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Questioning Web3, Understanding Web3

When you hear the term “Web3”, what comes to mind?

Judging from the comments on my first two articles, most people leave messages like “jail” and “rug-pulling”, indicating that they don’t understand Web3 and that it has been severely demonized.

It is reasonable and necessary to question Web3, as any concept should be scrutinized to get closer to its essence. However, the comments I see are not questions but rather prejudiced discrimination.

This article aims to explain my understanding of Web3 and to set the record straight.

Why Decentralization?

Being a content creator is one of my many roles. Although I have a personal website that I’ve been running for over a decade, in today’s world, if I want my content to reach a larger audience, I have no choice but to rely on the potential traffic from content platforms.

For content creators, the most frustrating thing is not having anyone view the content they’ve put their heart into. If it’s due to a lack of skill, that’s acceptable. But what if it’s because the content platform has throttled it or made it visible only to the author?

The system notifications received after such actions are often vague, like “Your content does not comply with the rules”, without any clear indication of which specific rule was violated.

What’s even more unreasonable is the lack of an effective appeal process—either there is no appeal entry point at all, or appeals are ignored, or they are handled in a perfunctory manner. In front of content platforms, do creators have any dignity?

This is just one example of the many issues I and others have encountered, and their commonality is that centralized platforms struggle to achieve maximum fairness, mainly because:

  • Power is concentrated in the hands of the operators, with no external participation in decision-making;
  • Platform rules are not detailed enough, with many vague terms creating a large gray area for arbitrary interpretation and manipulation;
  • The process of handling user-generated content is not transparent, and there is a lack of a user supervision system;
  • The feedback mechanism for reporting and appealing is very flawed, making it extremely complex to defend one’s rights, and sometimes even impossible.

The relationship between users and centralized platforms is not entirely adversarial:

  • Platforms can have their own rules and punish users when they violate them, which is reasonable;
  • Platforms can have imperfect rules but should be open to improvement when users raise valid objections, rather than being arbitrarily domineering;
  • Users generate data for the platform, and the platform provides traffic or other value to the users—it should be a win-win situation.

However, as mentioned above, centralized platforms often fail to achieve these seemingly simple goals, leaving users’ rights poorly protected. This leaves users with only three options:

  1. Leave directly;
  2. Try to appeal in a last-ditch effort;
  3. Continue to endure endless humiliation until it becomes unbearable.

No matter which option is chosen, the likely outcome is “leaving”.

But then what? Do you stop doing what you were doing? Or do you switch to another similar centralized platform? Is that platform likely to better protect user rights?

A truly people-oriented digital service should look something like what I described in A Brief Introduction to Individual-Centered Services.

Ultimately, those who value their rights and have ideas will turn their attention to “decentralized” platforms, seeing them as a lifeline.

How to Decentralize

When we talk about “decentralization”, it is essential to clarify what exactly is being decentralized, such as data ownership, data control, computing methods, communication methods, etc. Otherwise, the conversation will be like comparing apples and oranges.

Some people advocate absolute decentralization, but this is as unrealistic as wanting absolute freedom or egalitarianism—it’s wishful thinking.

Decentralization relies on a distributed network structure, where nodes in the network can communicate directly with each other without going through a central node that has control. That central node is the “center”.

Some may wonder—without a “center” to command and coordinate, wouldn’t the nodes in the network be in chaos? How can they communicate and collaborate?

Setting aside computer networks for a moment, let’s look at how humans do it.

Human communication relies on symbols, language, and other means of conveying information. The same unit of information can have different meanings in different systems. Only when two people are in the same system can they communicate, such as both speaking Chinese.

So, how do human individuals work together in the same direction without a commander? There are probably several ways:

  • The culture, traditions, and customs of civilizations and ethnic groups;
  • National laws and regulations;
  • Organizational rules and regulations;
  • Tacit understanding developed through interaction.

These are the consensuses or rules that participants agree to follow, using consistent rules to restrain and coordinate the actions of each individual to complete a specific task.

In summary, “the same medium system” and “consistent rules of action” are the keys to achieving “decentralization”!

Shifting back to the field of computers, “the same medium system” refers to data types and encoding, while “consistent rules of action” refer to protocols and standards.

Also, as mentioned earlier, absolute “decentralization” does not exist—within an overall distributed network, one of the nodes may also be a smaller network with a “center”.

The Evolution of the Web

People’s digital lives today are inseparable from the Web, whether browsing web pages or using native client applications.

