Web 3.0 And Future Of The Internet

Is Africa ready for the digital and physical worlds to merge into the metaverse?

- TIANA CLINE

THE INTERNET MAY HAVE evolved from a niche pastime to an essential part of our day-to-day life but for many, it’s problematic. The internet in its current form, Web 2.0, has become too centralized with only a handful of big technology companies – and governments – dominating the market. There’s even a collective name for these giants who have transformed the way we work, shop and socialize: FAANG – Facebook (now Meta), Amazon.com, Apple, Netflix and Google-owner Alphabet.

Web 3.0 is the third generation of the internet, a decentralized online ecosystem based on the blockchain. The term was coined by a computer scientist named Gavin Wood in 2014. Wood co-founded Ethereum, the decentralized blockchain platform behind the cryptocurrency ether (ETH).

In a podcast with CNBC, Wood explained that the biggest issue with Web 2.0 is trusting the people behind the services: “We’ve managed to architect ourselves into this somewhat dystopian version of what the world could be,” he said. This is why, for many, Web 3.0 is about looking at the internet in a more distributed and democratic way. It’s also a critical building block towards creating the metaverse, an immersive online world. Venture capitalists are investing billions of dollars into this future vision while others remain sceptical, calling Web 3.0 a marketing buzzword and a pyramid scheme. Both Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, are known to be ‘against’ the concept, Musk tweeting that “Web 3 isn’t real” and that he couldn’t see a compelling use-case for the VR-driven metaverse.