Image source @ Visual China
Text | Xinyan, author | Ye Jing, editor| Sang Mingqiang
"It can be said that we dug a gold mine in Google's backyard."
More than a decade ago, when Internet companies in the Web 2.0 era represented by Google and Yahoo were in full swing, Spivak proposed that "Google has too many daily affairs to deal with, which is our advantage... The final version of Web 3.0 is like the brain of the whole world, and every Internet user is a part of it. ”
As for what exactly is Web3.0, no one can clearly define it, more as a conceptual vocabulary, in the eyes of some people, Web3.0 represents a new trend in the future development of the Internet, involving decentralization, users have actual control over data and information, online asset construction.
Musk also recently talked about his views on Web 3.0, he believes that metaversity, Web3.0, which at present, is more like marketing terms, is the opportunity of speculators to hype the bubble created. From Bitcoin, blockchain, NFT, to Ethereum, all kinds of public chains continue to rise, DApp, DAO, IOT, earn these new concepts have also come into being, the changes in the investment market, people are confused. To this end, this article we will mainly discuss:
Reviewing Web 1.0 to Web 3.0, what changes has the Internet undergone?
The hot Web 3.0, is it an outlet or a bubble?
From Web 1.0 to Web 3.0
In 1989, Berners introduced the concept of the World Wide Web.
This fundamentally changes the perception that Internet services are just "information islands" assembled. To be precise, the static pages of Web 1.0 are the first stage of the development of the World Wide Web, and the media form is dominated by portals such as Sina, Sohu, Yahoo, and Baidu, and some specific groups or enterprises publish information to the network in one direction and feed it to users to browse and read.
In other words, Web 1.0 only solves the need for users to get information and read, in this process, users can only passively receive undifferentiated information published by the website, but can not upload their own feedback, online real-time communication with others, the website and the audience are in an extremely unequal state.
In Web 2.0, it has become a readable, writable, and interactive Internet.
At this time, the user is both the recipient and publisher of the network information, and people can communicate two-way and multi-directional through the network. From website portals to personal portals, from online information to online users, Web 2.0 has formed a human-centered way of communication and interaction, and has also promoted the rise of social networks. Software has also begun to jump out of the PC side, and apps such as WeChat, Weibo, and Douyin have appeared one after another.
But in fact, Web 2.0 is still a centralized network form, the Internet platform controls user data and information, operating user groups, there is a certain risk of information leakage and loss, passive contribution data for the platform side to provide advertisers to realize, the value of individual users is often difficult to reflect, another normalization problem is that the centralized virtual objects and physical information is not easy to trace, it is inevitable that there is a possibility of fraud.
What about Web 3.0?
As early as 2006, Web 2.0 has not yet been hot, Radar Networks (Radar Network) is still in the secret preparation period, CEO Nova Spiewak said that with the help of government technology, so that the radar network has to change the way Internet users find information, the network can not only understand the concept of words and sentences, but also according to semantics to judge the logical relationship, that is, in 1998 Tim Berners Lee proposed the semantic network function, radar network can be said to be the pioneer of Web 3.0.
In addition to the outer packaging of the Semantic Web, Web 3.0 is a new Internet form developed in combination with blockchain technology, and its core lies in decentralization - "giving users the ability to truly own the Internet", Brian Brooks explained that in the web3.0 era, the data and information in the Internet have completed the confirmation of rights from the time of publication, without worrying about being stolen or the database lost data being deleted.
Figure: Schematic of centralized and decentralized network structure (Source: Dongxing Securities)
However, the significance of Web 3.0 is not limited to this.
Whether it is Web 1.0 or web 2.0, users often need to register different accounts on different platforms, and the information is isolated from each other, for a simple example, in the past, we could not jump directly from one App to another App, because different platforms need to build their own huge user base, and do a good job of security precautions.
Web 3.0 has undergone a paradigm reversal, through the underlying logic of Web 3.0, users and platforms are independent of existence, when registering or logging on to the website, there is no need to fill in identity information and agree to the privacy protocol, but through the decentralized network to create an account directly, with a token protocol to maintain the Internet. Ideally, you only need to use your own digital wallet and key to log in to any website, and also use the key to manage your own assets and obtain financial incentives.
