What is Web3?

What is Web3?

In short, it’s the next generation of the internet built to enable value transfer.

While Web1 was the internet of information transfer, it got upgraded by Web2 to become the internet of social transfers. Web3 goes farther by being the internet of value transfer. It lets us move value around the globe. Securely.

Web1 is reading.

Web2 is reading and writing.

Web3 is reading, writing, and owning.

Ownership comes in the forms of tokens: pieces of the internet that users own, whether in the form of value (such as bitcoin) or digital art/music/property in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Tokens can represent both virtual (like tokens that power compute power) as well as physical (such as a real-world house) goods.

Web3 pulls together the prior internet generations and pulls in what got left behind by prior internet versions — finance, identity, scarcity, verifiable property, and security. Web3 benefits from the fusion of decentralized internet networks, secure computing, and autonomous intelligent software.

Cryptographically-secured transactions link Web3 together. Web3 computer code creates the rules of the new internet road for blockchain vehicles, and cryptoassets are the gas that incentivize database owners to maintain — and own — the system.

Because Web3 is digitally native, and often lacks real-world visibility, here is another way of looking at the internet’s…