Contents I. Introduction
In 1990, to facilitate the sharing of scientific information, Tim Berners-Lee established the first website “https://info.cern.ch/”heralding the inception of Web 1.0 era, which is characterized by a read-only information network served by a limited number of information hosts for a vast audience. It successfully broke geographical barriers, rendering information acquisition unprecedentedly convenient. To overcome the read-only limitation inherent in Web 1.0, Tim O’Reilly proposed Web 2.0 in 2004, which envisioned an information Internet with data read–write capabilities reliant on intermediary information platforms. Web 2.0 empowered users to generate, share, and interact, significantly propelling paradigmatic innovations in Internet. However, the progression of Web 2.0 brought to light concerns related to platform monopolies, information silos, algorithmic manipulation, etc., making Internet platforms dominate and manipulate users’ trust and attention. In response, the concept of Web 3.0 emerged as a Web that can be read, write, and own. It is first proposed by Tim Berners-Lee in 2001, as the semantic Web. In 2014, Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, introduced Web 3.0 (or Web3) as a decentralized, democratized Internet based on blockchain and with the key being full restoration of data and digital identity sovereignty to users.1 In 2022, Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, advocated for a democratized network integrating Web 2.0 and the Bitcoin network, namely, Web5.2 In 2023, the European Union proposed Web 4.0, highlighting the integration of blockchain, metaverse and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide interconnected, interoperable and interactive Internet. Fundamentally, all of them are built on blockchains, aiming at establishing a user-centric world in which individuals have ownership and control over their data.
Insight into A Modern World, https://gavofyork.medium.com.
Web5, https://developer.tbd.website/projects/web5.
