The internet is constantly evolving. Despite passing through several stages like Web 1 and Web 2, the world is now on the cusp of entering a new era, called “Web3.”
Emerging blockchain technology is playing a key role here, enabling decentralized financial transactions and building trust between different parties in various transactions and interactions. The Web3 innovation also brings crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, along with breakthrough virtual reality experiences like “the metaverse.”
Interestingly, Block has proposed a new concept, going beyond Web3 and talking about Web5. However, before grasping the full description of what Web3 is, Block came up with Web5, and here’s how the discovery was made.
Mike Brock of TBD by Block told the audience at Bitcoin 2023 Miami event that the Block team went out for an offshore meetup where they were discussing all that’s happening in the Web3 space, especially in line with all the innovation and efforts towards making decentralization the anchor of Web3.
“We were making fun of Web three, of the fact that all these ridiculous efforts to try and stuff data into all these blockchains” will surely boomerang. He added that while the everyone knew that there was a massive “interest in having decentralized tech” that will power solutions like “decentralized identity, decentralized off-ramping, and on-ramping,” the Block team was thinking that the industry does not “have to stuff everything onto a blockchain and issue tokens to decentralize things”.
Mike jokingly noted that they have started suggesting names to give to this new ideology that is from Web3. They got Web4 but over time they landed on Web5.
“I think there was a joke that came across and Web5 came up and it just seems so funny and ridiculous and so we went with it and so here we are.”
Everything shouldn’t be on the blockchain
Mike further explained that recognising that everything does not have to be on the blockchain is one of the factors behind the Web5 developers kit TBD released in the week of the Miami conference.
He added that the kits are tools that are needed to create “true decentralized open protocols” that are functional and beneficial. “It doesn’t make sense to tokenize the whole internet.”
The TBD leader affirmed that blockchain is not for everything and that not everything needs to be on the blockchain. There is a need to build different decentralization technologies just as Bitcoin is good as a base layer.
He advised that decentralized protocols need to be created for each sector of the economy as the world has become low in trust both in the financial and social systems which have led to “polarization in the world.” Another suggestion he gave to Devs is that it’s needed to create these protocols to mirror the basic principles on which Bitcoin is founded.
And for TBD, he said the focus is on identity. “Identity is the place that we’re really focusing on. We think having a true self-sovereign identity in the world” is an important goal.
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