There is a lot of hype these days around NFTs, blockchain, and crypto, which has many people asking ‘What is web3?”

Web 1.0 to Web 2.0

In order to answer the big question of what is web 3.0? It helps to go back to the beginning.

Web 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 refer to different technological phases of web technology.

Web 1.0 refers to the time from 1989 to 2004.

Web 2.0 refers to the time between 2004 to now. During web 2.0 the web transitioned into a platform, and there was a lot more user-generated content on forums, social media and networking services, blogs, and wikis.

What is web 3.0?

Gavin Wood, Polkadot founder and Ethereum co-founder, was the first to use the word in 2014.

Web 3.0 means “decentralized online ecosystem based on blockchain.” Basically, Web3 is the blockchain layer that the web will run on. It will allow web users to quickly pay for and prove ownership of digital assets, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.

A hazy beginning

Bloomberg describes web3 as “hazy.” What they mean is that the concept is still being clarified as teams all over the globe fight to develop the technology that will become the backbone of web3.

Bloomberg said web3 “would build financial assets, in the form of tokens, into the inner workings of almost anything you do online”

People who are pushing to build web3 believe that they are creating “a new internet that alleviates the problems of the old one.”

What is the future of web 3.0?

I have spent a lot of time thinking about how web3 will evolve.

At XELEVEN my team and I believe that web3 must focus on decentralization. There are currently a lot of web3 project posing as decentralized networks, which are in fact highly centralized.

There is no point in building a centralized blockchain that just recreates the problem that already exists in highly centralized traditional financial institutions.

Decentralization means that web3 can build a trust layer into every transaction we make on the internet.

So far one of the most promising innovations has been the non-fungible token (NFT). An NFT is a way that artists and creators can monetize and prove ownership of their work.

This has allowed artists who adopted the technology to empower themselves. However, this is likely just the beginning, licensing, in general, will likely be completely rethought.