Web3 is a new buzzword taking over the tech and venture capital world. It represents the third phase in the evolution of the internet, characterized by one primary term 'decentralization'. Still a work in progress, web3.0 pushes for a decentralized and permissionless ecosystem based on the blockchain. venture capitalists have invested lots of money into this vision but some experts in the industry are still sceptical of its global adoption and how it plans to scale, some of these experts have called it a marketing buzzword. As experts debate on the validity and whether or not this new version of the web can become reality here is how web3 stacks up against the version of the web we use today.

THE VISION FOR WEB3

In the early days of the internet 'web1.0', most of the users then were just content consumers who were limited to browsing through static webpages and only those that could code got the deal out of it. Then came web 2.0 the current version of the internet, web users gradually shifted from consumerism to producing more digital content this shift meant users could not only consume content but for the first time users could publish content online.

The growth of this version of the internet, though unintended has given rise to tech giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Netflix they even have an initialism known as 'FAANG'. This undoubtedly led to concerns about the internet being privatized and run by corporations, with few companies managing so much data there is a concern that this monopoly of data could be abused.

This is where the vision for web3 comes in, experts have proposed this new version of the internet as an open and decentralized version of the web where users can interact pseudonymously and securely and in so doing reduce the amount of trust given to a single entity. This means users would have more control over their data and would be able to sell it if they choose to, this technology has given rise to a new internet economy known as the new creator economy.

THE ECONOMIES WITHIN WEB3

The fairly new creator economy has been around for a while but in the last 12 months, major changes have been made in the space and these changes have been significantly driven by blockchain technology.

NFTs or Non-fungible tokens are one of the major developments in the new creator economy with some NFTs in the past being worth over $400,000, this has taken some artists from unknown creators to full-time online creators.

Not only NFTs things like creator tokens have been created giving fans the ability to support their favourite creators, but even for those who are not creators, cryptocurrencies are being given to incentivize users to participate in the operation of web3.

THE PROBLEMS WITH WEB3

A central element of this system is Defi or decentralized finance, and the idea is to financialize every possible interaction a user makes on the internet through protocols that offer structured incentives to participants and developers.

While being a bold approach and having a genuine motive it is still unclear how this decentralized system would be regulated, how it could be operated on a large scale or even how well it would diversify control of the internet. Some experts have called it a centralized entity with a different label.

The reality is, the underlying structure of web3 is not as decentralized as promised, and it is solely because most Web3 protocols are slow to evolve and reliant on centralized platforms to iterate faster. you could say web3 is as centralized as previous generations of the internet.

security has been a big issue for blockchain and has proven to also be a big obstacle to the mass adoption of web3. we have seen several web3 solutions being infiltrated and getting shut down at times creating uncertainty about the applications.

But even with these problems still very present, there is no denying that much better solutions are still in the works for Web3