Block Prime co-founder and director Volker Hartzsch has in-depth experience of the blockchain and tech development sectors. This article will look at Web3 and its potential to have a game-changing impact for internet users all over the world by decentralising the worldwide web.

Centralisation has helped billions of people to access the internet globally through the creation of robust and stable infrastructure. Nevertheless, centralisation also has its drawbacks, paving the way for a handful of companies to gain a stronghold over the internet, unilaterally deciding what should and should not be permitted.

Proponents cite Web3 as a potential solution to this dilemma. Rather than an internet monopolised by a few huge companies, Web3 hinges on the concept of decentralisation, with a web built, operated and owned by its users rather than organisations. Web3 has been hailed as placing power in the hands of people rather than corporations, presenting a decentralised, permissionless web everyone can enjoy equal access to, with no one excluded.

Incorporating native payments in the form of cryptocurrency for sending and spending online, Web3 eliminates the need for users to rely on outdated infrastructure such as banks and payment processors. Based on public blockchains, the same record-keeping systems that facilitate cryptocurrency transactions, Web3 does not require ‘trust’ or ‘permission’, eliminating the need for intermediaries. With agencies and intermediaries accounting for the lion’s share of data collection on the conventional internet today, Web3 poses increased scope for drastically enhanced user privacy.

Decentralised finance, or DeFi, is an aspect of Web3 that is proving particularly attractive from the modern consumer’s perspective. DeFi enables users to execute real-world financial transactions on the blockchain without relying on intermediaries such as banks or governments.

Many Web3 protocols rely on cryptocurrencies, incentivising anyone who wishes to help create, improve, govern or otherwise contribute to projects. A digital asset associated with the vision of a decentralised internet, Web3 tokens can be earned by participating in the protocol in various ways, both technical and nontechnical.

In much the same way as customers pay a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services, consumers of Web3 services typically pay to use the protocol. Relying heavily of NFTs and digital currencies, Web3 centres around the concept of creating a knowledge spiderweb to aid in understanding the meaning of words and connecting, generating and sharing content through search and analysis. Thanks to semantic metadata, Web3 will facilitate increased data communication, helping user experiences to progress to a new level of connectivity by taking advantage of all accessible data.