow course of
Those who be part of Web3 predict that these modifications will give Internet customers extra energy over the info they’ve and the information they share, making a free and extra egalitarian Internet.
But the promise that Web 3.0 might finish the dominance of tech giants like Google or Facebook raises doubts. There have been skeptical voices, reminiscent of Elon Musk, chief govt of Tesla and SpaceX, who posted sarcastic feedback on Twitter a couple of days in the past. “Has anybody seen Web3? I can’t discover it.”
Or the voice of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who described Web3 as “a centralized group, however with a unique label.”
Colin Evran, nevertheless, doesn’t lose his enthusiasm for the novelty.
“The step from Web1 to Web2 was an enormous transition that took a few years. The transition from Web2 to Web3 is inevitable, however it is not going to occur in a single day, it’s going to occur in a few years. It is simply the first step.”
It highlights the participation of members of the world know-how group. “The variety of builders concerned is a transparent indication that future Internet makers are betting on Web3.”
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Work on creating Web3 is nonetheless in its infancy
Evran believes that Web3 will “replace the Internet with a totally new paradigm and be extra democratic than Web2”. “If we concentrate on growing the net, we can get information again into the fingers of customers in the subsequent 5 or ten years. And that is the world I would like for myself and my youngsters.”
O’Kuinghttons agrees that change “is not going to be a straightforward activity, however we have to have a extra simply and equitable Internet.” “We’re nonetheless in the very early levels. It’s all simply began to increase, it is nonetheless beneath development,” specialists say.
“But in 2021, now we have already seen a giant enhance with the progress of NFT [bens digitais] And metavers [realidades virtuais]. In 2022, we’ll see vital modifications, reminiscent of the growth of this know-how, which is nothing greater than Web3. “
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