Tim Berners-Lee, widely recognized as the man who invented the World Wide Web, is reportedly continuously at work on ways to advance his groundbreaking project.
The decentralized utopia of the web that marketers and companies are selling as “Web 3.0” doesn’t, however, seem anything like the future that the British computer scientist envisioned.
In order to create a more democratic web platform where Big Tech companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft don’t hold all the data and contents hostage, proponents of Web3, also known as Web 3.0, propose a future version of the World Wide Web that incorporates decentralization, blockchain, and token-based digital transactions.
But computer scientist and chairman of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Tim Berners-Lee claims that Web3 is not the web at all, saying as much at the Web Summit conference recently held in Lisbon.
Beyond the buzzwords, Berners-Lee stressed the need of knowing what the phrases we’re talking actually imply.
According to Berners-Lee, “blockchain protocols are too sluggish, too expensive, and too public.”
To paraphrase the technologist: “It’s a shame that the genuine Web3 moniker got grabbed by Ethereum individuals for the stuff that they’re doing with blockchain.” In his opinion, blockchain isn’t the answer to the issues plaguing the modern web at the moment.
In Berners-view, Lee’s distributed ledger technology, which is used to verify transactions in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, is a solution looking for a problem to address and, as such, has no place in the web’s or the world’s future.
According to Berners-Lee, personal data repositories need to be quick, inexpensive, and secure, while blockchain protocols are too sluggish, too expensive, and too public.
However, he is working on an alternative “Web 3.0” design for his company, Inrupt, which he hopes will help to expand internet access to information and education for the masses.
Solid is the term, and it completely sidesteps the use of any blockchain-derived technology.
With a focus on privacy-by-design, Solid is a web decentralization initiative with the goal of shifting data ownership away from Big Tech’s centralized data centers and into the hands of individual users.
Using a worldwide “single sign-on” feature that allows anyone to log in from anywhere or login IDs that allow users to share their data with others, Solid implements a type of decentralized network that exceeds current models like BitTorrent. Apps can access information from any part of the Solid platform thanks to a “single universal API.”