What really is Web3?
An old goal not yet achieved.
From conception, the idea of the web has always been interoperability. The sharing of computer resources via the interoperation of computing systems was the founding principle of the Internet.
Web3 is fast becoming popular yet it’s understanding and definition remains poorly consumed by so many people.
My goal is to ensure you understand the concept of web3 and why web3 is indeed the revolutionary wave in the cycle of computing innovation. It’s implication is gradually felt by literally everyone and will indeed champion the revolution individual and societies seek.
The Conception of the Internet.
In 1963; JCR Licklider in his memo he shared to his colleagues in trying to establish a time sharing network of computers.
“It seems to me to be interesting and important, nevertheless, to develop a capability for integrated network operation. If such a network as I envisage nebulously could be brought into operation, we would have at least four large computers, perhaps six or eight small computers, and a great assortment of disc files and magnetic tape units — not to mention the remote consoles and teletype stations — all churning away.”
Let’s remember that Licklider’s memo led directly to the development of ARPANET, the forebear of the Internet.
The modern web (web 2.0)
A new system must allow existing systems to be linked together without requiring any central control or coordination, but the modern web was indeed the opposite. The problem is that the modern web has evolved into an increasingly centralized architecture that strongly impairs the rights of end users, endangers privacy, and confidentiality of information.
The Dot Com Saga
The dot com boom was ‘characterised by a rush to own infrastructure, to consolidate independent Internet service providers and take control of the network.’ A land grab ensued where investors centralized service providers from low level telecoms infrastructure to high level news aggregation, email, instant messaging and video communications.
It became of thing of the more users there are on a platform the more the platform is to each other. The increasing concentration of the market and the consequent concentration of power prevented interoperability from being a feature of the modern web.
The launch of Amazon Web Services AWS on 14th March 2006 lit a fire under the trend of web centralisation. This was the moment ‘Cloud Computing’ went mainstream. We literally have ourselves to a centralized,monopolized tech giant to do with our data whatsoever they wish.
Exporting all our infrastructure and data into the Cloud diminished the control users had over their resources. This trend has been gathering force since 2006. Resources have been migrating away from end-users, towards central authorities that possess enormous processing, storage and communication power. They essentially own our global computing systems.
Effects of Web 2.0
- Monopoly
- Loss of freedom of choice
- Political undertone
- Loss of trust and protection
In many respects, we gave away our content under the false pretense of community; we gave up our privacy in hope of a more personalised service; we handed over our rights in the name of accessibility and comfort; but, most importantly, we gave away our freedoms and, more often than not, we didn’t even realize we were doing it.
Without better levels of protection, people will not be willing to attach to the Internet.
We gave our personal data to Facebook in the expectation that the only people who see it were are our friends and family (and Facebook itself). We couldn’t do that with the original web. But trusting a centralised third party, especially when they have little invested in us, turned out to be a bad idea.
Facebook, being the first, did realise whatte they were doing, as did others who followed. They calculated correctly that the human psyche could be exploited and concluded: how do we consume as much of your conscious attention as possible, in return charging your dopamine system sufficiently to maintain your concentration, so that we can manipulate your choices with targeted advertising and charge billions in the process. At the philosophical level, this represents an infringement of basic human rights: the right to freedom of choice; it also endangers rights to privacy and confidentiality.
Centralization is an imperfect solution to trust. Although the stakes are lower, we trust Facebook, Google, and Amazon for the same reasons that we trust banks. Firstly, everyone else trusts them and there is comfort in groups. And when a big organisation mucks something up, it’s big news, we all hear about it, and this usually translates into enough political will to act on our behalf. However, by then it might be too late.
Web 3 aims to provide the functionality of Web 2 but with the decentralization promised in the original vision of the web.
This needs a new model of trust. Clearly, we need to move away from the web as a platform for trustworthy activities. We should move them somewhere integrity is maintained, resilience to suppression is achieved and, finally, is trustless and difficult to corrupt. These are a few features that describe decentralized systems.
Short definition of Decentralization.
“decentralized means that not one single entity has control over all the processing”.
Let’s take a look at.
Vitalik Buterin’s three axes of decentralization to help in making the web3 more simple for the everyday persons consumption.
1.Architectural Decentralization: the number of physical computers in the system. Can the system endure a number of computers conking out at a given moment?
2. Political Decentralization: how many individuals or organisations basically control the network of computers the system is made up of?
3. Logical Decentralization: is the system assembled together or scattered? As a rule of thumb, if you cut the system in half, will both halves continue to operate as independent organisations? Consider the starfish and the spider analogy which refers to the biological nature of the respective organisms. If you cut a spider in half it will die. If you cut certain species of starfish in half, due to their decentralised neural structure, they will regenerate into a new starfish.
With this in mind we can clearly say;
Web 3 is politically decentralized, since no one controls its development or operation; it’s architecturally decentralized, since it comprises blockchain and peer-to-peer technologies and, finally; it is logically decentralised since the building blocks of computing systems that we expect to make up Web 3 are themselves decentralised and could replicate if cut in half.
But again one maybe poised to ask why decentralize the web?
Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum Founder) pointed a few principles for decentralization.
Attack Resistance : Decentralized systems are much more challenging and expensive to attack because they lack vulnerable central pressure points.
Fault Tolerance : A fault-tolerant design allows the system to keep functioning, possibly at a reduced level, rather than failing completely, in the event of partial failure.
Collusion Resistance : It is much more challenging for members of a decentralised system to conspire and collude in selfish ways.
By definition, we cannot point to any one protocol or computing system that is Web3.
Instead, Web 3 is comprised of the original building blocks of computing systems: storage, processing and communication, but with one key distinction, these building blocks have now been decentralised.
As alluded to by Gavin Wood in his original blog. post 2014 describing Web 3:
Web 3.0…is the reimagination of the sorts of things we already use the web for, but with a fundamentally different model for the interactions between parties. Information that we assume to be public, we publish. Information that we assume to be to be agreed, we place on a consensus-ledger. Information that we assume to be private, we keep secret and never reveal. Communication always takes place over encrypted channels…never with anything traceable (such as IP addresses). In short, we engineer the system to mathematically enforce our prior assumptions since no government or organisation can reasonably be trusted.
Written by Ukata Pascal
With thanks to my wife Bashirat, H. for her encouragement and support
Sources -
Buterin, V. (2017) meaning of Decentralization
Brafman,A and Beckstrom, R (2008)
Wood G (2014). DApps: what web3.0 looks like
The Economist : Facebook Faces Reputational Meltdown (March 2018)
