Impacts of blockchain on the internet

Blockchain can also reform the internet, by bringing in web 3.0 and more.

A less centralized internet with more peer-to-peer interaction will discourage large internet monopolies and circumvent gatekeepers. Decentralization can empower consumers and producers alike, by giving them more control over their personal data and a level playing field in online business. It can also increase the role of prosumers, people that both consume and produce goods and services in a system. Some examples include decentralized social networks, and marketplaces, where participants are rewarded for contributing content or sharing and consuming resources at the same time. This is a next-level sharing economy, enabled by distributed applications.

Fully-programmable blockchain networks enable such distributed applications and peer-to-peer marketplaces. We have recently seen many startups trying to build more efficient markets for scarce resources, such as electricity, computer processing power, file storage, and advertising. Whether blockchain technology can be applied successfully to add value to such projects is a matter of scalability, user interfaces, and user experience.

Interoperability with other systems (and the internet as a whole) is also very important, and there are projects trying to build such protocol infrastructures in an efficient way. More importantly, the protocols are the sets of standardized rules adopted worldwide for using in computer systems to communicate with each other. Protocols, such as HTTP and FTP, have formed the base layer of the internet. Such protocols are now being developed for distributed computing systems, such as blockchain. The interaction of these new technologies and the concept of a shared economy is expected to deliver the vision of web 3.0.