The investment scale in a single year exceeds the total of all previous years. Web3.0: Is it just hype or the future of the Internet?

20 years ago, when programmers used Html (Hypertext Markup Language) to write blogs, they would not have thought that one day, publishing articles and videos on online platforms would be as easy as eating. For ordinary people today, publishing NFTs (digital collectibles) on the blockchain is something only professionals can do, but perhaps it won’t be long before ordinary people can play with the blockchain like posting articles on public accounts.

At present, a form of Internet based on blockchain technology is rapidly emerging. Some people call it "value Internet" and some people call it "Web3.0 (third generation Internet)". In the past six months, the United States, Japan, and Singapore have introduced policies to lay out its layout. Countless institutions and entrepreneurs have poured into it, and a number of disruptive applications are being nurtured. The explosion of the Metaverse has accelerated the "out-of-circle" of Web3.0, because more and more people realize that if they want to enter the Metaverse, Web3.0 may be a necessary path.

The second generational change of the Internet is coming

In the 53 years since the birth of the Internet, it has experienced a change of eras. The emergence of the first website in 1991 marked the beginning of the Web 1.0 era, which is characterized by read-only - professional websites are responsible for producing content, and users are consumers of content. Portal websites such as Sohu and Sina are the trendsetters of this era. The characteristic of Web 2.0 is a "readable + writable" social network. Users, as the main producers of content, spread their own works on the Internet and interact with other users. In 2004, the birth of Facebook marked the beginning of the explosive development of this interactive Internet. Taobao, Douyin, Bilibili, etc. are all companies that grew up in the 2.0 era.

In 2014, Gavin Wood, the founder of Ethereum, wrote on his blog about his understanding of Web3.0: a "decentralized ecosystem network" built on blockchain technology. This system includes a series of open source protocols that can provide building blocks for application developers. The rights and assets granted by the network belong to developers and users. As the concept of the metaverse "goes out of the circle", people are surprised to find that his definition of Web3.0 and the metaverse are surprisingly consistent.

Yang Guang, research director of Shanghai TreeGraph Blockchain Research Institute, said that the characteristics of Web3.0 are the value Internet and contract Internet of "readable + writable + ownable", which gives users the autonomy to manage digital identities, control personal data, and supervise algorithm applications, thereby reshaping the trust and cooperation relationship among Internet participants. The division of Web1.0, Web2.0, and Web3.0 does not lie in technical indicators, but in the form of generating and processing data, representing different stages of production relations in the digital world.

Each generation of the Internet has created a group of world-renowned companies. We seem to be standing at the forefront of such an era. Since the birth of the Web3.0 track, 2021 is the year with the most generous capital investment. According to a report by Galaxy Digital, in 2021, venture capital companies invested as much as $33 billion in the encryption industry and Web3.0-related companies, exceeding the total investment scale in this field in previous years. In particular, in the fourth quarter of 2021, the average valuation of companies in the encryption and blockchain fields was $70 million, which was 141% higher than the $29 million valuation of companies in other traditional venture capital fields. In October 2021, Facebook changed its name to Meta to enter the metaverse, which can also be seen as an exploration of Web2.0's attempt to transform into Web3.0.

Creating a brave new world of data autonomy

The same product is sold at different prices when bought with different mobile phones; the platform takes the lion's share of the revenue even though it is a work created by oneself... All kinds of unreasonable things encountered on the Internet have made people gradually realize that the more Web2.0 develops, the less bargaining power ordinary people have over the platform. Have you ever wondered how this happened?

Yang Guang explained that Web 2.0 has created a business model where platforms attract users with free or extremely cheap products and services, and then make money by collecting user data and accurately pushing advertisements. However, as time goes by, data is concentrated in the hands of a few Internet giants. Although they are "hosts" of user data, they gradually gain the power to formulate rules and distribute benefits by virtue of their control over data and algorithms.

The emergence of Web3.0 aims to break the current situation where users, as important participants and contributors to the Internet ecosystem, cannot benefit fairly from it, and to re-empower users with data autonomy. However, how can this imagined beautiful new world become a reality? After countless brainstorming sessions, the TreeGraph team, which focuses on the development of blockchain underlying and common technologies, has come up with a simple consensus: only when data is stored on a neutral storage and computing platform that is not controlled by any centralized company or entity can the "black box" of data monopoly by giants be broken.

In the Web3.0 era, rules written in code will replace the "black box" of the Internet platform, and a fairer and more transparent information processing process will give users more autonomy - people no longer need to remember the account numbers and passwords of various platforms; virtual goods such as skins and weapons purchased with recharge will not disappear due to the closure of the game; with the support of blockchain technology, traffic fraud will be difficult to exist, and issues such as copyright and profit distribution of digital works will also have clear ownership - and this is exactly the digital production relationship that is more in line with the ever-changing digital content productivity.

Polishing the "minimum viable product" to prosper the application ecosystem

In September this year, Shanghai TreeGraph Blockchain Research Institute released its independently developed operating system ConfluxOS for Web3.0. It is currently polishing the "minimum viable product" based on various new scenarios, prospering the application ecosystem, and promoting the early implementation of the next generation of the Internet. Binding digital collections with physical rights is one of the important directions.

For example, when a popular product is on sale, a brand can send a specific digital collection to a user's personal account (similar to a personal wallet, but stored on the blockchain). This digital collection can become the user's identity tag - when a limited new product is released next time, the user holding it will have priority to purchase it; when the brand holds an offline event, it can also serve as a ticket.

Products of the Web2.0 era, such as points, coupons, and membership levels, will also be given new ways to play. Users and users, and users and merchants can realize the flow of rights and interests based on a trust network guaranteed by technology, so as to achieve the goal of normalizing consumption promotion with a people-oriented approach. Social networks are often the most sensitive weather vanes. In January of this year, Twitter launched an NFT certification service, allowing Twitter users to bind their Web3.0 accounts and set the NFTs they hold as their Twitter account avatars . Ordinary avatars are round, and certified NFT avatars are hexagonal. This immediately activates the identity tag attribute of NFTs - after all, in the Web2.0 era, you can download a picture you like on the Internet at will, but NFTs are unique and one-of-a-kind.

The tamper-proof property of blockchain will also give rise to many possibilities for digital evidence applications. For example, young people like to use "couple avatars" to declare their relationship to their friends, but pictures are very easy to copy. If a couple is willing to leave proof on the blockchain to confirm that they are in love, then this relationship will be recorded and made public to relatives and friends. Even if they break up in the future, it doesn't matter, as long as they cancel each other's couple certification on the blockchain.

In the view of Zhang Wei, operations director of Hunan Xiangjiang TreeGraph Information Technology Innovation Center, if everyone approves of this behavior, then it is very likely that a "Renren.com" in the Web3.0 era will emerge, the cost of identifying people will be greatly reduced, and the possibility of finding like-minded partners will be greatly increased.

Disruptive innovation is likely to change the way the world works. A simple and easy-to-use Web3.0 operating system may be able to activate China's huge group of Internet developers, and a disruptive technological revolution may be taking shape.