Web 3.0
We are currently living in an era where our identity, our data and our money are all organized by centralized organizations. But what if these could be managed by decentralized organizations over the internet. Imagine no one entity owns your identity, your data or your money. Welcome to Web 3.0. A web powered by blockchain, AI and DApps.
In this week's talk, Amit and Rinat talk about Web 3.0, what is it, what are the different decentralized examples, and a lot more!
Transcript
hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Tech Talk where Amit and I talk about various technology-related topics. This week, we're going to talk about a very interesting topic. And a topic that's been quite popular for quite a few months now is web 3.0. This is a new technology based on the blockchain technology. And a lot of people are have recently been started to being aware of it and became really popular a few months ago now. It's kind of kind of settling down, but it's still offering all the modern technology and all the benefits as it should. So yeah, we're very excited to talk about Web 3.0. And is, you know, essentially how, what the internet will look like in future so very excited to sort of dive deeper into this topic. Amit, Thank you very much for coming up with this topic. And yeah, let's, let's dive right. What's your thoughts on web 3.0?
Amit Sarkar:Well, It's a very interesting topic. I mean, I'm pretty sure the audience must be thinking, what is web 1.0 And what is what is web 2.0? Then if you're talking about Web 3.0, differently, there has to be a web 1.2 and 2.2. So I'm pretty sure people must be curious about that. But nevertheless, I think it's a very relevant topic to talk about Web 3.0 Today, we have covered a lot of topics like cryptocurrencies, CBDCs, nfts, Blockchain, AI, Metaverse, etc. And somehow or the other they are interlinked or they are connected to this topic that we are talking about going to talk about today. Web 3.0 So yeah, I'm quite excited to talk about it.
Rinat Malik:Yeah, as you said, they are all interlinked and they are all interlinked in a very nice way and hopefully the audience have, you know, tuned in with our previous episodes on all of these topics and that way they can have an overall idea and understanding of how all of these things linked together. And sort of, then potentially from all of these ideas, you might even think about another new technology that can come up, you know, that can sort of come with combining all these things. Or, you could think about how you can use web 3.0 in Metaverse or how you can use one technology in in in this other arena, etc. So there's always this this exciting possibility of interrelations, which really excites me to be honest thinking about these things, how they all intertwine with each other and create new connections. And that's, that's really exciting to me. So, as we were talking about web 3.0 There must be web one and web two. What about those what give us give us a little bit of background on those? For me, for me, I I just know it in one line is web one is the static websites. Web two is what they call interactive with dynamic website and Web three is more like a smartwatch website. But it's not just websites, it's the domain and everything that comes around, you know, getting your message across to the world through internet. So yeah, give us a little bit more detail on this.
Amit Sarkar:So initially, when the internet was created, people build web pages or HTML pages and they bought a domain and they hosted the content. There was no way for people to actually find new content on it unless they go to some place where they were curating it. So content curation becomes the starting point. And then as the number of pages progressed, search was necessary. And that's how Google Search Alta Vista and many other companies came up and they became very popular but in essence, whenever those pages were created, getting created, they had images, they had text, not I don't think they had much of videos, they had maybe animations, like simple image animations, but fairly simple text and images. So that was the initial web that we all started with. And after that, we started getting interactive web pages, pages where you could interact with the page the website itself, you can make payments, you can watch videos, you can listen to audio. You don't have to reload the you don't have to go to a new page every time. You can reload the content of the page by keeping the URL static. So those kinds of things started happening with web 2.0. And that's what has been shaping the majority of the last decade, or more than that, and it has picked up very rapidly. And in this web 2.0 We had all the social media apps we had the Netflix we had payment, payments, etc. All those different types of apps. Web 3.0 actually started with the advent of the blockchain technology or Bitcoin. Bitcoin is actually based on the blockchain technology and blockchain technology enables many things but in essence, Bitcoin is a decentralized currency, or a cryptocurrency because it's cryptographically encoded so web 3.0 is basically built on top of the blockchain. And what that means is, in essence, it's decentralized. So Web 2.0 was more centralized. I mean, there were Facebook owns all the social media platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Oculus, quest, VR division, etc. So, those are centralized, Google owns the search business, they own Gmail, Google Maps, Android, many other things. And same with Apple, Microsoft etc. So they are basically owned the servers the servers on which our information is stored is owned by them. What if we have a future where we own the data?
Rinat Malik:Another aspect of it being centralized, sorry to interrupt this is also the fact that there are companies private companies who controls the hosting of it and also the domain registration. I mean, there is there is like a if you want to call it guardians, internet, the ICANN, the organization who will kind of…
Amit Sarkar:But they give the domain names they don't give the infrastructure.
