Restructuring the Internet to improve security, privacy and reliability
A dominant narrative surrounding today's Internet is the global proliferation of user-generated content and applications. Thanks to the rise of social media, online publishing platforms, and other tools (a trend that has been described as "Web 2.0"), individuals and organizations can easily share web content and experiences with a very wide audience.
However, this accessible and democratic approach does not cover all aspects of the Internet. When it comes to running web apps, it's usually the other way around. Currently, a person or organization that wants to launch an application has few realistic options for where to store and run it.
But these limitations are changing. Thanks to technologies like blockchain solutions, we are seeing a slow but steady move towards a more decentralized internet. And this has interesting implications for security, privacy and reliability.
The modern Internet is centralized in many ways
When a person or organization wants to launch a web application, they have historically had relatively few places to host it.
If the application has few users and uses limited bandwidth, it can be located on a private, on-premises server or data center. However, when bandwidth needs increase, or if the organization wants to provide the fast, secure experience that many users now expect , all but the largest and most resource-rich organizations find that their only economical option is some form of cloud hosting.
This solution is by no means a bad option. Cloud hosting offers many advantages in terms of performance, security, and flexibility compared to on-premises hosting. But centralizing data on a few selected cloud providers also brings challenges, including:
Service interruption: Hosting web application data on third-party servers can introduce a single point of failure unless you have implemented appropriate redundancies in your infrastructure. This can be a problem when cloud providers experience outages or internet connectivity issues.
Performance risks for global audiences : Cloud providers operate a relatively limited number of massive data centers, and cloud users often need to choose which geographic region their application will be hosted in. If an application’s users are far from their servers, they may experience latency due to the long haul of traffic.
Vendor lock-in:Migrating from one cloud service to another can be extremely difficult . If the cloud provider’s service quality declines, or if they set unfair pricing policies , organizations may struggle to find a better alternative.
To say it again, these problems are not reasons to give up on the cloud. But they may explain a very interesting recent trend: the conception, and slow emergence, of a decentralized Internet network model, based on technologies such as blockchain. This model is often referred to as "Web3."
Web3: What and how
Web3 is expected to more closely align with the original vision of one of the architects of the Internet, Sir Tim Berners-Lee , who envisioned a distributed network with no central authorities or single point of failure. Originally called the "Semantic Web," Web3 will be an intelligent Internet that understands everything a user transmits, both in content and context, and processes information with human-like intelligence. This will be achieved by interconnecting and decentralizing data on networks that operate using decentralized protocols.
Berners-Lee's vision should be realized in part by new technologies such as blockchain. These technologies will decentralize Internet infrastructure and applications, and change data flows and the centralization of information.
Blockchain, in particular, is supposed to be one of the most critical technologies needed for Web3 development company infrastructure. Blockchain came into being in 2009 with the creation of Bitcoin. Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto , an anonymous person or group who intended to respond to the 2008 financial crisis by decentralizing the global financial sector. As defined by Forbes , "Blockchain is the groundbreaking database technology that forms the DNA of nearly all cryptocurrencies. By distributing identical copies of a database across a network, blockchain makes it very difficult to hack or cheat the system. Cryptocurrency is currently the most popular use of blockchain, but the technology has the potential to serve a very wide range of applications."
While Bitcoin was the genesis of blockchain technology, it is just one of many blockchains that have the potential to disrupt nearly every industry and vertical, offering the range of high-impact applications described by Forbes. The most important blockchain after Bitcoin, and the one most likely to drive the advancement of Web3, is Ethereum .
Today, the Ethereum blockchain is considered to be the ideal open, trustless platform to serve as the infrastructure for a decentralized Internet. With technologies like Ethereum powering the emergence of Web3, the world could see a new intelligent Internet built on the trends of Web 2.0, but based on blockchain and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) technology. This will lead to an infinitely more powerful and user-friendly online experience, and revolutionize the interconnection of the Internet, applications, and the physical world. This will lead to huge improvements in privacy and security through the decentralization of data and privacy-preserving cryptographic and computational techniques .
Challenges for Web3
While Web3 promises to radically change the Internet and its ability to provide value to users around the world, there are still some major hurdles that need to be overcome for mass adoption. Currently, decentralized networks have several issues that impede the rise of Web3, including speed and scale .
Despite offering greater security, the decentralized web is currently much slower than the centralized one due to the need for authentication nodes . While a centralized application can process a huge number of requests at the same time, a decentralized application is far inferior in terms of scale.
Scalability is also an ongoing issue. Since the Ethereum network is made up of over 8,000 nodes that contribute to its security, every transaction must be processed by the entire set of these nodes. This can lead to network congestion and is a factor that severely limits Ethereum’s ability to handle the enterprise applications of tomorrow. Work is underway to help scale Ethereum. However, if this blockchain development (or a similar blockchain, such as Cardano or Polkadot ) were to become the backbone of the decentralized network, solutions for scaling, speed, and privacy would need to be developed.
The advantages of Web3
Once the challenges currently standing in the way of Web3 are resolved, it will provide high-impact solutions to some of the Internet’s most persistent problems. For example, while today’s centralized applications can experience downtime for a variety of reasons, Web3 DApps and servers offer more resilience with a much lower risk of downtime since they will run on Ethereum’s decentralized network of tens of thousands of computers. With wider adoption and ever-increasing network effects, the reliability of the Web3 Internet will continue to improve.
Similarly, Web3 will leave behind, both in terms of volume and effectiveness, the DDoS attacks we see today, thereby further improving reliability. Since the security of the Ethereum blockchain is based on peer-to-peer networks, rather than centralized servers, cybercriminals will not be able to disrupt internet services as easily as they can now. There will no longer be single points of failure, allowing the network to function normally even if participants are attacked or taken down.
And now that?
While latency, scale, and reliability issues still present challenges in the transition to Web3, organizations focused on improving the Internet will help solve these problems and drive greater adoption of DApps and the decentralized network. As more people use Web3, the network effect will keep making its benefits even greater, which will lead to even more people using it.
Currently, the Ethereum network is difficult to interact with, and requires running complex software, including downloading and cryptographically verifying massive amounts of data. This creates technical hurdles and can exclude those with low-powered devices. As Web3 adoption progresses, Cloudflare will continue to help lower accessibility barriers for users who want to participate.
That’s why Cloudflare has developed Cloudflare Ethereum Gateway , another tool in Cloudflare’s suite of distributed web gateway tools , which users can use to interact with the Ethereum network without installing additional software. This allows anyone and any internet-connected device to interact with the Ethereum network securely and reliably. Using the distributed web gateway, users can host content on IPFS, interact with and develop Ethereum smart contracts, build fully decentralized websites, and more. In line with Cloudflare’s mission, these advancements in internet technology will provide increased speed, security, and reliability—all powered by Cloudflare’s edge network.
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