After so much mess in the crypto world, why do we still care about this technology, and where can it lead us?

A lot has been said about crypto prices in recent years. We have seen cryptocurrencies with significant fluctuations throughout the years, making some people rich suddenly and others lose everything in a single stroke.

Not to mention the NFT Market that generated over $23 billion in trading volume in 2021, and now most NFTs are worthless.

But behind these significant fluctuations in crypto assets and these once-hyped projects that have hit rock-bottom valuation, there is a technology with great disruptive potential that has been breathing life into several projects that add value to our society.

In this article, I invite you to leave aside the investment bias and focus on a technological approach so you can understand the key milestones of the web that made us get here and what you can expect for the future.

The Birth of Web

The first step towards decentralization occurred in the Cold War when the United States created a system for decentralizing its information in the Pentagon, making it accessible remotely to prevent the potential loss of government documents in a supposed attack.

Subsequently, the computer communication system expanded beyond the military environment. It underwent various improvements, including the standardization of TCP/IP, which enabled the creation of the National Science Foundation Network in 1985, a vast network connecting universities focused on research and education.

In the 1990s, the internet also started to serve commercial purposes, becoming more popular until it experienced its boom in the 2000s. From then on, leading up to Web3, we can divide the web into two major phases: Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.

Web 1.0 (1995–2005)

Web 1.0 was primarily composed of static web pages. Users were especially consumers of content. Through a computer at home, users could connect to a server and download information for reading. This protocol became known as client-server.

Standard websites of that era included libraries, catalogs, and corporate pages, where all the content was static. At that time, there was a main professional responsible for diagram content to be consumed: The web designer.

Web 2.0 (2005 — present)

Web 2.0, the one we are familiar with today (since Web3 is still in its early stages), consists of dynamic web pages where users interact and create content. In other words, users read and write information to the server.

Social networks, streaming services, finance apps, and Software as a Service (SaaS) products, in general, emerged during this period.

During this phase, with a significant focus on creating cross-platform products (not just on desktops anymore) that are user-friendly, have intuitive interfaces, offer a good user experience, and are profitable, the tech industry underwent significant changes. There’s no longer a single professional responsible for this. Instead, there’s a multidisciplinary team comprising designers, software engineers, product managers, data scientists, and more who work on continuous interactions to enhance what is delivered to users.