Rinat Malik:Yes, yes. So these infrastructure privately owned by different companies, so they're not decentralized, they are centralized in that aspect. And then there is the central authority which decides which you know, top level domain are available or which etc. So these are like central authorities who decides all of these things. And you know, that that kind of takes away the users if you want to call it right, debatable way this right, user's right to a lot of data and a lot of the things that they want to use or do in internet so yeah, so from that perspective, also,
Amit Sarkar:I think you're absolutely right, the right the right of their own data. I think that's a very important term because if we use Facebook then we are bound by US laws because Facebook servers are mostly in us. And if we use the European service, we are bound by GDPR. So the companies are bound by GDPR. So the rights are very important. And as you mentioned, it's about our data, right? Our data on Facebook server or Microsoft server or Google Server. So the domain names managed by ICANN, then you have the physical servers on which our data resides. So even when we are talking now we are recording this on Zoom. We will maybe pause put this video on OneDrive. So that OneDrive has our video recording and that's owned by Microsoft. So we don't own the data. So tomorrow if Microsoft shuts down, our data is gone. I mean, of course they would give us notice by being an ethical company and etc., etc. But in essence, they are now the keepers of our data. And that's called being centralized. Now. What if you live in a world where you own the data and you can take it from Facebook, to Microsoft, to Google, wherever you want, even if one company shuts down because you want the data, you just take it and take it somewhere else. So that's what in essence, what decentralized means that it's not centralized, with one person. And that's what the concept of Metaverse is, like, you can take digital assets from one universe to another universe without thinking about how do I take it, how does it work, etc. And same with your information, your data, your identity.
Rinat Malik:Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, sorry, I interrupted you. You were talking about the decentralized aspect of web three.
Amit Sarkar:So yes, I mean a decentralized aspect again, so as I as I mentioned, the information currently is centralized. But with the advent of Bitcoin and blockchain, it became decentralized. Now block blockchain in essence is a ledger. And that ledger keeps tracks keeps track of information, of credit and debit who owes what who has given him what. Say I pay Rinat Malik 10 Bitcoins, Rinat Malik pays X, 20 Bitcoins, so who owns how much bitcoins based on the wallet, etc. So that is tracked on a ledger that ledger, Dom predominantly is owned by banks in today's world, but in bitcoins, terminology that's in blockchain, that blockchain is a decentralized ledger. Now what do you mean by decentralized? So the ledger is there written on blockchain and anyone can copy the entire ledger on their machine if they want. And for any new transaction, they can try to add the next transactions onto the ledger and keep a copy of it to maintain the copy Bitcoin Network gives the miners who actually mine the bit coins, some sorry, who want to add the transaction, they have to do some mining and basically they have to find a cryptographically. A cryptographic hash, that that enables them to attach the transactions group of transactions to the end of the blockchain. And that, in essence, is what's happening in decentralized one so I can own a copy of the blockchain ledger, you can own a copy of a blockchain ledger person X can own a copy of the blockchain ledger. And once they have a copy, it means now if one ledger goes down, someone else has a copy. So even if one node or one person fails, the others have a copy. So the information is not lost. And that's what you mean by decentralized. So the information always stays and it's not owned by someone else. It's owned by everyone. There is no single person who is maintaining it, but even in a decentralized one, and we will talk about this later. There is some kind of centralization so yeah,
Rinat Malik:yeah, that's another thing I mean, as much enthusiastic I am about adopting the cryptocurrency and this blockchain technology, it just a little bit frustrating to me. But you know, when I think about how it's kind of panning out in our in our world is that we are kind of ending up with some clusters of central authorities or exchanges where most of these transactions are happening like Coinbase or Binance. They now you know, yeah, they're not central bank. They're not any authority. They are private. Companies, which is even riskier if you think about it. And a lot of the data is central to them. Yes. But the difference is that you can also have a copy of the whole of the public blockchain and you can do the validation yourself. You can But right now Bitcoin mining, you know, the doing this validation is in a sense, what we call mining and now the Bitcoin mining has become so difficult for a server that you can't with a single computer, you can't really do the validation on time, the calculation, power necessary. You can't generate a with just a single user computer you would need like industrial grade like proper powerful, you know, a machine which, you know, is kind of out of bounds for a regular technology user. So, in that sense, Bitcoin has kind of centralized itself to a number of companies, although still it's not like one authority or anything but these all of these companies are private companies, which can which is debatable whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, but yeah, it just seems like that. One of the main selling point of this blockchain network is kind of slowly becoming a little bit controversial. But enough about that. I mean, moving on moving back, right back to web 2.0. I mean, obviously, to understand Web 3.0 we needed to understand blockchain and public ledger as you explained Amit. So, now, what happens in you know, the networks like Ethereum and some of the other modern blockchain technologies is that you can create smart contracts within these transactions and these hold the data and I would really recommend you guys to go back and watch the NFT episode that we did where we explained this, this this technology a little bit more detail but what happens is in that public ledger, instead of just having the transaction saying that, Oh, this person gave this other part this wallet gave this other wallet, this amount of bitcoin or whichever coin you could also say that this piece of digital asset, be hexa animation or video, audio, whatever, is owned by this particular wallet as a result publicly worldwide. Everyone knows and agrees that who is the owner of that particular piece of digital assets. Now that's how NF T's are what NF T's work and now if you think about Web 3.0, in in, you know, one of the fundamental concepts of web is domain names you know, you will need to have website addresses or links or URL which is which we all know what is the address where we want to go to and