Value Internet, is it a scam or the future?
For now, the most immediate attraction of Web 3.0 for most people is to "make money."
As mentioned above, in the Web 3.0 era, individual users are able to realize and distribute value for a better user experience. For example, let's start with the earlier NFT (non-homogeneous tokens), as a derivative of blockchain technology, foreign star Library once bought an avatar for $180,000, and the artist Beeple's digital work "Every Day" auctioned $69.34 million is also a magic; domestic Internet head players Ali and Tencent have also joined in to issue digital artworks.
Blockchain is equivalent to a distributed ledger, the creation and transaction information of these digital files are recorded on the blockchain, which means that the recording method is not only the ledger data stored in each node, but also the synchronization, sharing, and replication of data by each node, and the IP is printed and cast on the chain to implement the provenance, so it also ensures that the works and ownership are not tampered with.
At present, NFTs have been applied to media, clothing, music, film and television and other industries, which is very attractive to creators, while achieving creative freedom, the same work can be resold every time it is resold; for buyers, the value of NFTs is reflected in scarcity and status symbols, but this is also based on their cognitive consensus.
In addition to NFTs, ENS (Ethereum-based distributed domain name service) has also attracted much attention.
In October, one of the biggest domain deals to date took place – someone bought the domain paradigm.eth for 420 ETH. EnS, which logged into Ethereum in 2017, simplified the Ethereum wallet address of more than forty people, and through the bidding mechanism, any user can register an Ethereum domain name ending in ".eth", thus optimizing the user's experience with cryptocurrency. Since ENS is built on the ERC721 protocol, each domain name is equivalent to an NFT.
In the Web 3.0 era, we can get an input-side business model that starts, crowdfunding, and tokens that fulfill the creator's value cycle. All in all, blockchain technology explains why identity is independent, providing the underlying technical support for Web 3.0; on this basis, the NFT provides indivisible and unrepeatable transaction value for digital currencies, realizing the creator economy, which acts as a series of decentralized components to maintain users' ownership of their digital identities and data, becoming an ark to the metaverse.
Focusing on practical applications, Monaco, for example, as a blockchain social project based mainly on Web 3.0 socialFi (social+DEFI) and supporting "content mining", Monaco is known as the encrypted version of Twitter. At the beginning of the launch, the invitation code hype brought by hunger marketing made the Monaco market hot.
In terms of functional dimensions, users can publish valuable high-quality content on this Weibo-like platform and can display their NFT; in addition, participating in "Write to Earn" mining will receive corresponding rewards every week, and the rewards will be proportional to the number of users' fans, comments, and forwards. Monaco wants to use SocialFi as a breakthrough to return data ownership to users and give users creative benefits, driving the internet's transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0.
It should be noted that Monaco's model is not the first, as early as 2017, the social media platform DApp Steenit deployed on the Steam chain has appeared, and users can get token revenue while publishing popular posts, which made it once the largest on-chain encryption community.
For now, the idea of Web 3.0 is indeed very utopian, but the actual landing is still debatable.
Before entering Web3.0, first register a crypto wallet, such as finding the Ethereum browser wallet plugin MetaMask, setting the transaction password after adding, confirming the account mnemonics to complete the creation, but the mnemonics and keys are not very convenient to save (it is best to remember in physical objects, such as the memorandum); the Ethereum transfer process is also more troublesome, not only to enter a very complex account address, the transfer time is also long, even if the follow-up can apply for ENS, but compared with the payment software currently used, Web 3.0's experience isn't great.
As follow-up tokens fell sharply, new user engagement declined, and Steeni, like Primas, clubhouse, and other juniors of the socialfi circuit, have disappeared. At the end of November, Monaco officially issued a "English mining only", a tweet that was clearly treated differently not only caused dissatisfaction in the Chinese community, but also contradicted its emphasis on the concept of "decentralization", although for users, on the one hand, creative freedom was achieved, but on the other hand, the spread of malicious information was inevitable.
In terms of technology, the high threshold for use of blockchain and encryption applications deters ordinary users, even if the largest decentralized application Metamask has only a few million monthly active users, on the other hand, whether it is personal data or social relationships, it is impossible for users to leave the original Web 2.0 platform.
