Explaining Web2, Web3, and Blockchain To My Mom

Hey, Mom,

Do you remember we talked the other day about web3? And I can’t explain it very well? I kind of do now?

You can imagine it like this. Grandpa is web1, you are web2, and I am web3.

Web3 is the third generation of the internet. Okay so why are we already talking about web3 and what are web1 and web2 first?

Web1 is like a newspaper, just text and photos — the only difference is you access it via the internet.

Web2 is you. You are social. You comment on stuff. You create and post something and people comment back. You bond over the internet.

It is what we’re experiencing now using the web. For example if we want to use a drawing app, mom, you need to make an account for that drawing app. When you make an account, you enter your name, email, and password.

Do you remember your email that is tied to your bank account? You use that. Right? You enter the same password, too. You told me about it just in case you forget.

If you want to use, let’s say, a food delivery app, you do the same process with the drawing app. You input the same email again. And so on. That is what is happening in web2. We are giving away private information to the company whose tools we wanna use. They keep that information on their database. Or do they?

Have you heard that sometimes they sell information, too? Okay, too much?

Let’s go to web3, then.

Remember When Nicolas Cage in “National Museum” clicked a rock and it opened a whole new world? That’s how web3 feels like.

According to my research, you can see who is building what. Building what? Not a building with elevators. They’re creating something on the web like applications — — that’s just how far I understood it. Haha.

You can just be a spectator if you want. You can comment, too. You can also help without asking for permission from a third party. You can interact with users without governance from anybody!

Wait, let me finish!

That’s true. No middleman interferes with transactions.

Nobody can say “you shouldn’t do this.” or “submit this first before you do this”.

And what makes it really cool for me is there’s this way of securing your information called blockchain.

Okay imagine a hollow block? The ones we use in construction sites? Imagine there is information of people stored in the block.

We’ll call that block “Jenny”. Don’t ask me why. Haha. Then, that block, Jenny has a number that is assigned to her. When Jenny is full, she’ll be chained to another block before her. We’ll call that “Matt”. Matt the block has a number, too, and the blocks before him. And so on.

That number is called hash, it’s a code that keeps the information in those blocks. Okay, we’ll talk about this again. I need to read more.

Did you get it, though? I barely did, mom, we’re not alone.

It’s me, your daughter, haha.