Rinat Malik:the address that as, as a content provider, you want other people to come to etc. And that is the domain name is basically etched into the Ethereum or any other network saying that this domain is owned by this wallet or in cases you know wallet is also connected to a user etcetera, etcetera. So you can kind of say that this domain name is owned by this person. Now, the benefit of that is, you don't have any yearly fees because once you are owner of it, you own that domain. And that's massively beneficial for the user like people like you and I, who creates websites or you know, wants to have domain names. And right now in web 2.0, all the domains including Facebook, Google, they have to pay a yearly fee to be you know, to keep owning the google.com facebook.com or rinatmalik.com or whatever. And you know, the central authority I can has also a little bit of very tiny attendees of charge on there as well. But yeah, it's all maintained by private companies. And you know, you don't really have much of a say and even the hosting provider. You have to pay the hosting provider, which you can also kind of do yourself technically kind of host from your computer which is massively impractical, but you can yet you know, if you want to if you had a really popular website, which needs a lot of bandwidth, you want to go to a hosting provider and then now if you're doing something questionable, like signal for example, you know, a few months ago or last year when they were hosting this in new massive in service, and you know, which was kind of disrupting the social situation.
Amit Sarkar:Yeah That happened because WhatsApp changed its policies and people were like, Okay, let's move on to some other platform.
Rinat Malik:Absolutely. Yeah. So what would you do if you know private companies like WhatsApp does Yeah. So you need some sort of protection and in, in other in other side of it is the freedom of speech and freedom of expressing yourself. So if you want to express yourself, then you want to, you know, you don't want to be guided or restricted by your hosting provider, they might say, oh, you can't host this or that cetera. So all of these restrictions can be you know, you can find ways to not have this section in web 3.0 and you know, you can own the domain for life. These are some of the benefit just to start with. And then there are so many other technological benefits when you combine all the other technologies NFTs and Metaverse and stuff like that, which, you know, Amit, you can explain but yeah, this part I just wanted to say this part is quite exciting to me. It's like a fundamental difference between web two and web three, because once you own it, you own it. It's etched in the blockchain forever until you're selling it off to someone else. And again, etching it in the blockchain. It's yours. And the whole world knows is and knows it and can validate that you know, that is that you are the owner. So that's quite a cool thing to me. One of the other thing I wanted to also touch upon is some of the providers of web 3.0 domains that in current world obviously there could be more in future. But one of the one of the most popular ones is unstoppable domains.com And they're providing a few top level domains with dot crypto dot wallet, these kind of top level domains and then you can purchase the domain names that you like I for example, purchase rinatmalik.crypto. Not that anyone else was going to, but I wanted to test with one and it's quite cool. You know, you basically, you know, the purchasing is actually a lot more expensive than web 2.0. Because, you know in web 2.0 we are here in UK, so we use some Starling and you know, it's usually 10 Pound starling for every year and usually the domains I buy from Google domains, you just buy it for 10 years for 100 pounds. But in web for web 3.0, you have to remember is kind of like an NFT so you have to first pay the fee to own it and then you have to pay the gas fee if you're if your domain is going to be on Ethereum network, obviously, depending on which network you use a little bit differently. But Ethereum gas fees are also quite expensive. So it was more over 100 pounds for me to own that but now I own it forever. Until I sell it will remain mine. And you know, I don't have to pay any maintenance or yearly fee of any sort. A counter to that. There is also another top-level domain which is dot e (.e) dot Eth(.eth) and there you have to pay a yearly fee and people might ask them how is the web three if that's the case, because over there what they're offering as a company which obviously is down to them more you know owning the network or so they are offering you to lease the domain. That's why you have to pay your. They're not giving you the ownership of the domain. If you were to own it, then it was going to be yours alone to do anything about it. But the reason you have to pay yearly you're not periodic payment is because you're not owning from there so I wanted to I you know I wanted to check out and I wanted to buy one just to and when I did my research and I didn't want to buy I mean although dot eta sounded more attractive to me and I thought okay dot eth (.eth) That sounds like you know, it's the Ethereum and all of these cool, but then I kind of backed off because one of the primary, you know, foundational benefits I thought it's not just for the benefit but it's the feature it's one of the USP is a Web 2.0 that you don't have to pay ever again and that no on it's not just about paying but it's representation of how the whole technology works.
