Most of the world heard about Blockchain technology in the last couple of years. It will have a major impact on the future of our digital world. It is complex technology to understand because it introduces a new philosophy to deal with a digital system. Blockchain is closely related to the internet and the web as two revolutionary technologies that have transformed our human civilization in the last decades. In this article, I will explain the impact of blockchain on our digital world. Before diving deep into the blockchain, we need to return to some fundamentals and the history of our digital world.

Internet

The Internet is a network of networks, a global computer network infrastructure. It connects millions of computers worldwide, forming a global network where any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as both are connected to the Internet.

Before the internet, we had just standalone computers. It will be helpful to connect them to share data. In the 60s, the advanced research project agency(ARPA) of the US department of defense(DOD) funded research to create a network(develop a protocol to allow computers to interconnect with each other using digital communication). Data that travels over the network uses a variety of languages known as protocols.

In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (IPS)(commonly known as TCP/IP) was standardized, and the Internet was officially defined as a global interconnected network. The communication between any two computers in the internet network is done through the TCP/IP protocol standard.

The Internet was simply the way computers connect to share data.

Web(Internet of information)

The World Wide Web, or simply the web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the internet. It is the leading information retrieval service on the internet. In other words, the World Wide Web is a global collection of documents and other resources linked by hyperlinks. The web uses the concept of documents to form an entire network of information connected via hyperlinks, accessible to anyone connected to the internet network. It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the internet.

The web was invented by Tim Berners-lee in 1990 when he was a computer scientist at European researcher CERN.

The web is a service on top of the internet. It is used to build websites. A website is a collection of documents(contains information) called web pages. Web pages are connected using hypertext links. The web page is the interface responsible for rendering information and managing users' digital interactions. We program Web pages using HTML, CSS, and javascript. A browser is a tool used by end users to access websites. Information rendered by a web page is stored in a centralized server. The browser loads documents from servers using the HTTP protocol. Web documents/resources are indexed using URLs. A computer can serve web documents/resources (HTML, JSON, XML, images). We also have a web service that manages web documents/resources. They are machine-readable documents(not like a web page which is a human-readable document). They are used by applications to communicate with each other(machine-to-machine service running on the Internet using the web). They use XML or JSON document format.

The first version of the WWW (Web1) allows for building basic websites. It enables only reading the information from a document. Instead, the second version(web2) enables the building more advanced websites. The web has become programmable and interactive. Users can read and write information from a document.

Web2 has more advanced features than web1, like web pages becoming dynamic and programmable. The user can provide information via web forms. The most important thing is that the user has a state within every used digital platform. The end user manipulates the state via advanced digital experience within a web page. UI/UX techniques give users a powerful digital experience. It leads to a platform economy based on trust provided by intermediaries. It introduces a way to manage user states on top of the internet. It leads to a new paradigm of digital systems.

Web2 processes the user’s state via a centralized server and persists in centralized storage. The user’s state is owned and controlled by centralized companies.

The web is practical and well known because it gives the digital primitive and principles to build a digital system destinated for the end user. Those applications provide services that enhance our human civilization.

When the web exists, startups search for new ideas and models to design any activities in our digital world using web principles and digital primitives. For example, we take social networks where many models exist based on web principles and digital primitives proposed by different startups. Facebook and Twitter models won the game because they had a model that met user requirements and suggested a good business model at that time.

Blockchain(Internet of value)

A Blockchain is a highly secure, reliable, and decentralized network that stores data, exchanges values, and records transactions activity in a shared ledger that is not controlled by any central authority but maintained by multiple parties. It is a distributed ledger on top of the internet.

The Blockchain was invented by an anonymous person or group of persons called Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 by introducing the Bitcoin white paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. It is a new model of a digital currency system(peer-to-peer, decentralized, and with no central authority) on top of the internet. It was a response to the financial crisis in 2008.

The trust intermediation in blockchain was realized via math, cryptography, transparency, and incentives mechanism, not by centralized institutions like banks. Blockchain provides the software-based verification, validation, recording, and integrity essentials for transactions that can be currency transfers on top of the internet.