Since its inception in 1989, Web-related technologies have developed rapidly to meet various needs, and its current direction of development has somewhat deviated from the expectations of its inventors.

In these 35 years, due to changes in the way people use it in production and life and the shifts in ideological trends, there have been some concentrated characteristics every few years, which are used to divide periods and are named with an incrementing number after “Web”.

Many materials introducing Web3 describe it as “Web 3.0” or compare it with “Web 1.0” and “Web 2.0” at the same level—as someone who is sensitive to wording, I find it hard to agree.

Replacing the number representing “generation” with “X”, there are two forms of wording: “Web X.0” and “WebX”, and they have very different meanings.

Generations do not replace each other but coexist. Whichever one is more dominant becomes the “mainstream”, and the less dominant ones do not disappear completely but are “neglected”.

Web X.0

The Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, initially for the purpose of sharing documents and data primarily in text and image formats on the Internet, with a natural “decentralized” gene, where one’s computer could serve as a server.

At that time, CSS and JS had not yet appeared, let alone PHP and Java. Web pages were not only completely static and non-interactive but also very plain—just like people’s thoughts at the time—simply for knowledge sharing.

With the emergence of supporting technologies that made web pages more visually appealing and dynamic in various senses, web pages began to develop towards personalization and commercialization, giving rise to a variety of personal and commercial websites and bringing vitality to the Web.

Around 2004, the mainstream application form of the Web shifted towards socialization and platformization, with a flood of SNS and XaaS products that occupied every aspect of people’s daily production and life. The platform side gained control over a large number of users and data, with its commercial value rising accordingly.

Taking around 2004 as a dividing line, the application form of the Web before that was mainly information publishing content websites, where the content was “read-only” for users, known as “Web 1.0”.

After that, the application form of the Web became more about user participation in content creation and sharing interactions through platform services, that is, “read-write”, known as “Web 2.0”. At this time, there was a clear centralization feature, which contradicted the original intention of the Web.

The above is a periodization based on the application form of the Web. As the inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee does not agree with this. In his notes, he divides it from the perspective of technological development and problem-solving:

  • Web 1.0—Creating a global web of documents and data;
  • Web 2.0—Enhancing the security of information access;
  • Web 3.0—Building a semantic web to improve data interoperability.

Among them, “Web 3.0” is to use a series of protocols, standards, and technologies to transform web content into structured data that is easily readable and understandable by machines, turning the entire Web into a vast knowledge graph and intelligent network.

The “Web 3.0” conceived by Tim Berners-Lee can be applied in a decentralized manner to fields such as knowledge engineering, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and social networks.

WebX

In the Web as conceived by Tim Berners-Lee, “decentralization” is natural and does not need to be emphasized. However, in actual application, it has deviated from expectations and has taken on a centralized platform as the mainstream model.

At this time, blockchain-related technologies, which are different from Web-related technologies and are also decentralized, were born. Because they emerged in an era dominated by centralized platforms and come with their own monetary system, their “decentralization” has a
rebellious connotation.

The immutability of cryptocurrency transactions and records is a basic characteristic of blockchain, so it is only natural that various financial activities centered around cryptocurrencies have developed.

The relatively mature application field of blockchain-related technologies at present is decentralized finance, that is, “DeFi”. Because it has the characteristics of stock and foreign exchange trading and is unregulated, it can easily cause economic losses and needs to be approached with great caution.

Blockchain-related technologies more or less have financial attributes in their application fields and have also formed corresponding cultures and industries, which is “Web3”.

The reason it is called “Web3” is closely related to the centralized characteristics of “Web 2.0” in the application form of the Web mentioned above, and it has a significant difference from the “Web 3.0” conceived by Tim Berners-Lee.

In order to distinguish Web-related products and industries that do not use blockchain-related technologies, they are called “Web2”.

Conclusion

This article, based on my personal experience and understanding, has explained the reasons for and the underlying logic of decentralization and has tried to clarify the meanings of the two forms of Web periodization, “Web X.0” and “WebX”.

I am committed to exploring and researching solutions for personal and family decentralization and digital intelligence. From this perspective, whether it is Tim Berners-Lee’s “Web 3.0” or “Web3” does not matter. However, considering my career development, it is only “Web3”.

Web3 is a dark forest, with people lurking everywhere, coveting your assets. You need to be vigilant and cautious at all times to protect yourself—this is the downside of lack of regulation and the price of freedom.