The video of Ryan Shea's presentation at the Blockstack Berlin event was my first introduction to the term Web 3. I was thrilled to finally have a concise label for everything that I'm excited about in technology.

Watch the Video Presentation

Watching this video is well worth the 20 minutes, to get this overview of the still-evolving vocabulary of Web 3, along with clear explanations of the underlying values and principles!

Ryan Shea is the co-founder of Blockstack, a company building protocols and open source software to power decentralized apps (DAPPs) based on user-owned identity which is maintained on a public blockchain.

Ryan Shea: Blockstack, Co-Founder https://blockstack.org/

Presentation Overview

In this video, Ryan's presentation covers the following topics:

What Web 3 Means
The Shift to Decentralized Apps
The DAPP Model
The Decentralized Future

What Web 3 Means

The World Wide Web (WWW) has yet to live up to the original vision of its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee. However, the WWW has evolved and continues to evolve ever closer to Tim's original vision. The last major evolution of the Web brought the rise of dominant Internet giants like Facebook and Amazon.

Web 2

Looking forward, Web 3 is the next leap forward in the WWW's evolution.

WWW Over Time

The Shift to Decentralized Apps

Decentralized applications (DAPPs) do not rely on a single company or server (e.g. Facebook) to store users' data and broker communication with other users. This architecture stands in stark contrast to the centralized applications which dominate the Internet landscape today — whether from a huge company like Google or a smaller independent company like Basecamp.

Centralized-v-Decentralized

Additionally, DAPPs decouple the application from the user's data. This means that a user can choose a new software provider, without leaving behind everything she's built on her old app (e.g. reviews on Yelp, friends on Facebook, spreadsheets on Google Docs, etc).

Decoupling Data from App Interface