Blockchain is a service on top of the internet like the web. It allows for building a digital distributed ledger. We have a set of parties known as nodes that form a blockchain network. They run software that implements a blockchain protocol. The protocol allows the node to run a distributed ledger together. Blockchain has an incentive mechanism to motivate network nodes to keep running the distributed ledger. The consensus algorithm allowed the network nodes to agree on the same state of the distributed ledger. We can deploy a computer program on the distributed ledger based on smart contracts. A wallet is a tool used by users to interact with the blockchain. The wallet manages an address, a public key, and a private key. The user updates the distributed ledger using transactions. Transactions are signed by the private key, which generates a digital signature. Transactions are stored in an ordered, back-linked list of blocks to form a chain of blocks.

The first version of blockchain introduced by Bitcoin was a limited and specific-purpose version. It is used to transfer digital currency between any two users worldwide in a peer-to-peer manner. Instead, in the second version introduced by Ethereum in 2013, the blockchain becomes programmable and general purpose. It is based on smart contract innovation. We go from a specific-purpose distributed ledger to a general-purpose distributed ledger(programmable blockchain).

Blockchain manages the user state in a completely new manner using a distributed ledger. It has a different philosophy, approach, and paradigm for managing user states. In contrast to the web, where users’ state within a digital system is processed, persisted, controlled, and owned by centralized companies, on the blockchain, the user’s state is processed and persisted by decentralized networks like Ethereum and is owned and controlled by the end user.

Blockchain provides new principles, capabilities, and digital primitives to design and build a digital system as the web did before. It is an entirely new vision of our digital world. Blockchain constructs a public digital infrastructure that provides new digital primitives and principles to build a new paradigm of digital services. It doesn’t have only a technological impact but a social, economic, and cultural impact. It has a huge change in our modern civilization. In this new era, we are forced to rethink many traditional concepts through which we make sense of the world: money, equity, property rights, to name a few. Innovators are realizing that there are enormous opportunities in rebuilding these core concepts from the first principles.It has an impact on the daily life of any digital user. In the incoming years, everyone will be familiar with a wallet because you can’t access digital services based on blockchain technology without it. We will use wallets in our daily life like browsers and mobile phones nowadays.

With Blockchain, startups have new digital primitives and principles to design any activities in our digital world. It introduces a new philosophy to building digital services. We take for example social networks, LENS protocol proposes a new social network model based on the Blockchain. Facebook is adopting Blockchain in its products. It opens NFT Sharing on Instagram and Facebook to All US Users. Facebook is rebranding to Meta based on its strategic plan to create the metaverse. There's a huge part of our digital world will be re-designed based on the new digital primitives provided by blockchain technology.

Web3

The term web3 has brought a ton of interest from people and organizations interested in blockchain technology's potential. There was no common consensus on what web3 is and how it works. Too much noise, too little signal.

The community considers Web3 the next generation of the world wide web built based on blockchain technology. Some parts of the community define that as read-write-own, and others as read-write-execute.

The term web3 is coined by one of the best minds in the blockchain world, ex-Ethereum co-founder and Polkadot founder Dr. Gavin Wood. Web3 is not the proper term to describe the evolution that the blockchain is currently carrying out.

Blockchain is the next evolution of the internet after the web evolution. It is wrong to classify the blockchain as a sub-technology used by the Web or the technology based on the next Web version. This classification will limit the potential of blockchain technology. In the next part, I will explain the relationship between the internet, the Web, and the blockchain.

Internet - Web - Blockchain

Internet and Web are often used interchangeably. The Web has been the most used and successful service on top of the Internet in the last decades, which is why most people think that the Internet and the Web are the same. But they are two different technologies. So, the Web, therefore, is not the Internet. The Web is one of many services that run on top of the Internet infrastructure. Other services include email, FTP(file sharing), and VOIP (e.g., Skype).