Rinat Malik:And they want to do that. So I kind of even though I like the .eth would have liked it but I kind of went back to unstoppable domains to do go with them where I got the domain,
Amit Sarkar:not criminal ship.
Rinat Malik:Although more costly, but I did only do own it will own it. So yeah, that's, that's the that's the part that I find really cool.
Amit Sarkar:So I think you touched about, I mean, very some of very interesting aspects of decentralized network. I think, in the beginning, we started talking about the concept of centralization. I think it all comes down to two things. One is infrastructure. And one is market place. I think these are two very important concepts people want to understand. In the real world. There is someone who always maintains infrastructure like someone is there to maintain your to supply electricity supply of water, and clean your streets and supply heating, etc. They supply internet. So those are the infrastructure and then you have marketplace. So instead of going to one individual location to just buy a pair of shoes, another location to buy vegetables, another the location to buy groceries, you go to one single place where you can buy everything. So you can buy all the grocery shops and everything. So that's a marketplace. Now in a digital world, if you want to replicate that there will be some kind of centralization just like in the real world. So there will be some person or some entity that will provide the infrastructure and there will be some exchange where you will actually go and buy these currencies or these coins, cryptocurrencies, etc. So there will be always some level of centralization even though we say it's decentralized. I think that's that. I mean, if you get these concepts clear, then I think it just changes your mindset. You own the data so it means you can take the data from one network to another network. No one is stopping you. But someone is still maintaining the infrastructure. And someone is still owning the marketplace or the exchange where you actually trade in those currencies. So you say you're owning the NFT. But NFT is being created by someone. It is maintained by someone, you only are choosing or sorry, you're only approving the ownership rights, you actually don't own it in real terms or physical terms. It's actually kind of renting or renting, but indefinitely. That's what NFT is,
Rinat Malik:is that what it is? I….
Amit Sarkar:I mean, you think like this because you own the asset, and there is proof that you own the asset, but it's not like you have it it's that it's within that so if suppose you so when you say it's there in open sea right, you buy the NFT from open sea, okay, any then can you take it to another NFT marketplace? Or it stays?
Rinat Malik:It is in the same blockchain network. Another marketplace is also using the same block blockchain network you should be able to take it as far as I understand that.
Amit Sarkar:So again, another interesting concept. So when we talk about blockchain network, that block chain network, we are referring to bitcoins blockchain network that says actually
Rinat Malik:Or Ethereum now a days.
Amit Sarkar:or Ethereum exactly, but those networks are different. So people also need to understand that bit as well. There are two networks one is for Bitcoin one is for Ethereum. And then there are different networks for different current cryptocurrency so it means you have Ledger's which are tracking only one single type of currency. Now there is this whole concept of multi ledger or multi protocol where
Rinat Malik:cross ledger for Bitcoin.
Amit Sarkar:Cross ledger. So basically in a single ledger, you can track different cryptocurrencies, you can track Bitcoin, you can track XRP, you can track Ethereum. So that again, is a very interesting concept which people are trying to deal with because if, if we have just one single ledger to track one single currency How is it decentralized? Because now we have so many different currencies. And we want to move that information that transactional information of one particular currency from one ledger to another ledger.
Rinat Malik:Yeah, I don't I don't know a lot about this part. But yeah, I didn't know that I knew that you can kind of communicate between the two blockchains. But I didn't know whether you can track all of the different cryptocurrencies in
Amit Sarkar:Exactly, exactly. So that could be the next level. I am also not sure whether it's already but I have read about it, that people are trying to solve this problem, because this is a very interesting problem because as you have different cryptocurrencies which become popular, sometimes Dogecoin comes and people start buying that. So you need to have a network and then each network has. So you mentioned about Ethereum smart contracts. So that's basically proof of stake and what Bitcoin a network does is proof of work. So you have to actually show that you have mined something in order to get some bitcoins and in spine Ethereum network, it's proof of stake How much do you actually own
Rinat Malik:Oh I think that’s Ethereum 2.0 By the way.
