What the heck is web3? ... according to Twitter.
And will you care?
web1 —> web2 —> web3.
Maybe you’ve seen these meme-like posts on Twitter a thousand times already. Maybe you’ve never heard of web3. Or web2 for that matter. Or heck maybe you’re still on web1.
We talked about all these kinds of webs in our first Noodler post. And I tried to make the case that web1 has actually existed for about 150 years, with the dawn of the telegram - where for the first time you could send bytes of information at the speed of light around the globe. A nascent read-write global communication infrastructure. Regardless of its origins, this web has shifted in the last 20 years.
So what is web3? And should you care? As you’ll see below, everyone has a different take on what web3 is.
To me, web3 means a transition of power (through ownership of content, data, assets, etc.) to creators and communities (or simply, the individual). Perhaps it’s an idealistic pipe dream that’ll struggle to break free from the greedy meathooks of the web2 Zucks. But IMO, it’s inevitable that web3 will come. Or perhaps it’s already here.
This is just how I see web3. Everyone will view it differently. If you go back to the early days of the internet, in the mid 20th century, it was imagined more as an ethos for decentralized, bottom-up communication. And somewhere along the way, this medium (and message) got lost.
Anywho. I scrapped twitter* to find more of these web1, web2, web3 definitions.
*I actually started with an old script that I wrote for TrumpTweets years ago. And I was today years old that I realized you can now just search Twitter. fml.
Here are some in no particular order.
And some meme-y ones:
If you’ve come across some good ones, plz add in the comments.
Here’s some other reads on the history of web1-3:
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/what-is-web3/
https://eshita.mirror.xyz/H5bNIXATsWUv_QbbEz6lckYcgAa2rhXEPDRkecOlCOI
https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-web-3-0