Web3 Technologies: Challenges and Opportunities

Different from “read” based Web1 and “read-write” based Web2, “read-write-own” based Web3 is proposed as a typical user-centric Internet to open the new generation of the World Wide Web. Web3 is the internet religious fundamentalism for data rights owned by users based on identity, data, network, and service, which requires the support of full-process data protection provided by a zero-trust and zero-touch environment. However, as to the traditional layered architecture like TCP/IP, data protection is an overlaid function, which is far away from the full-process data protection requirements. To this end, in order to build a zero-trust and zero-touch environment, a Web3 architecture is presented in this article as a promising paradigm. Meanwhile, the key principles for Web3 architecture designing are discussed, covering interoperability and interpretability of data, trustworthiness throughout network lifecycle, incentive for collaboration and sharing, and human-centric experience. Moreover, in order to achieve these principles, four aspects of enabling technologies are presented, including semantic, incentive, decentralized, and spatial technologies. Finally, some main challenges and open issues are also identified as a future direction for further work.