Blockchain will establish a globally accessible, trustworthy, unfilterable, and uncensorable database of data and information.
In recent years, the future of the Internet has been the topic of considerable conjecture and discussion. From the emergence of virtual worlds and immersive experiences to the fast expansion of social media, the Internet has become a pervasive communication and commerce platform. Due to the emergence of blockchain, the Internet is set to undergo a significant shift.
This is hardly the Internet’s first shift. Since its public debut about 30 years ago, the Internet has undergone two significant transformations and will likely experience a third. These alterations have altered how we use the Internet, what we use it for, and how we live, work, and interact in the world.
Web 1.0: The Internet’s unchanging structure
The website has existed since the initial version of the public Internet. Every business required a website, which featured largely static data and information deemed essential by the website’s owner. The corporate website included information about the organization, mostly marketing materials. Additionally, news and reference websites had an abundance of data. All of these websites, however, pushed leads to the customer, creating a one-way communication channel. This was comparable to how the day’s conventional media (newspapers, periodicals, radio, and television) disseminated information to the public.
Whether an established news organization like NBC or CNN or a corporate brand like McDonald’s, every corporation eventually had a website that provided the public with information. Figure 1 depicts the Internet. A website was an entity that was formed and controlled by a firm. It mainly included static data owned and handled by the organization. The information flowed in a single direction toward the website’s visitors.
Due to the one-way nature of the information under this architecture, data personalization was highly restricted. Users could pick and filter the information they wanted to consume, but they often had little control over the content of the information provided. Users had almost little impact on other users. Traditionally, information-sharing among users was restricted to local friends and bulletin board groups. These represented very targeted and restricted audiences.
The Web 2.0 web application
The second version of the public Internet, which you are now using, is the era of web applications. Here, businesses concentrate on creating a place for individual users to discuss information. Web 2.0 ushered in the trend of personal blog creation, which subsequently grew into today’s social media environment.
Twitter and Facebook were pioneers in the data democratization movement. They developed programs that let practically anybody publish nearly anything on any subject and share it with a potentially vast audience. In the present iteration of the Internet, as seen in Figure 2, online apps and social networks controlled by firms like Facebook offer a forum for users to input data into the program and share it secretly with “friends” or openly with anybody who may be interested. Modern online apps enable users to interact with people they have never met globally.
When smartphones became popular, internet use increased dramatically. Now, everyone may be constantly linked to the Internet. They could communicate with whomever, anytime, and wherever they choose. Internet use soared.
While users discovered they could speak with individuals from all over the globe, the owners of these programs found they could gather vast amounts of information about users and their preferences. This data became a valuable source of information and a significant cash generator for the Internet’s largest companies. Companies such as Facebook evolved into multibillion-dollar megacorporations, and its founders were among the wealthiest individuals in the world.
Then, these businesses found an additional capability: curation. Instead of randomly displaying content from one user to another, they may tailor information sharing to users’ interests using information about their likes and dislikes. The “social algorithm” was created, and online application businesses exercised immense influence over the information received by the global populace.
This control over information has given these corporations significant influence, which many consider excessive.
Web 3.0: Authentic information
We are now on the verge of the third version of the public Internet.
In this third generation, web apps no longer store and retain data. Instead, data and information are kept in the Internet’s infrastructure. In Web 3.0, data becomes accessible to any program permitted to utilize and requires access. The data is no longer the property of an application or a web platform firm such as Facebook. Online apps play a considerably less significant role in information management. No one program can serve the function of an information curator. Hence, no omnipotent social media corporation can control what information users are permitted to see.
Figure 3 illustrates the Internet. End users manage and control their data and information directly, and that data is utilized and maintained beyond the control of a single organization. The online apps are information consumers, but none own or control the data. Therefore, online apps are becoming secondary to the data itself. Instead, data and information are saved on a decentralized blockchain that is not governed by a single entity. All information in the blockchain is evenly dispersed among all internet firms and cannot be controlled by a single entity (company or government).
The objective is to provide shareable, unfiltered, uncrated, authoritative information independent of web apps and their unfair effect on the news. The information is owned and maintained by the data’s valid owner, the user, and not by the online apps or developers.
Consequently, the Internet will be more authoritative and trustworthy, as data will be sourced, referenceable, and unfiltered.
Web 3.0 should generate a more decentralized internet power structure than was ever achievable with Web 2.0 web platform firms.
The benefits of blockchain
This transformation leading to the third generation of the Internet is made possible by a single technological advancement: blockchain. Central to this decentralized, data-first, authoritative Internet is a blockchain. Why is blockchain technology so essential to this revolution? Several characteristics of blockchain will allow this transformation:
A blockchain enables decentralized ownership. There is no central source of data ownership on a blockchain. Anyone can contribute to a blockchain, and anyone can view its data. Anyone may participate in the blockchain’s distribution.
The information saved in a blockchain is immutable, irreversible, and cryptographically signed, making it verifiably legitimate and authoritative (or provably inauthentic and authoritative). Everyone knows the owner and creator of every data, and the validity of all data can be checked. This raises confidence in the data’s dependability.
No organization can curate, regulate, prioritize, or filter blockchain data. As there is no one owner of the data, no one can control how users use the data. This indicates that no data power brokers, such as social media firms, manage and control shared information.
Blockchain promotes confidence in data and its origin by making all transactions transparent and data verifiable.
There is no one owner of the Internet’s communications backbone, just as there is no single owner of the IP transport infrastructure. Some firms contribute to the backbone, including AT&T, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, and NTT Communications. However, no one owner can entirely isolate, filter, or prevent Internet traffic. Even strong governments, such as China and Russia, find it difficult to limit their people’s access to some portions of the Internet. All filtering is useless if a new, unfiltered provider creates a new communication channel.
Blockchain will provide internet data that the internet backbone has performed for information dissemination. It will build a globally accessible, trustworthy, unfilterable, and uncensorable storehouse of data and information. This trait will fuel the development of the Internet’s third generation.
Hence, the blockchain represents the future of the Internet.
What blockchain implies for businesses
The most apparent piece of advice is to study and comprehend as much about blockchain as possible. Blockchain should not be confused with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin uses the blockchain. However, it is not Bitcoin. The utility of blockchain extends well beyond its first application in cryptocurrency.
Next, recognize that blockchain is not just a technology but a fundamentally new way of conceiving data that will build a new version of the Internet. It is as essential to data as the Internet’s backbone for the transmission of information.
You should keep the blockchain development company in mind as you consider future application designs. Blockchain will be as essential to the next generation of internet apps as the public cloud, microservice architectures, and DevOps is now. Ensure that you account for blockchain’s impact in all your existing and future application design strategies.
