Julien Gaillard, former Chief Data Scientist at Twitter Spaces, announced on Twitter that he is leaving the Silicone Valley social media giant to become head of data science at DeFi lending platform Aave.
He said in this Twitter comment that Web3’s core values are decentralization, innovation, fairness, and experimentation, which sums up much of the sentiment of the early Internet.
Meanwhile, David Marcus, Cryptocurrency Project Manager at Facebook (now known as Meta), also launched his own company Web3 January 1st.
Another Meta employee, Evan Cheng, also left in September to start MystyLab. He is currently focused on building blockchain infrastructure and revealed in a meeting that 80% of his team’s employees come from the Web2 internet industry.
All this proves that an era of web3 is coming. In this article, we will introduce web3 and the problem it solves.
The World of Web3
Web3 is a new iteration of the internet based on blockchain technology, developed with decentralization and empowerment at its core.
While Web1 was a content delivery network and Web2 builds the social media ecosystem, Web3 aims to be a distributed and decentralized network.
Although the concept of Web3 is still vague, most people envision more widely distributed management and oversight rights, with community members and users having the ability to discuss, propose, vote, and implement changes.
Blockchain has its origins in Bitcoin, an early major currency that does not rely on credit intermediaries, but instead relies on a distributed and decentralized public ledger. It is a decentralized consensus mechanism free from centralized institutions.
A pioneer in the application layer of blockchain technology, decentralized finance (DeFi) is an important step in the journey from the Internet to the Web3. DeFi continues to dominate the application layer of blockchain technology, and Footprint analysis calculated the total volume locked (TVL) of decentralized finance projects over the past year, showing massive growth since 2020
What’s next for Web3?
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are already widely used in blockchain, NFT and metaverse projects. Other areas, such as cloud storage, are also growing rapidly.
What problems does Web3 solve?
The internet is dominated by a few large internet companies, like Google, Youtube and Facebook, which use big data to recommend content. There is growing dissatisfaction with how they handle privacy and free speech, with many wanting to escape an ecosystem controlled by a few companies.
Problem 1: Privacy issues
Tech companies collect terabytes of user data, raising concerns about data security and privacy. In November 2021, a survey of the Washington Post showed that 72% of the public did not trust Facebook.
At present, similar data and privacy breaches are primarily dealt with by government legislation, but public trust in government has also declined. A radically different model could be the solution.
In Web3, people use distributed data storage to preserve data and prevent personal data from being used by centralized organizations. Projects currently working on it include Decentralized Storage Protocol Arweaveand Secret Network, designed specifically for data privacy.
Problem 2: Freedom of expression
In January 2021, Twitter blocked Donald Trump’s account for inciting violence, which also led to a global discussion about free speech.
At the heart of these discussions is the question of whether a social media company has the right to censor speech. But if the era of Web3 arrives, will the world have a freer online environment? This is quite possible, with control rights distributed to each connected user.
The hard road to Web3
In December, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and CEO of Block, tweeted that he didn’t think people could own Web3, but capital could.
Web3 needs technology and capital, and the final shape of Web3 is highly dependent on the attitude of technology and capital.
Also, the barriers to entry for Web3 are much higher than for Web2
DeFi is harder to start than traditional finance, DeFi is harder to start than traditional finance. It’s not that easy to use because it’s far from fiat and our lives. It is not so easy to study because the educational system and the infrastructure are not so complete.
The same goes for other areas of the blockchain application layer. It always takes time to accept completely new platforms and systems after people have adapted to centralized technology companies. The advent of the Web2 era has removed the barriers to contributing to the network. Web2 allows everyone to contribute content to the Internet. Unlike the Web2 network where the barrier was low enough for anyone to join, it seems that Web3 currently needs more work from everyone in terms of barriers to entry.
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