Web3 – the beginning of the end of the platform economy is decentralized

The calls for Web3 are getting louder: Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Internet, the Mozilla Foundation and others call for a decentralized Internet. The blockchain could play an important role in this.

In the early 1990s, the World Wide Web changed the way people communicate and get information with one another. With the advent of social media and e-commerce platforms, the web evolved into Web 2.0. This phase was and is characterized by direct social interactions that are not – or hardly – restricted by national borders.

Even if communication and business are direct and take place according to the peer-to-peer model, this is always done through a middleman. For example, if you buy something from another user on Ebay, you have to rely on the middle man – namely Ebay as a platform – to handle the business.

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(Graphic: t3n)

This is simply because in this phase of the Internet platforms have established themselves as “trustworthy” service providers that regulate the interaction between users and companies that are under Circumstances do not know personally and therefore cannot trust each other.

Some startups are working to bring the internet to remote regions with the help of mesh and blockchain technology. (Photo: Shutterstock / GaudiLab)

As “trustworthy” intermediaries, these platforms are paired with continuously optimized content -Discovery layer makes users’ lives easy and convenient. The whole thing has a catch, however, because the platforms have full control over the user’s data and can also set their own rules and determine who is allowed to use which service and when and who can see what exactly. That could be over soon.

In principle, the Internet was originally organized in a decentralized manner, because it doesn’t belong to anyone. However, important parts of the Internet are now made available by centralized services. Regardless of whether they are Internet service providers, domain name systems, search engines, e-mail, web hosting, social media or the cloud – they all run on a limited number of servers run by a few, but very large companies to be controlled.

Today’s Internet is shaped by platforms such as Facebook and Youtube. Decentralized solutions for different areas should help the Web3 to break through. (Image: Ong.Social)

This fact is the reason why a growing number of people use the Internet referred to in its current form as “broken”. A centralized architecture, as it prevails in the platform economy, brings with it a whole series of disadvantages that the forefathers of the Internet certainly did not want.

For example, servers can fail so that users no longer have access to important functions. The owners of the servers can theoretically sell the data of users or give it to governments unnoticed and without consent. Censorship and the prioritized display of content (keyword: net neutrality) are also much easier thanks to the now centralized structure of the Internet.

Many experts assume that the blockchain as a technology is very valuable on the way to a really decentralized Internet. Steven Johnson explains why this could be the case in a recommended article in the New York Times Magazine.

Identified in “Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble” Johnson describes security and identity as the main problems of the internet in its current form and shows how these problems can be solved with the help of the blockchain. He draws a picture of the Internet, which today consists of two layers on top of each other. The “InternetOne” includes open protocols such as TCP / IP and was designed as a simple and flexible data network. In order to keep the “InternetOne” so simple and flexible that it is suitable for almost every application, security aspects and the management of identities and personal data have been outsourced. These aspects are taken over by the applications of the “Internet Two”, as Johnson calls the second layer.

The blockchain could standardize the areas of security and identity on the Internet. (Image: Shutterstock / phive)

While the “InternetOne” layer uses open protocols, the protocols of the “InternetTwo” layer is mainly defined by companies. For this reason, there are hardly any standards for the important areas of security and identity. It was the lack of these standards that made it possible for corporations like Facebook, Google or Amazon to become giants.

The basic idea behind the Internet is in shape Von Johnson’s image of the “InternetOne” continues to be decentralized, while the “InternetTwo” as a layer is to a considerable extent centralized and controlled by a few companies. The blockchain as a technology has the potential to remedy this problem, as it enables the secure exchange of personal data for validating the identity of the users in a secure and decentralized way without the need for a central platform or an intermediary.

In a really decentralized one n Internet, the system itself and services would not be operated by a few companies or organizations. Instead, all users and a network of independent computers and servers would operate the network. The transition from the platform-driven Internet to the decentralized Internet will not be radical, but will take place step by step. However, it cannot be assumed that the Internet will one day be completely decentralized, because centralized systems also have advantages that users do not want to do without. They are more prone to failures and attacks than decentralized architectures, but at the same time they are simply faster and easier to use.

Projects like the Interplanetary File System are working on an alternative network. (Image: IPFS)

However, individual aspects can be decentralized and different startups are already working flat out – many of which rely on the blockchain.

One of the most important areas that should be decentralized revolves around the storage of data. Those who use the Internet today can hardly avoid entrusting their data to other companies. Things can go wrong, as various incidents in recent years have shown, in which hackers have stolen records from millions of users.

One of the great advantages The blockchain results from the fact that users can avail themselves of services and use apps without having to give up sovereignty over their data. Storj, for example, shows that this works. This is a decentralized counterpart to Dropbox, which chops up data, encrypts the pieces and distributes them to the different nodes of the network. Users who provide storage space on their personal computer for this purpose receive units of the associated cryptocurrency in return.

Many decentralized projects rely on rewarding users for providing infrastructure to a critical mass for to achieve success. For example, if you make storage space available to other users at Storj, you will be charged a previously defined amount g of a cryptocurrency. (Image: Storj)

Another area of ​​the Internet that would also benefit from decentralization is the Domain Name System (DNS). Put simply, special servers transform the IP addresses of websites, which are easy for computers to understand, into addresses that are easy for people to read, such as t3n.de.

In the early days of the Internet, networked computers contained the text file HOSTS.TXT, in which the network addresses of known computers were stored in a human-readable format. The more extensive the Internet became, the more cumbersome this method became. This is how the domain name system was brought into being in the mid-1980s. The system is structured hierarchically, and although each user can set up their own DNS server, an industry around DNS has established itself over the years, which is now heavily centralized.

The whole thing is so central that a meltdown cannot be ruled out in the DNS area either. In 2016, for example, the DNS provider Dyn was attacked using DDoS, which meant that popular sites such as Netflix, Twitter, Reddit and GitHub were no longer accessible to users in certain regions in the USA.

Gladius is another example of this. The blockchain startup works on a decentralized content delivery network and focuses on preventing DDoS attacks. To do this, the company relies on the blockchain to distribute files to many different computers in the network. Users can rent unneeded computing time, bandwidth and storage space to host websites and receive a corresponding cryptocurrency as a reward. For this purpose, Gladius relies on smart contracts that run on the Ethereum blockchain.

A decentralized alternative to the established DNS system would in principle also involve the risk of Curb censorship. This can be taken even further, as demonstrated, for example, by the Orchid Protocol, which is rethinking classic VPN. Orchid also relies on users making unneeded bandwidth available to other users.

Many blockchain startups such as Blockstack cleverly activate the developer community so that they can program useful applications. (Image: Blockstack)

The examples for decentralized partial solutions suggest that the Internet is again in individual areas Could become more decentralized and platforms at least have to rethink if they do not want to lose their relevance. Even if the likelihood of a holistic paradigm shift is low, there is hope for those who want more privacy and security online. Projects such as Blockstack, Orchid, Storj or IPFS show that blockchain technology, with the philosophy on which it is based, could be just the thing for this. Exactly these possibilities are the really exciting aspects of the blockchain – far more exciting than the disruption of the financial sector by cryptocurrencies.

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