What is Web 3.0 and why does that matter to your identity?
The internet is the greatest technological advance of our lifetime. While the benefits of technology to society and the economy are abundantly evident, there are several areas of learning and improvement that are currently steaming ahead.
A new transparent and secure model of internet Web 3.0 has been making headway in addressing the concerns associated with previous iterations of our online lives. And, it’s all happening with the help of blockchain technology, decentralised networks, and artificial intelligence.
“Web 3.0 enables a future where distributed users and machines are able to interact with data, value and other counterparties via a substrate of peer-to-peer networks without the need for third parties. The result: a composable human-centric & privacy-preserving computing fabric for the next wave of the web,” articulates Fabric Ventures.
A brief history of Web 3.0
The evolution of human identity and reputation has gone through several stages. It started with the concept of identity being the reputation and standing within a social group. In Web 2.0 however, people started engaging more with the internet through comment features, chatrooms, and social media platforms. With more online exposure, the definition of identity changed as a digital print that the user left whenever they interacted with the internet.
Web 2.0 had several problems, including users having little control over their data ownership and misuse of private data without consent. Web 3.0 applications aim to solve this problem by giving users complete control over their information and who has access to their data.
What is Web 3.0?
The world wide web is now protected using several privacy-preserving technologies that are sophisticated and require in-depth knowledge to understand. Web 3.0 utilizes this technology to give users back control of their digital identities, by leveraging distributed, interoperable and self-sovereign applications.
One of the biggest advantages of Web 3.0 applications is that they are scalable and leave room for improvement. For instance, blockchain technology has emerged as one of the most reliable ways to secure users’ private data. Several Web 3.0 applications are now integrating the use of blockchain technology to create a secure and private identity management system.
PhotoChromic serves as an excellent example of how blockchain technology can improve Web 3.0 applications using NFTs to give users complete control over their identity, while making it easily transferable, secure, and private. PhotoChromic creates biometrically managed self-sovereign identities on the blockchain that allows users to present their credentials to an authorized party and have them attested as the truth.
Web 3.0 will fundamentally expand the scale and scope of human and machine interactions, far beyond what we can imagine today. These interactions, ranging from seamless payments to richer information flows, to trusted data transfers, will become possible with a vastly increased range of potential counterparties. Web 3.0 enables us to interact with any individual or machine in the world, without having to pass through fee-charging middlemen. This shift will enable a whole new wave of previously unimaginable businesses and business models: from global co-operatives to decentralised autonomous organisations and self-sovereign data marketplaces.
The forthcoming wave of Web 3.0 goes far beyond the initial use case of cryptocurrencies. Through the richness of interactions now possible, and the global scope of counterparties available, Web 3.0 will cryptographically connect data from individuals, corporations and machines, with efficient machine learning algorithms, leading to the rise of fundamentally new markets and associated business models. The result is akin to a “return to the global village” — daily immersion in the human-centric and highly personalised interactions from which we used to benefit, now delivered at the global scale of the internet and supporting an ever-increasing myriad of human and machine skills specialisations.