Amit Sarkar:that's Ethereum 2.0 Yes.
Rinat Malik:Before the previous version of Ethereum is still proof of work, but in a different
Amit Sarkar:Yeah. So that also keeps evolving the definition and that's the beauty of it. And you mentioned about top level domains. And that's kind of interesting. It's basically a digital asset that you own, but of course, you keep paying the rent every year or every you buy it in bulk. So 10 years, I have the domain Ahmed Sarkar dot tech bought it for 10 years, I don't have to pay any money. In UK you pay about 100 quid 10 pounds a year. That's about it. It's good, but after 10 years, I have to renew it. And if I don't, then it gets stolen by someone. So there is this whole concept of domain reselling and other things. Some people just buy domain names for a business so that they can sell it at a premium when someone else needs it. And there's a whole big business of it.
Rinat Malik:Absolutely a domain. I mean, that's how the .com Bubble kind of was created a couple of decades ago, where you know, everyone thought that this .com domain name would be so Popular each and a lot of people bought and then realized that
Amit Sarkar:So the moment that domain name expires, what people do is they jump on it, and they try to buy it if it's very popular. So if google.com Expires for some reason, for a millisecond or even for a second, someone can actually buy during that time. And if they buy it, Google then has to negotiate with that person to give them back the domain. And this This is completely legal. There is nothing illegal about it.
Rinat Malik:Yeah, I mean, of course, I mean it’s
Amit Sarkar:it's not like they're cheating Google. Yeah
Rinat Malik:If any one Purchase it, there's no question of legality is supposed to be legally is. So it's interesting how these things happen. But yeah, this is that's web 2.0.
Amit Sarkar:and now in in the decentralized world, so you have the domain name, and then you have your data. So there are governments so Estonia is one of the few fully digital countries in the world where everything is digitized the whole citizens health, health, health records, sorry medical records, education records, financial records, insurance records, they're all owned by the citizens. So it's, it's stored in government servers, but they are owned by the citizens. And if they want to change the provider, they can take the data with them to the other point and again that's enabled by blockchain. So that's what Estonia is trying to do. And in the blockchain world, we now have NFTs, so that's enabling us to buy digital assets. Then we have Metaverse where we have a... It's not a virtual world. It's virtual worlds, where you can own assets using NFTs, and you can move from one world to another world. That's also being enabled by virtual reality, augmented reality, expanded reality. So these are all connected. Then you have these concepts of decentralized apps. Rinat you are mentioning just before the talk about decentralized apps, or Dapp, as they're called. Can you talk a bit more about that?
Rinat Malik:Well, to be honest, I haven't really delved too much deep into Decentralized App but what I will say what I've seen After logging into unstoppable domains after I bought my web 3.0 domains and there are some of the benefits that the domain brings is true Apps. And that's how they make possible and one of them is to have your wallet address as your domain name, or as a personal personalized email or something that string of words that are easier to memorize, and you make that connected with your wallet. So you don't have to remember your 26 digit alphanumeric, string to everywhere and you know, there's less chance of making a mistake as well, even though it's really highly recommended that you always copy and paste and never type that by yourself. But yeah, I mean, so that's, that's one of the benefits and then another thing is that you could I don't remember much to be honest…
Amit Sarkar:okay, it's fine. I mean, if you take the concept of decentralized apps, so take, for example, Twitter, Twitter is an app right, Twitter is an app. Now what is the decentralized version of Twitter? Decentralized version of Twitter, there is a new version and that's called Mastodon. That’s the sign of, basically, a mammoth in olden days or a big elephant. It's a it's actually a Twitter server, but it's open source, anyone can host their own servers and anyone can host their own Twitter space. And you can either keep it free, you can keep it paid, or you can ask people to get invited to the network etc. There is one network maintained by Mastodon and there are other networks maintained by other people, and it is kind of like a decentralized app. And it is it is very interesting that the whole concept of Twitter what it means if it's taken to a decentralized version, what would be the decentralized version of Facebook? What would be the decentralized version of say, Google, Google search, or Google Maps? And those are the kinds of things that people are now thinking about and talking about and it's actually progressing very rapidly. Then we have so there is adapts and there is digital decentralized autonomous organizations, DAO or DAOS. And they are actually very interesting. It's basically a small company or a small entity. That is completely decentralized. That means there is no hierarchy there is no one at the top, no one at the bottom. Everyone has some stake, some ownership and a voice and no one is in charge. Everyone is in charge. Everyone is in charge towards a common goal. So they work on certain projects, and everyone decides whether they want to work on the project and how much time would they dedicate the have proposals etc. And it is very interesting how it is self-organizing, and self-sustaining. And these DAOS are now currently based on mostly Ethereum network. But it is again a very interesting subject. I think we'll do another talk on DAOS. But it's a very interesting thing to look at.
