* By Starcoin community

From Web to Web3

Starting from the first year of the computer (1970), in just a few decades, the IT industry has experienced several phase, the largest and most enduring of which is the Internet. After the maturity of Internet technology, there have been many important applications, such as e-mail, Web technology, etc., which have completely changed the way of human life. In today’s life, no matter how far apart people are, they only need to use various flexible communication tools and social applications to easily establish contact.

Especially after the outbreak of the mobile Internet, mobile applications such as taxis, food ordering, and shopping have made life more convenient. Behind these prosperity are inseparable from the maturity of Internet technology and Web technology. In recent years, Web3 technology has gradually entered into everyone’s view. Here, let’s sort out the development history of Web technology first, so that everyone can understand what Web3 is.

Web technology has been applied for about 30 years, and it is quite mature and accepted by everyone. In this process, Web technology has undergone three major upgrades, called Web1.0, Web2.0 and Web3.0. Let’s dive into the differences between them:

Web 1.0 refers to the first phase of the development of the World Wide Web, which ran from approximately 1991 to 2004. The main feature of Web applications in this period is static web pages, typically represented by portal sites. There are relatively few content creators, who are basically full-time editors, and most users consume content passively.

The first Web 2.0 conference was held in 2004. The core concepts of Web 2.0 are interaction, sharing and relationship. All network behaviors can be explained by these three keywords. The core of Web 2.0 is participation, users are no longer passive content consumers, but participants. The most typical application is SNS. The Web 2.0 has entered the era of application prosperity, such as blogging, social networking, e-commerce, live broadcasting, taxi , IM, etc., which affect all aspects of life.

Through Web1.0, to Web2.0, everything seems to be perfect. In fact, whether the Web 1.0 or the Web 2.0 , the content generated by users in various applications and scenarios does not belong to them, but to the platform. And the platform has the right to process user data, mute users, or even delete users at any time. That is, ownership does not belong to the user himself.

On the basis of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, Web 3.0 makes data belong to users. Breaking the limitations of time and space, no matter when, what country or gender the user is, let the user take ownership. It can be said that the Web3.0 can free users.

How to Protect the Ownership of User Data

Web3.0 is worth embracing, and blockchain is an important cornerstone for realizing Web3.0.

From the perspective of blockchain, to completely hand over the ownership of data to the users themselves, in addition to the design of consensus, the storage model of the account system is also a very important factor. Here are some common situations.

Under Bitcoin’s UTXO model, each user saves unused transaction outputs in his wallet, which is a complete solution for users to control ownership. However, Bitcoin’s script itself has limitations and lacks the ability to express.

In Ethereum’s Account model, although each user saves his own ETH under his own account, more data generated by Solidity contracts can only be stored in the contract account in a unified manner. In essence, data ownership belongs to a certain contract account. In fact, this is the true situation in the EVM ecosystem.

Starcoin also uses the Account model, but uses Move as the smart contract language. In Move’s storage model, the data generated by any contract can be distributed and stored in the user’s own account. It not only has powerful expression ability, but also protects the user’s own data ownership. So in Web3.0, Move is the best choice for smart contracts now.

Starcoin’s mission is to build important infrastructure in the Web3. In addition to having a better storage model using Move as a smart contract programming language, Starcoin uses PoW as consensus in layer 1. Among all the current consensus, PoW is the most thorough way to protect the rights and interests of users.

The Starcoin main network has been running stably for more than half a year, and the community is relatively mature. Recently, many DeFi applications will be launched on the main network. Welcome to join the Starcoin community by:

Twitter: @StarcoinSTC (English) https://twitter.com/starcoinstc

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Meduim(Chinese): https://medium.com/@StarcoinZH

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Starcoin Website: http://starcoin.org

Starcoin Github：https://github.com/starcoinorg/starcoin