Web3, Decentralized Internet of the Future and It's moving tech stack

The tech industry is bursting with stacks, be that the full-stack developer, LAMP, MEAN or Java stacks to name a few. These groups of tools or frameworks, or stacks as you may, are crucial building blocks upon which technology platforms are built using and deployed upon in general.

There are no strict rules as to what is defined as a stack, it's simply the sets of technologies you use to support various parts of your organisation. The LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) is one of the best-known stacks, as it was a key building block adopted by Web2 companies such as Facebook, where each component of this stack has a clearly defined role. In the LAMP stack:

• Linux is the underlying operating system (or Windows in the case of the lesser-known WAMP stack)

• Apache provides the webserver serving up the web pages

• MySQL provides the data persistence layer

• PHP provides the web application framework encapsulating the business logic and presentation layers

As the technology landscape has evolved so have the stacks, and in addition to these core web stacks, there are also stacks or applications for application performance monitoring (APM), business intelligence, load balancing, product analytics, machine learning, etc. — the list goes on.

If we examine the core application themes as they stand in Web3, they are dominated by:

• Cryptocurrencies and utility tokens

• Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)

• Decentralised finance (DeFi)

• Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs)

• Decentralised identity (DID)

• Workflow synchronisation

These are typically making use of the following foundational building blocks, which I think of as the Web3 foundation stack:

• Consensus

• Data availability

• Execution

• Storage

• DApps

• Wallets

There are also additional components, for example, interoperability, layer2s and naming protocols, but c'mon I won't be discussing here.

Think about how the internet affects your life on a daily basis. Consider how society has changed as a result of the internet. Social media platforms. Mobile apps. And now the internet is going through another paradigm shift as we speak.

The Evolution of the Web

The web has evolved a lot over the years, and the applications of it today are almost unrecognizable from its most early days. The evolution of the web is often partitioned into three separate stages: Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0.

What is Web 1.0?

Web 1.0 was the first iteration of the web. Most participants were consumers of content, and the creators were typically developers who build websites that contained information served up mainly in text or image format. Web 1.0 lasted approximately from 1991 to 2004.

Web 1.0 consisted of sites serving static content instead of dynamic HTML. Data and content were served from a static file system rather than a database, and sites didn't have much interactivity at all.

You can think of Web 1.0 as the read-only web.

What is Web 2.0?

Most of us have primarily experienced the web in its current form, commonly referred to as web2. You can think of web2 as the interactive and social web.

In the web2 world, you don’t have to be a developer to participate in the creation process. Many apps are built in a way that easily allows anyone to be a creator.

Web2 is simple, really, and because of its simplicity more and more people around the world are becoming creators.

The web in its current form is really great in many ways, but there are some areas where we can do a lot better.

Web3 aims to solve many of these shortcomings by fundamentally rethinking how we architect and interact with applications from the ground up.

The Future and Web 3.0?

There are a few fundamental differences between web2 and web3, but decentralization is at its core.

Web3 enhances the internet as we know it today with a few other added characteristics. web3 is:

Verifiable

Trustless

Self-governing

Permissionless

Distributed and robust

Stateful

Native built-in payments

In web3, developers don't usually build and deploy applications that run on a single server or that store their data in a single database (usually hosted on and managed by a single cloud provider).

Instead, web3 applications either run on blockchains, decentralized networks of many peer to peer nodes (servers), or a combination of the two that forms a cryptoeconomic protocol. These apps are often referred to as dapps (decentralized apps), and you will see that term used often in the web3 space.

If you'd like to dig deeper into what I've discussed here, I encourage you to check out an episode of Web3 Innovator's with Doug Petkanics, founder and CEO of Livepeer, the decentralised video streaming network🚀

Moonway.

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