Rinat Malik:Yeah, absolutely. And all of these sub topics are really interesting. And some of those things I don't even I have much idea and I also want to find out more about these things. But one of the things I would say as we always do, we encourage our audience to you know, find out more, you know, do a little bit of tests. You know, my you know, in our previous episodes, we also said that try it out, you know, but there is a question of affordability as well to buy a say like web 2.0 You know, you can spend upwards of more than 100 pounds in pound sterling and more in dollars and other currencies etc. So obviously depending on your affordability I would also say that yeah, try going there. No, we're not sponsored by unstoppable domains or anything. But there is another issue currently, which I've had with the .eth domains that that Ethiopia, the country
Amit Sarkar:Ah okay yeah,
Rinat Malik:Dot in web 2.0 domain naming system. As a country, you know, you know, for example, in UK we have.co.uk And you know.uk is the last part of the of the domain names and in Ethiopian you know country domains, you get .eth, and then again in web 3.0 You are having for Ethereum, you know, you can buy the red chip on domains which is where there is quite a lot of confusion with how this is gonna, you know, go forward and what we're gonna do about it, but it is interesting yet but if you are going to just test it out and you know kind of want to do something then you know probably .eth is a bit more riskier option but then again, you know, go and make your own research, do your own research and make a decision based on that. I've gone for unstoppable domains, but again, they have other controversial, you know, active domain names as well. So, yeah, I mean, because they, you know, what I've seen is they are obviously trying to sell various domains and obviously they are private companies as well. So there is there is that kind of scare of lack of centralization in my mind, obviously, not everyone’s mind. So, yeah, but I would definitely encourage our audience to, you know, go for one and see, see how it is. And once you own it, you can never lose it. So
Amit Sarkar:That’s an interesting bit, and I think I think you I think, when we talk about decentralized domain names and other things, I think it's very important to understand what's happening currently. We have Facebook, we have Google, Microsoft, Apple, many other big companies who actually own our data and they provide us certain services for free. All the social media platforms that we use are free. All the email apps that we use are free. And there are many of the things that are free that we use from these big organizations. Now, well, it's not essential it's not free because we pay that with our data, with our information with our transactions, with our internet history, etc. In this world, the ownership of data is within these companies. So that's why we call it centralized, in a decentralized world or web 3.0. This won't happen. So even if even if we start using Facebook, or we use a decentralized app like Facebook, then we own the data and we can take the data out of it. Any single time. We have talked about it, but I think you need to understand what's happening. So now, as Rinat mentioned, you own the domain forever. You don't have to keep paying it again and again and again, just to have it. Similarly, you own the data forever. You don't need to go and tell. Sorry, you don't need to negotiate with someone to give your data they have to give you or you can just take it away. That's the beauty of being decentralized. It means everyone has a copy. And no one has ownership and everyone is there for it. A similar concept is like BitTorrent. It's peer to peer that has happened in the past. So in peer to peer, I mean there was Napster. So if people had a copy and they are on the same network, if anyone searches for that particular file, they can easily download it to their computer because it's available in that network Napster network. Similarly with Bitcoin or sorry, BitTorrent. If you have a piece of that file, you can download it. And normally in a network, everyone seems to have some complete file. So it's like just having a ledger. Now you have the complete ledger and you own it, you maintain it. So you are essentially preventing the system to collapse just because one central system has collapsed. That has happened during the economic crisis where our banking system collapse because of the mortgage industry. So in this case, we can prevent such collapses because it's decentralized, and the network would be tolerant to such collapses. If one ledger fails, we have the records of everything else. And we can track where the money actually is. If not to the person, but at least to the wallet Decentralized network also gives you anonymity. So that's again, a very good thing in Web 2.0. You have to actually prove your identity again and again and again. In decentralized world. You can always trade with the wallet,
Rinat Malik:But wouldn't it question the security and privacy I mean, if someone can be anonymous, I mean, criminals could use that to their advantage
Amit Sarkar:and then they use and they use that that that's why a lot of criminals have now moved to the Bitcoin or the cryptocurrencies.
