How Web5 wants to put data back into the hands of internet users

WHILE the idea of a decentralised Web3, based on blockchain technology, is becoming more and more attractive, the famous American entrepreneur Jack Dorsey is now proposing the concept of Web5. The idea is to give full power back to internet users, who would control their identity and data in a completely decentralized universe.

Jack Dorsey, the Twitter co-founder, who today helms Block, a company specializing in mobile and electronic payment, is also a great evangelist of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. Now, he has now come up with the term Web5, a perfect addition of Web 2.0 -- the so-called social web, as we know it today -- and Web3, a concept already envisioned by many.

This new evolution of the internet would be, he says, made of completely decentralized protocols and applications, within which the users of content and services would be the definitive owners of their identity and of all their data.

But to achieve this, it will still be necessary to "recover" the control of this data, which today belongs to the large groups and corporations with whom internet users have opened all kinds of accounts. This is the criticism made by Jack Dorsey about Web3. "You don't own 'web3.' The [venture capitalists] and their [limited partners] do. It will never escape their incentives. It's ultimately a centralized entity with a different label. Know what you're getting into..." he tweeted in December.

Technically, Web5 would be a decentralized web platform, composed of multiple applications that would also be decentralized, thus giving individuals ownership and control of their identity and their data, which they alone would store.

The same certified credentials would be used for all the services offered and would only be held by the users themselves. Data would be transmitted in a fully encrypted way, and Bitcoin would be the default currency.

So is this technological progress in the making or wishful thinking? Time will tell...