Web3 promises to reclaim the internet from tech giants – will it work?

There's a batch of hype surrounding the thought of a decentralised mentation of the net that would springiness much powerfulness to mean users. Here's what it would instrumentality to marque it happen

Technology 17 January 2023

By Chris Stokel-Walker

Chris Malbon

On a gloomy Thursday greeting successful Newcastle, UK, I beryllium with my laptop unfastened playing a game. But I americium not, I volition admit, having overmuch fun. Besides the occasional pixelated images of a abstraction hero, it is mostly a text-based, multiple-choice offering, with prompts encouraging maine to ideate that I americium connected the satellite Veles and asking wherever I would similar to excavation next. The acquisition isn’t enhanced by the information that I person had to walk 20 minutes linking a cryptocurrency wallet to the crippled successful bid to get this far.

Why americium I putting myself done this? Because, judge it oregon not, this crippled is expected to beryllium the aboriginal of the internet, oregon astatine slightest portion of it. It is 1 of the world’s top-rated distributed apps, a manifestation of what immoderate spot arsenic a shiny caller signifier of the online realm called web3.

While my adventures connected Veles are amusingly awful, determination is simply a superior broadside to my foray into the wilds of web3. There is simply a chorus of voices calling for a caller iteration of the internet. And it isn’t hard to spot why: the tech giants that presently power our online satellite are wracked by scandals, are haemorrhaging money and don’t look equipped to lick the problems of online misinformation and hate. So what is web3, however does it enactment and tin it truly connection a amended integer future?

The thought of a connected acceptable of computers – the net – goes backmost galore decades. But the satellite wide web, the shared acceptable of websites that we tin presumption online via those …