Twitter founder Jack Dorsey released a new concept of Web5: replace Web3, become the new future of the Internet?

Author | Liam ‘Akiba’ Wright

Translator | Nuka-Cola

Planning | Ling Min

Web3 hasn’t figured it out yet, and Web5 is here again.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey

Announcing the creation of Web5

At the 2022 Consensus (consensus conference), Twitter and Block founder Jack Dorsey announced that Block’s Bitcoin division, TBD, is developing a Web5 standard that replaces Web3. This technology will allow users to control their own data and will not leak it to others. any third party.

According to TBD, “We strongly believe in a decentralized future that will return ownership and control of finances, data and identities to users. Guided by this vision, TBD is building the infrastructure to help everyone access and participate in the global economy. .”

It is reported that Web5 will be built on Bitcoin and will operate without any other tokens.

The basic idea of ​​Web5 is to maximize innovation on Bitcoin, so once it succeeds, any other cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin will be meaningless.

Mike Brock, head of TBD, also confirmed, “There are really no tokens to invest in Web5, thank goodness.” He also pointed the finger at Web3, saying: “Some people seem to think that we are proposing Web5 as a joke. I assure you, We’re really working on it. Unlike Web3, Web5 is going to be a reality.”

Jack Dorsey echoed that sentiment, declaring, “This will probably be our greatest contribution to the Internet. I’m so proud of the team. For Web5 (RIP, Web3 VCs) ). “

In fact, this is not the first time Jack Dorsey has fired at Web3. He has repeatedly emphasized that the ownership of Web3 is actually in the hands of venture capitalists, and any decentralized technology cannot shake this basic premise.

The evolution of the web

TBD believes that the evolution history of the Internet is the history of “person-centered” popularization.

In the first web version, most of the content was static HTML, with the only exceptions being forums and chat protocols such as IRC. The evolution of social media brought what is known as Web2, allowing users to interact through centralized applications such as Facebook.

Twitter and MySpace ushered in a new era of self-built content, real-time sharing. With the birth of Bitcoin and blockchain, the world is marching towards the Web3 era. The hallmark of this new era is the use of decentralized applications at the center, using zero-knowledge proofs to protect data, tokenize content, and defend users’ personal identities.

While Web3 is far from becoming the dominant technology of the next generation of the Internet, Jack Dorsey thinks it might be time to take the initiative and make changes. The core of this wave of changes is his proposed Web5 – based on Bitcoin, the data storage location is transferred from the application back to the user.

The so-called Web5 is actually the addition of Web2 and Web3, so you don’t have to worry about where Web4 is going. The diagram below shows the main differences between the current Internet and Web5.

Web5 announcement sparks discussion

As soon as the announcement came out, the crypto community started to gleefully discuss the question of “Where is Web4”, and there were a lot of interesting tweets on Crypto Twitter. Snoop Dog even announced that it was working on Web6, to which TBD responded, “Cool, high-five dude.”

But there are also many community members who are taking this announcement seriously. After all, there are other people who want to compete for this decentralized Internet built with Bitcoin as the absolute core. Victor Zhang, founder of TokenScript and founder of SmartToken Labs, criticized in the interview: “This “Web5” mentioned by Jack Dorsey is nothing new… It is still the kind of application-centric framework, saying that Web2.5 is still almost. “

Meltem Demirors of CoinShares also pointed out that TBD’s Web5 platform was announced via Google Doc. The DeFiPulse co-founder quipped, “Super Decentralized Web5 on Google docs…the biggest joke I’ve heard lately.” “So, Web4 is Jack Dorsey on Twitter and other Web 2.0 apps. A fictional high-speed network implementation in China. Web5 is Jack Dorsey’s imaginary Ethereum on the Bitcoin chain.”

But there are also community members who seem to agree with the idea of ​​merging the underlying technologies of Web3 and Web5. Maybe that’s what came out of this…Web8? Matt Huang, co-founder of Paradigm, urged everyone not to have such meaningless debates, emphasizing: “About Web2, Web3 and Web5 will only distract everyone. Don’t make blind analogies, but start from first principles…Cryptocurrency In it lies huge possibilities that we cannot yet imagine in 2022. Embrace this uncertainty and move towards a better future!”

Web5 parsing

The concept of Web5 is clearly built on the basic thesis that Web3 is not sufficient to support a decentralized web. The explanation given by TBD is as follows:

The establishment of the Web democratized the exchange of information, but one key layer was missing: identity. We can only protect personal data with hundreds of hard-to-remember account plus passwords. On today’s web, identities and personal data are already in the pockets of other third parties.

Web5 will be composed of four key components that are fully decentralized and based on Bitcoin, namely: Decentralized Identifier, Autonomous Identity Service, Decentralized Web Node and Autonomous Identity SDK.

TBD defines Web5 as follows: Web5 is a decentralized web platform that allows developers to write decentralized web applications using decentralized identifiers, verifiable credentials, and decentralized web nodes to integrate identity and Ownership and control of the data returns to the individual.

The diagram below shows the difference between traditional Web2 applications and the new Web5 ecosystem. In Web2, progressive web applications centralize user-related information through caching, and then hand over the entirety to a centralized server. But Web5 will replace these centralized servers with decentralized Web nodes to ensure that user data does not fall into the hands of third parties.

The text and pictures in this article are from AI Frontline