Another example is DeFi (decentralized finance) running on the public chain, these products have immutable smart contracts. Liquidity mining in the DeFi field is the process of depositing or lending out specified token assets according to the requirements to provide liquidity for the product's capital pool (native tokens or governance powers), liquidity mining is to encourage users to deposit tokens in their own trading pools to improve liquidity, thereby obtaining users and traffic, and further issuing native tokens to expand the community of the project.
Figure: The "Impossible Triangle" of Blockchain Technology (Source: CSDN Blog)
Because of the high returns of liquidity mining, it was once supported by capital.
However, in the blockchain public chain, it is difficult to achieve both a good "decentralization" and a good system "security", and at the same time can have a high "transaction processing performance", that is, the so-called "blockchain impossible triangle". The vulnerability of the project contract code will always attract hackers and even cause asset theft, and the frequent occurrence of project party funds running away also casts a layer of fraud risk on DeFi, in addition, when the market fluctuates sharply, network congestion, impermanent loss risk, system design and liquidation risk in the process of trading contract liquidation may cause investors to lose collateral assets.
Will Web 3.0 be the next outlet?
Many people's expectations of Web 3.0 come from the more possibilities brought about by its decentralization.
Brian Brooks once said at the hearing discussion, "We have digital assets on the network, and all the programs are built on top of this new layer of the network." Ether is proof of ownership of the Ethereum network, the Ethereum network is run by countless programs, just like the programs in the collection need to run the underlying network, people will guess which underlying network will eventually win, will buy the tokens of these network protocols to invest, here trigger voting mechanism, under the proof of stake mechanism you can vote to affect the future development of the protocol, under the proof of work mechanism, maintain network users can get token rewards, any decision of the decentralized network is made by investors. ”
In 2018, Gavin Wood published "Why We Need Web 3.0," in which he mentioned that "Web 3.0 will spawn a new global digital economy, create new business models and markets, break down platform monopolies like Google and Facebook, and generate a lot of bottom-up innovation." ”
In order to solve the problem that Web 2.0 users can use Web 3.0 without leaving the familiar environment and without dealing with complex wallet passwords, Mask Network, the gatekeeper of the new Internet, has released a series of DApplets, such as THE ITO (Initial Twitter Offering) model, which makes the Mask Network explode, which means that Internet users do have an urgent need for Web 3.0.
Looking back, it is not difficult to find that since 2017, the successive investment fevers of ICOs, DEFI, and NFTs have been closely related to Ethereum, and this year's Web3.0 and Gamefi are no exception.
After Musk angrily angered Web3.0, Sequoia posted firmly optimistic about Web 3.0, and Jeff Morris Jr., founder and managing partner of Los Angeles-based venture capital firm Chapel One, said that It has completed the fundraising of a $40 million early-stage fund, which focuses on Web3.0 investments. While Musk is rejecting Web 3.0, it is also not denying its market potential, and from a capital perspective, the positive wave of Web 3.0 seems to be approaching.
Chris Dixon, a partner at top venture capital A16z, believes that Web 3.0 will go a different path, since value and control are not in the hands of companies located in the center, but are distributed to the people who actually build the network, so what Web 3.0 needs is the ability to self-market, and the emergence of social media provides impetus for the transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, and when people in the community really own certain tokens for economic benefits, they will actively spread within the community: On the one hand, the user churn rate will be reduced; On the other hand, in a good situation, the architecture of the network will be more robust.
But the so-called "good situation" here is also a pain point of the current Web 3.0: the current technology has not yet been able to perfectly implement the requirements of Web 3.0, the number of participating users is limited, the division of labor of all production and life in the human world is not refined to a certain extent, AI has not achieved an absolute subject status, the limitations of mobile phones are also difficult to carry blockchain information and high concurrent demand of users, and the inefficiency and security of the transaction process cannot meet the needs of commercial applications.
To some extent, we really can't predict the first use case of the success of a new platform, and we don't have to generate FOMO sentiment because of the drive of capital, whether it is Web 1.0 or Web 3.0, it is just a trend of Internet technology deepening and refining, nothing more.