Rinat Malik:To be honest I mean cryptocurrencies but in Ethereum or Bitcoin or some of these popular networks you can't be anonymous. Because…
Amit Sarkar:the wallet you can be you can with your wallet see on the ledger it's just a
Rinat Malik:wallet without identifying yourself to you know…
Amit Sarkar:Yes, now because of the exchange so you will have a wallet same Coinbase or Binance. And now because they're heavily regulated, they have asked people to start verifying their identity.
Rinat Malik:So yeah, that's that should give some sort of comfort that you know, you can't do criminal I mean, if you were thinking if you were kind of associating Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general with criminal activities, that's not necessarily the case. But then again, if a criminal wants to then what they can do is they can have an offline wallet created, and then use something called a tumble dryer where they can anonymize the money and then send it to that offline wallet, and then own that and then but this is vastly difficult, and that makes the same argument about cash as well. I mean, right now nowadays using cash is much more difficult. You want to use a card, you want to make online payments, but if you want to be a criminal, and you want to have traceless transactions you want you use cash? Now, it's the same thing if a criminal wants to do crime, then they're going to find a way like they can find a way now with fiat money using cash or other there are other ways of using digital, you know, using fiat currency digitally as well, not anonymously. So, Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency for that reason is not necessarily associated or encourage or enables crime in any way. It's just similar as if you were to use fiat currency.
Amit Sarkar:I think I think the key point is that key point for people to remember is that it offers the anonymous it but because it's again part of, centralized say exchange Coinbase Binance Other things and they are regulated. They are legal entities, they are companies they are organizations that make money. So they are governed by the law of the state and because they are governed by the law, the state, they have to now validate the kind of activities that occurs on their exchanges. And because of that, there is some form of regulation. It is of course offers protection for everyone, their money, their assets, but it also means that there is some level of now centralization. So,
Rinat Malik:another interesting part just because this is this is come as part of the topic of not directly relevant to web 3.0 But if you in UK if you own more than 5000 pounds worth of cryptocurrency in any format with Coinbase and binance in some of these popular exchanges, then they have to they are legally bound to give your details to HMRC the Revenue and Customs of UK and you need to declare that when you do your yearly tax return. So if you have any transactions based on the amount you gained or whatever, I don't know the exact calculations
Amit Sarkar:basically, it's capital gains tax so you will have to pay some capital gains on cryptocurrency.
Rinat Malik:What I have heard is This is not just as simple as capital gains tax but it also capital gains is when you increase or if you decrease then it's a capital loss. What I've what I've kind of understood which may I haven't done enough research so you know, take it with a gain of assault but if you exchange from any cryptocurrency to any other cryptocurrency How do you know whether you gained or not or whether so but even on those scenarios, you wouldn't be subject to tax or at least you have to declare it so definitely the for those of you who are in UK and you know, you know our audience or also everyone else do find out your own country's legal requirements but yeah Coinbase, Binance legally required to give your details to HMRC if you're in UK then if you have more than 5000 pounds worth of what cryptocurrency and you should or you need to declare it to HMRC at the time of your annual return. So yeah, that's just that's just a little bit of side note in now while we're talking about all of these topics in general,
Amit Sarkar:But it's interesting to know that because I mean we talked about decentralization. But it's I mean, as you can see, the government's want to protect the interests of the people. So there will be some kind of centralization. Of course, people are still trying to figure out how to actually run a decentralized network, how to run these decentralized organizations and decentralized apps, and I think things are getting figured out. But people want convenience and convenience comes at a cost. So that's why we are still used to so much used to using Facebook and Google and even if there is a new alternative people don't want to move because if you move everyone else has to be there as well.
Rinat Malik:Yes, absolutely. Yeah, convenience is actually a big factor. A lot of the times we don't notice it but it is and
Amit Sarkar:I mean when a lot of people move from WhatsApp to signal. The problem was that not everyone was on signal so you still had to message few people on WhatsApp. So at the It was just causing more confusion.
Rinat Malik:That's why it is take I would say a potentially an even I would I would say even when Google came up with Google STARCO and everyone was so excited and it didn't stick I didn't they didn't let you know is Google so they obviously came in the game prepared but yet still it didn't stick because everyone was same active as everyone was in Facebook back in those days.
Amit Sarkar:Yes, exactly. Exactly.
