

Nonetheless, major tech platforms are also jumping on the idea. In theory, this also means avoiding fees, rules and the strictures of tech companies. It's even forced major tech companies to assemble teams dedicated to Web3.Īnd that's brought a certain irony to the evolution of Web3: Enthusiasts hope Web3 will mean that sharing photos, communicating with friends and buying things online will no longer by synonymous with Big Tech companies but be done through a multitude of small competing services on the blockchain - where, for instance, every time you post a message, you earn a token for your contribution, giving you both ownership stake in the platform and one day a way to cash in. But in recent months, the push for a blockchain-powered future has come to dominate tech conferences and social media chatter in certain circles. To technologists and cryptographers, Web3 has remained a theoretical grand vision for years. "Every new advent of the web is at first baffling," he said.

Pop Culture What's An NFT? And Why Are People Paying Millions To Buy Them?ĭryhurst admits that trying to explain Web3 can be exasperating, since it's a loosely-defined term that takes on a slightly different shape depending on who is defining it but, he said, that's the case with all new frontiers of technology. Web3 is about grabbing some of the power back. Critics say over time those companies amassed too much power. Platforms like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter emerged to bring order to the Internet by making it easy to connect and transact online. Then came Web 2.0 starting in the mid-2000s. It was pretty disorganized and overwhelming. The web was seen as a way to democratize access to information, but there weren't great ways of navigating it beyond going to your friend's GeoCities page. Think of it this way: The nascent days of the Internet in the 1990s were Web 1.0. In this new era, navigating the web no longer means logging onto the likes of Facebook, Google or Twitter. It's an umbrella term for disparate ideas all pointing in the direction of eliminating the big middlemen on the internet. Conversations are now peppered with it, and you're not serious about the future until you add it to your Twitter bio: Web3. There's a buzzword that tech, crypto and venture-capital types have become infatuated with lately. Web3, short for web 3.0, is a vision of the future of the Internet in which people operate on decentralized, quasi-anonymous platforms, rather than depend on tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter.
