Hello there! You like me might be starting your journey into blockchain or you might just have been hearing things like Web 2 and Web 3 a lot and you are curious about their meaning or maybe you are just confused as I was when I started. Well, today we are going to be taking a look at what these terms mean and how they affect you as an internet user.
What is Web 2
Before we look at what web 2 is let's look at what we might term as web 1. Before the internet came to be what we use today, websites were read-only in the literal sense, no matter how much you interact with the site the content does not change, basically every static site is a web 1 page some of these sites might have some CSS and JavaScript animation effects but those are not enough to elevate them to web 2.
From this explanation of web 1, you might already start to have an idea of what web 2 is, so let's get into it, web 2 is the version of the web that allows for User Generated Content (UGC), Wikipedia describes it as also being participative web and social web. A web 2 website is an interactive site that allows for some things like commenting, uploading content, interoperability (compatibility with other products/sites, devices, and systems) for the users of the site. To put it in Tim O'reily's words
“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as a platform, and any attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform”.
Examples of Web 2 sites are Google Maps, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, even Dev.to, the list continues as there are over 80,000,000 sites to call but you get the idea.
What is Web 3
Now that you have an understanding of what web 2 is, let's talk about web 3. Web 3 is another iteration or paradigm shift from the internet as we know it now to a decentralized system based on blockchain technology. There is yet to be a standardized definition of Web 3.0 as its relatively new, it has some defining features, some of which include decentralization (Information no longer being stored in one single server but amongst participants on the network), being trustless (users can interact publicly or privately without a trusted third party), being permissionless (There is no need for permission from a governing body to participate), being open (built from open-source software by an openly accessible community).
The most popular blockchain network for building decentralized applications (dApps) on web 3 is Ethereum, and I want to take a moment to thank the guys at Blockgames, the Zuri team, and Nestcoin for the amazing opportunity to learn more about web 3. If you are also interested, you can check them out at Blockgames. Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain platform that establishes a peer-to-peer network that securely executes and verifies application code, called smart contracts.
Differences between Web 2 and Web 3
We've earlier defined social media as one of the advents of web 2 and it should be safe to assume that we all belong to one social media or the other. For all purposes and intents any of these social media platforms (or at least to my knowledge, the big ones) can censor any post or account at any time, with Web 3, that will be impossible because control is decentralized.
Another example is payment platforms that may not allow payment for certain services through their platforms, a web 3 payment app requires no personal data and cant prevent payments.
Because of the centralized nature of web 2, if the servers of an essential service provider (for example google or meta) were to go down, the impact would affect all the users of that provider, but with web 3, since it is decentralized, the servers cant go down as the data is present on the devices of all participants on the network
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