Rinat Malik:No needs of Facebook nowadays anymore? But yeah, those times
Amit Sarkar:Facebook is being used data it has a billion users. But now Facebook is used by organizations by people. I mean for other breeds that you are not doing see on Instagram, Snapchat or Tik Tok. Basically, the boring stuff.
Rinat Malik:Yeah, I mean, yeah, it still has it still has quite a quite a large user base. And yeah, I mean, you can't really judge from just one country and your surroundings.
Amit Sarkar:Exactly.
Rinat Malik:And there's countries where people go Facebook instead of going Google that I'm aware of. So
Amit Sarkar:And there are like US’s majority iPhone. Most of the other markets are and UK is also majority iPhone users. Asia, Africa, Americas, the Latin America, they are mostly at Android users. So depending on the kind of handsets you use, it defines what kinds of apps you will use. Not all people young people are on Snapchat or Tik Tok. Not the older generation. They're more used to Facebook so it's different demographics as well. So people who are listening to this talk and who want to actually try web 3.0 There might be a certain age group who are actually quite interested in looking into it and taking the risk of actually buying a domain, buying in a nifty etc. And there might be a certain age group that may be averse to it. And that all comes down to your local laws and regulations, and your surroundings and how much risk appetite you have, based on your current income or whatever, wherever in life you are. So yeah, I mean, we are talking about all these things in the hope that you have gained some bit of knowledge and in the hope that you try something new, because that's where the internet is heading towards a world where you own the data, you own you define your identity, and you can move the data from one place to another place and it is completely open. There is nothing hidden behind the walls all the transactions on blockchain on Bitcoin, every single transaction that has ever occurred, is available to download right now. So that's, I think that that's the power that drives the message.
Rinat Malik:And yeah, again, I would encourage you guys to try it out. If affordable for you. But one of the things I want to add to it is you have to remember that these domain names that you will purchase and you will think oh yeah, I'm gonna add a hosting account and then have my website hosted and people using Chrome and internet edge. Others are gonna come to my website, that's not happening. So that kind of that is a very direct indication of that. If you're buying it now, you're definitely going to be in the category of early adopters. This is like your very, very new technology, even though it's been a few months and the early, you know, the very first hype is kind of settling down. But it's still such an infancy in terms of technology and what it can do that you can't actually go to this domain name with Chrome if you if you if I go and write rinatmalik.crypto it's not gonna return anything in Chrome, or any of the usual browsers that we do. One of the ones that I do know or have heard that enables web 3.0 is brave browser. There’s also brave base in Chrome so you're not really missing out much I have it installed in my computer and kind of imports everything from home. It's actually quite easy to transition to Brave and I didn't fully start using it. I use it as an when Chrome and brave
Amit Sarkar:Brave has their own coin as well, right?
Rinat Malik:Yes, That's where you can really see how Web 3.0 and you know, all of these newer technologies will help you because it helps you not give out your data and if you are giving your data then you get some brave coins, which is money. however small it is. And if you keep using brave on a on a day to day basis, all the internet sites visited. You keep accumulating valid coins as a token of against your data that you're providing. So that's like a direct example of what the power of these decentralized network and these modern technologies are. So yeah, going back to what I'm saying is that you're still going to be a very early adopter. So I have faith in this technology and I think it will, will have a future. So there is benefit in adopting to this technology if possible. However, I think would be good. But yeah, the indication of it is you can't use the regular browsers to go to this domain. So at the moment, you know, web 2.0 sites work differently than web 3.0 sites. So you know, the usability and you still have various usability, for example, your wallet can be your domain. But in terms of the regular, your usual web 2.0 It's not replacing your web 2.0 domain in that sense just yet. Obviously, you know, I would encourage you guys to do your research, do more studies and find out more and then based on that go forward, but definitely worth checking it out. Even if you don't want to buy one you definitely want to find out because it's gonna be something in the near future and you want to be aware of it when it becomes more mainstream.
Amit Sarkar:Definitely, definitely. And I think it's a very exciting topic. If you keep hearing or if you if you if someone mentions to you web 3.0. At least now you have an idea of what they're talking about. And I think that's a good starting point. And that's the aim of our podcast. I mean, you hear about something new and interesting technology and we try to deconstruct it for you try to give you examples try to give you the its pros and cons. and hope you've learned something from this talk today. So thank you so much for listening in. And please share your feedback post. give us any questions that you have, or recommended topics, or even recommend us guests. that you want us to interview. So yeah, thank you so much for tuning in, and see you next time.
Rinat Malik:Thank you guys, see you later. Bye.