Examine history - The internet was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for sharing data between computers for military purposes and the web to meet the demand for information management on top of the internet. The blockchain is simply part of the continuation of the history of technologies used to digitize our world(computing, the internet, the web, etc.). It’s a natural progression of the technologies we’ve had in the past. Blockchain is the next revolutionary service on top of the internet after the web.

The internet is the main canal of modern civilization and the basic building block of our digital world. The most commonly used service on top of it is the web which is considered the first era of the internet. The blockchain will hugely impact the current version of the internet. So, it will be the second era of the internet. Mostly, the web is described as the internet of information, and the blockchain is described as the internet of value.

The Internet is not designed to manage information or value, to provide trust, etc. It is just designed to transfer data(bytes) between computers. We need to build a service on top of it to interpret those data in different contexts. The web and blockchain services take the transferred bytes over the medium of the Internet and interpret them in different ways. The transmitted data over the Internet will be interpreted using the web as a document that manages information. On the other hand, the blockchain will interpret those data as a distributed ledger that records and processes transactions between multiple parties in a decentralized and transparent manner.

In the last few decades, our digital world has been based on the web as the most efficient service on top of the internet. Applications are built on web principles even if it's not suitable for that use case. We enforce many applications to be aligned and developed based on web principles. We end up with more complexity and an inefficient model for building such applications. Nowadays, after the growth of Blockchain and its maturity level, we have new digital primitives and principles to build applications. Now, we can build applications on top of the internet based on the web and Blockchain principles. Blockchain can reduce complexity and provide new efficient models to develop applications and advanced use cases across all industries. With the web and the Blockchain, we can have a more efficient model of our digital world.

The Internet connects millions of people around the world. The end user uses applications on top of it to communicate, do business, etc. Those applications are built based on the Web's digital primitives and principles. Now, they will be based on the Web and the Blockchain digital primitive and principles. Blockchain is reinventing the Internet, not the Web.

The web is a service on top of the internet that allows building websites. The blockchain is also a service on top of the internet, like the web, that allows having a distributed ledger for the accountability of users' digital assets through tokens and the execution of users' digital agreements in an innovative manner.

After decades, I think computer scientists will discuss how humanity has such an internet network that connects people worldwide, they limit the use of the internet to build digital services based on the model given by the web. Then, how the blockchain fixed that by providing new digital primitives and principles alongside the web to build digital services. Blockchain is reshaping how we use the internet. We will have a more efficient digital world.

The web democratizes information access on top of the internet. Blockchain will democratize value and wealth access and also democratize agreement execution between parties based on the distributed ledger on top of the internet.

Metaverse

Our digital and physical spaces have begun to merge. The metaverse promises boundless possibilities - from creating novel virtual reality experiences to replicating entire cities in virtual realms.

There is no clear definition of what the Metaverse is. There is no common standard about how the Metaverse will look like. There is multiple vision to construct the Metaverse. It can be a 3D virtual world based on VR, XR, and AR or a new technology that didn’t exist before.

Some definitions and explanations:

• The metaverse can be described as an immersive and constant virtual 3D world where people interact by means of an avatar to carry out a wide range of activities. Such activities can range from leisure and gaming to professional and commercial interactions, financial transactions or even health interventions such as surgery. The immersive experience is generated by using a range of technologies including virtual reality (VR), which is a three-dimensional online environment that can be entered by using a dedicated headset connected to a computer or game console, and augmented reality (AR), which shows the real world enhanced by computer-generated items, such as graphics. Users can create a virtual avatar in the metaverse, to represent them in any desired shape or form. The quality of illustration of the virtual avatar increases the immersive experience. — European Parliament report

• The future of metaverse is not deterministic, but rather it will emerge from the choices we make today. “At its most basic level, the metaverse is a series of digital interactive worlds that are accessed through VR headsets. Users create avatars through which they move about and physically interact with others.” — Graig Paglieri, Forbes Technology Council

• “The metaverse is a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered, 3D, virtual worlds which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.” — Matthew Ball

