Glossary
What is web3?
Web3 is a new concept and indicates a second revolution in the Internet, which is still in progress. To understand its meaning, we need to comprehend a little about the recent history of the World Wide Web.
The first pages of the Internet, in the early 1990s, were purely static and read-only. There was no interaction between the site and the visitor. Today we call this era web1, to differentiate it from web2, or web2.0
The first revolution in websites occurred with the arrival of social networks. In these spaces, there is a great deal of interaction between the page and the user, and the user is often responsible for creating the content for the page. So we move from read-only sites to sites where writing is also possible.
A significant problem in these social networks is that the user does not own the content created by him. Social networks use user-created content to engage new participants. The network obtains income through the sale of advertising and may or may not reward the content creator.
Another worrying factor of such social networks is the almost indiscriminate use of user data, since the network owns the data and may be used to target advertising. It is even possible that social networks sell such data to third parties. Thus, web2, based on reading and writing, has issues of privacy and non-rewarding of user-created content.
It is in this context that the web3 revolution is taking place. In addition to reading and writing, processes that are typical of social networks, the user will now have the right to their data and its content through tokenization. Whatever you create, it must now belong to you. A post on a social network can be turned into a non- and be sold on a decentralized marketplace.
Another common idea to web3 today is the Metaverse, a virtual environment where users own items such as a virtual land. Still an idea in development, it is related to the question of ownership thas has been already mentioned. That is why the issue of fungible and non-fungible tokens is so essential in web3.
On web3, users also have the right to their personal data. They can freely choose to sell their data for a reward or get paid to pay attention to specific advertisements. Experiments of this type are already underway, as in the case of the Brave browser, which rewards its users with tokens. However, for this feature to be fully implemented, privacy issues must be resolved. As we will see in another lesson, the data recorded on most blockchains is currently public and unencrypted.
Web3 attempts to move beyond the centralization of social media and create a more decentralized and democratic environment for peer interaction, where users are rewarded for their contributions. Although it is an idea that has yet to reach maturity, if there is a guideline for it, it would be the following motto: not just read and write, but also own.
