Understand and define Web3
Recently, the concept of Web3 has gradually become popular, but it is somewhat difficult to explain Web3 to friends who are new to it.
In fact, the professional term Web3 was born relatively early. In the early days, it was mainly used to describe a new protocol that achieved decentralized consensus. When you search "What is Web3" on the Internet, you may get an answer like this: "Web3 is a relative concept. In a popular sense, it can be understood as the abbreviation of the new generation of the Internet." Or this answer: "Web3, which runs on A decentralized network based on blockchain technology.”
Without exception, the concepts are quite broad.
Since it is a new generation of the Internet and a new product of the third generation, how should Web3 be defined? Or should we say that as long as the network runs on the blockchain, it is Web3? This seems very confusing.
A set of theoretical descriptions that are now widely accepted by everyone is as follows.
Web1 users can only read information on the Internet. For example, in early web pages, users can read information on the Internet through web pages. With Web2, users can not only read information on the Internet, but also write information on the Internet. For example, the Internet giants that everyone is familiar with now all developed under the background of Web2. Compared with Web1 users who can only view content, users can publish their own content on the Internet, such as a Weibo picture or a Douyin video. The way users use the Internet has changed dramatically.
Now that Web2 already supports users to read and write, what about Web3? In addition to being able to read and write, Web3 users also have information. This is a simple definition of Web3.
Public chain and Web3
The public chain is one of the most critical infrastructures of Web3. To a certain extent, different types of public chains can essentially be understood as different decentralized ledgers, which mean classified management of different types of massive information in the decentralized world. This in the Web3 field is just like the status of cloud technology in the Web2 field. Applications can choose any service provider among Amazon, Azure and Google Cloud to store data and run business, and can easily and smoothly migrate data to other cloud platforms. Several cloud services can be used simultaneously.
But why has Ethereum become the only dominant player in recent years? Perhaps it is because there is only one type of data information in the decentralized world now, namely digital assets, such as NFT, SWAP, etc. And soon, another or even multiple types of data are coming, such as the vast amount of different information that is flooded in Web2, including game, identity, background, social and other data information. When this data appears in the decentralized world, another type of ledger will inevitably be needed to record it - the current blockchain is limited by specific mechanisms, performance and ecology. Therefore, more types of chains will be needed in the future to suit different types of information management.
“By defeating Ethereum’s public chain, one can dominate the blockchain field.” To some extent, this is a misunderstanding and a false proposition. Monopolies that did not appear in the Web2 era will not be born in the Web3 era with decentralization as a prominent feature. The future is an era in which multiple chains coexist, but each has its own characteristics.
Why Nervos is the new infrastructure of Web3
The Nervos network is an open source public blockchain ecosystem and protocol collection that uses a layered architecture to lay the foundation for a universal Internet-like public network.
The bottom layer of the Nervos network uses the POW consensus mechanism, which ensures the decentralization of the entire network.
Although there are few public chains that insist on taking the PoW path. Currently, ETH has been converted from PoW to PoS. Many people think that PoW is old and PoS is the future. But the author believes that PoW is still an essential factor in the Web3 world. Web3 focuses on the ownership of user data, so credit that is different from Web2 is essential, and the source of credit for blockchain is its decentralized concept.
As a way to start a project in the early stages, PoS does have huge advantages for early participants. This is why we see more and more new projects choosing the consensus mechanism of PoS. But as time goes by, what PoS provides The security barriers will not continue to increase, which makes it impossible for subsequent participants to achieve indiscriminate fairness, and decentralization cannot be guaranteed. However, decentralization and indiscriminate fairness are the advantages of the PoW consensus. .
Secondly, benefit from Nervos’ more abstract design.
CKB transactions can be more abstract, allowing developers to use other verification algorithms;
CKB’s virtual machine can be more abstract, and CKB-VM does not contain any compilation contracts;
CKB's Cell model is more abstract, and each Cell does not have any internal structure.
It is precisely because of these abstractions that developers have more freedom on the Nervos network, allowing more imaginative products to be built on Nervos.
For example, the earliest PortalWallet wallet developed by the Layer2 team led by Zhixian (a wallet that does not require the management of mnemonic words and addresses) supports users to use Ethereum addresses to send and receive CKB; later, UniPass ID (aimed at providing traditional Internet users with access to Web3 stores Flat access and lowering the threshold of use, promoting the large-scale popularization of Web3), you can directly use the mailbox as the user's account system without the user saving complex private keys and mnemonic phrases. This allows us to see the possibility of ordinary Internet users directly using applications on the blockchain.
For example, supporting different public chain addresses for management DID.bit (a decentralized identity system for the entire Web3) allows us to see the possibility of the Nervos network linking all blockchains;
There is also the latest JoyID (a cross-platform, cross-terminal, password-less and wordless wallet solution) that allows users to use Face ID and Touch ID to create wallets. These products all demonstrate the creativity brought about by Nervos abstraction. force.
As the public chain infrastructure gradually improves, the Web3 world needs more imaginative products to meet different functional applications. Even though the current Nervos infrastructure and on-chain standards are still not perfect enough, as long as it develops in the right direction, I believe Nervos will have its own place in the world of Web3.