• Technically, a metaverse is a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality. For simplicity’s sake, think of a metaverse as the next iteration of the internet, which started as individual bulletin boards and independent online destinations. Eventually these destinations became sites on a virtual shared space — similar to how a metaverse will develop. A metaverse is not device-independent, nor owned by a single vendor. It is an independent virtual economy, enabled by digital currencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). As a combinatorial innovation, metaverses require multiple technologies and trends to function. Contributing trends include virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), flexible work styles, head-mounted displays (HMDs), an AR cloud, the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, artificial intelligence (AI) and spatial computing. — Gartner

At least, the Metaverse is the new digital interface that gives an immersive digital experience and interaction to access and use digital services. We will have a new digital interface that leverages a digital experience and interaction aligned with the web and blockchain digital primitives/principles. Metaverse is the next evolution of (the digital interface, digital experience, and digital interaction) of a digital system. We are at an early stage of technology. Many technologies are involved in constructing the metaverse: Extended reality (XR), Virtual reality (VR), Augmented reality (AR), Mixed reality (MR), and Mirror worlds. The metaverse needs to address the new requirements of a digital interface, digital experience, and digital interaction required by blockchain technology and also leverage the existing one levered by web pages.

What leads to the re-appearance of the metaverse?

• Blockchain is built without a friendly user interface. We need a new digital interface that provides a new paradigm of digital experience and interactions that can reflect the new digital primitives and principles of blockchain technology. This is what leads to the re-appearance of the metaverse.

• When we develop a digital system, the digital user interface can take multiple forms: command line interface(CLI), desktop application UI, mobile application UI, or web page. We can combine a wallet with one of the existing digital interfaces to use a blockchain-based digital system. But they don’t deliver a digital experience aligned with blockchain principles and digital primitives. Each digital interface is built for a particular purpose at a specific moment, like web pages for rendering web documents. Web pages are the most used digital-friendly user interface nowadays. They cannot support the requirements of the new evolution of the (digital interface, digital experience, and digital interaction) needed by a blockchain-based digital system. For example, true ownership of value in our digital world through tokens is one of the blockchain digital primitives. We cannot express such a digital experience using existing digital interfaces.

We use a blockchain-based digital system through a web user-friendly digital interface, a web page accessed through a browser. We add a wallet as an extension in the browser, allowing us to interact with the blockchain using transactions. So, we use the digital experience leveraged by web pages to use services built based on the blockchain digital primitives and principles.

Some thoughts about the Metaverse:

• Metaverse could have a new way to render web documents loaded from a centralized server in a new format, unlike a web page.

• Maybe, we will not be having a browser, web pages, or UI/UX for a web page anymore.

• It could appear new UI/UX paradigm for the Metaverse.

• A new tool(something like a browser) can exist to access digital services built on top of the internet.

Digital world 2.0

With Blockchain, we will have a completely different version of our digital world. We have a fundamental change in the basic building block of our digital world:

• New digital interface, digital experience, and digital interaction to access and use a digital system through the Metaverse.

• New digital identity system through Self-sovereign identity (SSI).

• A new paradigm to persist user state and data within a digital system through blockchain.

• A new paradigm to manage user state transition within a digital system through blockchain and Zero-knowledge proof.

• New digital cybersecurity aspects(especially via smart contract vulnerabilities and auditing)

We have changes at the core level of our digital world. That’s why we will have a new version of it. It can be introduced as the digital world 2.0.
The digital world 2.0 has a new philosophy and mindset to design and build digital services. It has new digital primitives like:

• The user owns and controls his digital identity, state, and data within a digital system.

• Trust will be provided in a natively digital way via cryptographic and mathematical guarantees, unlike the current version which is provided by intermediaries.

• True ownership of value in our digital world through tokens

• etc

History point of view, the current version of our digital world is the first iteration by humanity to design an efficient version(model) digital world. The existing version is broken and not sustainable. The next version will take benefit from the advantages of the first version with improvements based on blockchain technology.