The theory behind blockchain's immutability is sound, but like with all technology, humans have found creative ways to cheat it. If the nodes in the network don't agree that a new transaction reflects the blockchain's shared history (i.e., someone is trying to spend Bitcoin they don't have to spend), then it's not added to the ledger. There are two elements to this security: a cryptographic fingerprint unique to each block and a 'consensus protocol'. When a transaction is submitted the nodes check that it's valid.
It's essentially a decentralised accounting ledger stored on multiple computers (nodes) across a network. Let's take a look at the most popular use case of blockchain: Bitcoin.īitcoin uses blockchain technology to record the history of every Bitcoin transaction ever made. The first blockchain was proposed back in 1982, so how is a 40-year old concept so secure? Without getting into some serious technical weeds here, there's some very sophisticated maths going on, making it extremely difficult for attackers to manipulate and making blockchain very secure - in theory…īlockchain technology has gained prominence in the last few years thanks to the meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies, but it's not actually new. Every new block added contains a cryptographic hash that contains information about the previous block, creating a chain. The USP of blockchain technology is that each block is linked together using cryptography. In layman's terms, a blockchain is simply a growing list of records called blocks a database that stores information in digital format. Simply put, machine learning and AI handling 'the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives'.ĭespite incorporating some ideas relating to the semantic web, Web3 is the concept of a decentralised online ecosystem based on the blockchain. The term 'semantic web' was coined by web founder Tim Berners-Lee in 1999, with the vision of making internet data machine-readable. Web3, sometimes referred to as Web 3.0, is not the semantic web, which is sometimes referred to as Web 3.0. So how is Web3 different?īefore we get into Web3 and what it actually means, a point of clarification: The likes of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok have allowed us all to become content creators and publishers.
Web 2.0 is based on websites that emphasise user-generated content, most notably social media platforms. Web 2.0 is what we're familiar with now, and is also known as the participatory web. Personal web pages existed (remember GeoCities?), but again, these were static pages of information. As internet users we were consumers, rather than producers, of content.
Web 1.0 is considered to have been approximately 1991 to 2004, where the vast majority of websites were simply static pages of information.
The next big thing on the internet software#
The world wide web isn't a single piece of software that receives regular updates, but the terms Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 refer to eras in the history of the web. So are the promises of Web3 to be believed? "Hold on - there have been two previous versions of the web?"
If not, you've almost certainly heard about some of its related technology -cryptocurrency, NFTs and, at the heart of it all, the Blockchain.įormer candidate for the Democratic US presidential nomination Andrew Yang has claimed 'Web3 technologies represent the biggest anti-poverty opportunity of our time', while a clip of Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon comparing their Bored Ape NFTs went viral earlier this year.
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