By providing access to a near limitless amount of information, the Internet has changed the way the world communicates, consumes data, shares information, and conducts business.

Over the last two decades alone, trillion-dollar businesses like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook have produced some of the world’s most recognizable products.

Google answers more than 5.0 billion queries every single day, or 1.8 trillion searches every year. With 2.9 billion active monthly users (MAU), more than one third of the world’s population uses Facebook. YouTube has more than two billion users, and Instagram and TikTok each have one billion MAUs.

While a small number of Big Tech companies are, in part, responsible for the success of the internet, they only got there because of their users. Users provide them with valuable free data, which tech companies then sell or trade to monetize the users’ experience. Users contribute to the success of Big Tech but, unfortunately, they don’t benefit from it.

Web 3.0 aims to equal the playing field by eliminating the omnipresent middlemen. By incorporating technologies that include distributed ledgers and storage on blockchain, Web 3.0 is expected to create a decentralized, more transparent, fairer internet, that is enabled by individual users who own, control, and can profit off their own content.

What Is Web 3.0?

Web 3.0 is the natural progression of the internet. In fact, the goal of Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, was to create a more autonomous, intelligent, open internet, “a collaborative medium, a place where we [could] all meet and read and write.”

The Evolution of the Internet

Web 1.0 – Connected Us Online

Berners-Lee made that comment back in the early days of the internet, or what is referred to today as Web 1.0 (1985-2005).

At the time, the internet offered limited information with little to no user interaction. It was difficult to buy a web domain and create user pages. It was also difficult to find web pages and if you did, there was no such thing as making online comments. It was a static, one-way experience.

Web 2.0 – Connected Us into Online Communities

Web 2.0 (2005- present), or the Social Web, changed all of that. With the advent of web technologies like HTML5 and JavaScript, etc., individuals and startups could create their own web platforms, like Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, Wikipedia, Facebook, and YouTube.

Virtually overnight, the internet became much more interactive. It was easy to find specific websites and create user-generated content (messages, pictures, videos). But making it easy to connect with others, create fresh content, and provide detailed profile data also means it was easy for those same platforms to sell that data to third parties for targeted advertising purposes. The centralization, monetization, and exploitation of that data, without the users’ consent, led to the idea of Web 3.0.

Web 3.0 – Connected Us into a Community-Owned Virtual World

Web 3.0, which is expected to be implemented in the near future, gives the power back to the user. By combing legacy technology from Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 with cutting-edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learnings (ML), and blockchain, the internet will be interconnected in a decentralized way, and be able to understand data both contextually and conceptually. By processing data more intelligently, Web 3.0 will be able to create highly tailored, independently curated content, for every user.

Web 3.0 open crypto metaverse networks solve this problem by eliminating the capital controls imposed on these virtual worlds by Web 2.0 platforms. This new paradigm allows users to own their digital assets as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), trade them with others in the game, and carry them to other digital experiences, creating an entirely new free-market internet-native economy that can be monetized in the physical world. This evolution of the ‘creator economy’ is known as “Play to Earn.”

Moreover, by using the foundation of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology, a decentralized infrastructure come to the forefront, and induvial users will own and control their own information.

While a decentralized Internet and blockchain is expected to solve many of the problems associated with Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, the big question is, once fully realized, will Web 3.0 be an entity that operates on its own or will it simply run in conjunction with web 2.0? And will Big Tech create their own version of Web 3.0 in order to keep their competitive edge?

Investing in Cryptocurrency with Evolve ETFs

If you’re thinking of investing in cryptocurrency, you may want to consider a more diversified approach. The Evolve Cryptocurrencies ETF (TSX: ETC),Canada’s first multi-cryptocurrency ETF, is designed to be a one-ticket solution to cryptocurrency exposure. It currently holds two of the largest cryptocurrencies – bitcoin (TSX: EBIT) and ether (TSX: ETHR) – but as regulators approve other crypto ETFs, they may be added as well. To learn more about ETC, visit our website by clicking here.

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