Web 1.0 is dead, long live Web 3.0

The Parler social network was removed by the App Store, Google Play, and Amazon shut down their servers.

Regardless of the application itself (the content there is a cross between extremism and conspiracy theories), this is the zeitgeist of the modern web.

The traditional, decentralized, open and uncensored Web 1.0 where we were all born and raised is sort of dead. (Spoiler: but that’s okay)

In today’s world, it is virtually impossible:

1) To have a decentralized distribution of an online service. In 1999, I could register a domain, run Apache on my home computer, and anyone who wanted just typed in a website address and would go in to consume my content. Believe it or not, in the browser. Without downloading from the app store, without connecting the fb, without signing in through Google.

2) To own the infrastructure. Seems wild for an internet company today:

• To own a data center
• To lay several hundred kilometers of cable
• To buy expensive servers and maintain them
• To write two dozen of your own IaaS services
• To maintain your own PaaS stack
• Configure a firewall and write your own DDoS protection service

Seems wild? Millions of dollars down the drain? But in the not too distant 2000, any Internet company was forced to do just that.

Web 2.0 solved all of these problems for us, but we naturally sacrificed some of our freedom for convenience. Rational choice btw.

Web 3.0 promises us the best of the two worlds:

• YOU store your online identity and reputation(self-sovereign identity)
• YOU and only YOU have access to your data (decentralized addressable storage)
• YOU and only YOU control your money (Bitcoin)
• YOU control distribution (web3.js, ENS)
• YOU control the social graph (self-hosted mesh network)
• YOU control policy (decentralized autonomous organization, governance tokens)
• YOU control access (p2p encryption everywhere)
• and, as a bonus, mechanism design instead of enforcement.

What’s the thing? The point is that web3 should not become just another user-friendly service with a CEO from the establishment (evil Larry Ellison or saint Jack Dorsey alike) and that the infrastructure remains decentralized. Not your keys — not your web. Whoever controls the node — controls what you consume.