What Is Web3 and Why Does It Matter?（Web3がなぜ重要なのか）

One of the more recent terms which has arisen in the IT industry is the concept of Web 3, or Web3, which tries to explain how the Internet will operate in the future, and is radically different from its current form. The essential challenge that Web3 seeks to address is the fact that the Internet as it exists now is heavily centralized. This in turn means that a relatively small number of organizations wield a large amount of control over governance of the World Wide Web. Web3 is a vision of a decentralized concept for how the Internet will operate, which seeks to distribute control more equally among users using technologies such as blockchain, NFTs, and the metaverse, and while in its infancy has the potential to reinvent the entire online ecosystem, and hence, is an important concept to follow.

The Need for Web3

The Internet has come a long way from its early commercial days in the 1990s when websites were read-only, and data was hosted internally by companies and on personal computers. Around 2005, Web 2.0 services emerged alongside today’s Internet giants who control a significant amount of global web traffic, and hence, wield a tremendous amount of power in terms of how data is stored, gathered, and monetized. This is the essential issue Web3 seeks to address by giving users more control over their own data and eliminating intermediaries. Web3 seeks to promote open-sourced applications on a blockchain, which would bring a new level of transparency to the Internet and in theory will allow users to have significantly more control over their data.