There is an endless amount of jargon associated with new internet technology. It’s difficult to keep your eyes from glazing over every time a podcast host attempts to actually explain what crypto, blockchain, NFT’s and DOE’s are. Well, add another term to that list — Web3.
Some call it the next natural evolution of the internet. Others believe it’s a dangerous scam. But that hasn’t stopped firms from investing billions of dollars into the technology, according to Crunchbase.
So what is Web3?
Proponents of Web3 like to tell a story about the internet in three parts. The earliest days of the internet are described as “Web 1.0,” where people could publish information in the form of read-only blogs. Everything was decentralized and unorganized. Web 2.0, the internet as we know it today, added the ability to edit, post, and write on malleable web pages. According to this story, corporations quickly consolidated and organized traffic (think Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and began to trade personal data for “free” services.
Web 3.0, shortened to “Web3”, is just a way of referring to a proposed evolution of the current internet framework we use currently. According to Wired, it has been touted as a solution to the corporate monopolization of the internet, through a decentralized system running on the same technology that supports cryptocurrency.
Gavin Wood, the cofounder of the cryptocurrency Ethereum, coined the term…
