K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
Computer scientist Gavin Wood coined the term "Web 3.0" in 2014, laying out his vision for the future of the internet.
The phrase, also shortened to "Web3," has become an internet buzzword recently with high-profile technologists, including Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, debating the meaning of the term.
Wood, who is one of the co-founders of Ethereum and founder of blockchain infrastructure company Parity Technologies, spoke to CNBC on an episode of the "Beyond the Valley" podcast to discuss his Web3 vision.
What's wrong with the current web?
Proponents call Web3 a decentralized version of the internet — one that is not dominated by a handful of powerful players such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
Web1 started off with the idea of an open and decentralized internet, but Web2 — the internet we know today — led to the birth of trillion dollar technology companies that have a strong influence over the internet and own a lot of the infrastructure the web is built on.
"The big problem with this is ... sort of the same thing as placing all your eggs in one basket, if something goes wrong with one of these services, you know, the service is suddenly unavailable for an awful lot of people," Wood told CNBC's "Beyond the Valley" podcast.
"Furthermore, the keyword here is trust. We're having to trust the people behind the services. We're having to trust the owners of the companies that run the service ... And so yeah, we kind of managed to architect ourselves into this, somewhat like dystopian version of what the world could be."
So what is Web3?
For Wood, Web3 is truly decentralized and a more democratic version of the current internet.
"Web3 is really sort of an alternative vision of the web, where the services that we use are not hosted by a single service provider company, but rather they're sort of purely algorithmic things that are, in some sense, hosted by everybody. So it's like, it's very peer to peer, right? ... The idea being that all participants sort of contribute a small slice of the ultimate service," Wood said.
Continue reading: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/20/what-is-web3-gavin-wood-who-invented-the-word-gives-his-vision.html
The phrase, also shortened to "Web3," has become an internet buzzword recently with high-profile technologists, including Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, debating the meaning of the term.
Wood, who is one of the co-founders of Ethereum and founder of blockchain infrastructure company Parity Technologies, spoke to CNBC on an episode of the "Beyond the Valley" podcast to discuss his Web3 vision.
What's wrong with the current web?
Proponents call Web3 a decentralized version of the internet — one that is not dominated by a handful of powerful players such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
Web1 started off with the idea of an open and decentralized internet, but Web2 — the internet we know today — led to the birth of trillion dollar technology companies that have a strong influence over the internet and own a lot of the infrastructure the web is built on.
"The big problem with this is ... sort of the same thing as placing all your eggs in one basket, if something goes wrong with one of these services, you know, the service is suddenly unavailable for an awful lot of people," Wood told CNBC's "Beyond the Valley" podcast.
"Furthermore, the keyword here is trust. We're having to trust the people behind the services. We're having to trust the owners of the companies that run the service ... And so yeah, we kind of managed to architect ourselves into this, somewhat like dystopian version of what the world could be."
So what is Web3?
For Wood, Web3 is truly decentralized and a more democratic version of the current internet.
"Web3 is really sort of an alternative vision of the web, where the services that we use are not hosted by a single service provider company, but rather they're sort of purely algorithmic things that are, in some sense, hosted by everybody. So it's like, it's very peer to peer, right? ... The idea being that all participants sort of contribute a small slice of the ultimate service," Wood said.
Continue reading: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/20/what-is-web3-gavin-wood-who-invented-the-word-gives-his-vision.html
