Think about an web that anticipates your wants and means that you can create customized experiences the place popups, cookie notifications, and annoying banners are non-existent.

On this imaginary web, your private AI assistant would prioritize your emails primarily based on what you discover essential, filter out junk and spam exactly, and even commerce digital currencies, shares, and different property whilst you sleep.

That is the potential future internet a rising variety of folks name Net 4.0. It’s the place blockchain know-how, digital currencies, tokenized assets, and peer-to-peer transactions meet synthetic intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). On this model of the net, inconvenience is minimized, all the pieces is customized, and the person expertise is vastly improved. On prime of all that, it’s decentralized, which means interactions are peer-to-peer with no data-harvesting companies in the course of all the pieces.

Sounds implausible, proper? Not so quick! Earlier than embracing this digital utopia, let’s stroll down reminiscence lane and ask some essential questions concerning the future.

The evolution of the net: Net 1.0 → Net 2.0 → Net 3.0

Within the early 90s and 2000s, the world was launched to the primary model of the web. Some name it Net 1.0, and others name it the static internet, however no matter you name it, this model was outlined by its read-only traits.

Within the Net 1.0 period, companies and people on the forefront of tech created the content material, and customers consumed it however couldn’t work together. There have been no feedback, minimal media, and nothing like user-generated content material. This was the time of straightforward HTML web sites with minimal CSS for styling (bear in mind Angelfire and Geocities?). It was additionally when some giants that dominate the web at the moment, like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), had been born.

Then got here the brand new millennium, and Web 2.0 began to take shape. On this model of the web, customers can learn, write, share content material, and work together. Blogs and boards grew to become a factor, however social media websites quickly started to dominate the web. Humanity flocked to those new websites and apps to share images and photographs of their lives and eat them from their pals and networks. It was an harmless time!

Nevertheless, it quickly grew to become obvious that people had signed a take care of the digital satan. Fb (NASDAQ: META) wasn’t only a cool app to share images and reconnect with outdated pals—it was a data-harvesting corporate giant with surveillance capabilities that might have made the KGB envious. The intrusive, invasive nature of those apps, designed to be addictive, started to wreak havoc on lives and societies. In some ways, we’re nonetheless coping with the seismic adjustments they led to at the moment.

In fact, Net 2.0 isn’t all dangerous. Many enterprising people have constructed e-commerce companies and social media accounts that make them fortunes. Instruments like Google Maps (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Uber (NASDAQ: UBER) have made life rather more handy for a lot of, and most of us take pleasure in utilizing a minimum of some social media platforms.

Then got here Web 3.0, which is, in some ways, Lifeless on Arrival. The concept right here was that digital currencies like Bitcoin and “decentralized” blockchains like Ethereum would allow a brand new form of web the place peer-to-peer transactions allowed anybody, wherever, to pay one another and talk with one another straight. On this model of the net, the person would personal their knowledge, would be capable to monetize it, and the data-harvesting middlemen can be eradicated.

It didn’t fairly work out like that, a minimum of but. Fascination with flipping meme cash for fast income and gradual, essentially damaged, unscalable centralized blockchains like BTC, Ethereum, and Solana have slowed the event and adoption of Net 3.0. It’s difficult to construct a brand new world on blockchains the place the transaction charges could possibly be something from $1.50 to $150, and transactions fail repeatedly when issues get busy.

But, there’s nonetheless hope for Net 3.0. The concepts and ideas are each in style and sound. In time, builders shall be much less enticed by VC cash and extra targeted on constructing merchandise that work. Maybe then, the scalable blockchains able to one million transactions per second can have their second within the solar, and people with a long-term enterprise focus will shift to constructing on them.

Net 4.0 can’t occur till Net 3.0 succeeds

So, is Net 4.0 a untimely thought? Sure, that’s plain. Whereas AI agents are already becoming a thing on Meta-controlled platforms like Fb, and so they’ll change into a extra outstanding function of the web expertise within the years to return, that’s simply an evolution of Net 2.0 the place the identical company titans will harvest much more knowledge, construct much more addictive platforms, and can serve up much more customized adverts. The perfect we are able to hope for here’s a higher person expertise, however there shall be no freedom. It’ll merely be a extra nice digital cage to reside in.

For Web 4.0 to succeed, Net 3.0 must be constructed on a stable basis. Sure, which means a scalable blockchain like BSV that may course of hundreds of thousands of transactions per second with tiny charges. It additionally means dependable transactions, compliance with the legal guidelines and laws of nation-states, and priceless functions folks discover higher than Net 2.0 options.

How will we get the ball rolling? One apparent approach is to empower creators with instruments to monetize their content material in methods Net 2.0 can’t and allow them to deliver their audiences with them. That’s the place micropayments are available in, and platforms like LaMint and Gibeo are paving the best way. One other is to make it simpler for builders to construct Net 3.0 functions, and that’s the place platforms like sCrypt can assist.

Net 4.0 sounds unbelievable, nevertheless it’s a great distance off. To forestall the identical huge gamers from utilizing AI to tighten their chokehold on the web, we have to make scalable Net 3.0 a precedence. Both we unite and construct on a scalable blockchain or descend into tribalism and struggle over the worth of nugatory meme cash whereas the masters of Net 2.0 change into trillionaires and management ever extra points of our digital lives. That’s a sobering option to must make, nevertheless it’s an actual one.

Watch: Amazon Net Providers to check Web3-enabling tech on BSV

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