The internet, since its inception, has revolutionized the computer and democratized information, enabling instant access for the world to see. Web 1 sets its roots in the late 60s and early 70s, when it was simply a connection between a handful of computers. Since then, the web has grown exponentially, developing into the second phase of the web, Web 2 has managed to touch the lives of almost every individual today. Nowadays, Web 3 is at the centre of everyone’s attention, but what is the history behind Web 3, why does its development matter? It all comes down to decentralisation and democratisation power and value throughout the network’s participants.

Web 1 refers to the beginnings of the World Wide Web. For the first few decades, the internet remained a rare commodity and was available only to the select few majorly who could afford it and were technically sound to use it. This period also had limited content creators, and a vast number of users were only content consumers. The content created during this period was static and was majorly informative and less interactive. Personal and single-page web pages were standard in this era hosted on ISP-run web servers or free web hosting services. Whilst the functionality of Web 1 was lacking, the decentralised nature of the web meant that the value accrued to the users and builders of the networks, such that active individuals within networks benefited from participating in the networks they influenced.

As the world entered the 1990s, Web 1 evolved into Web 2, shifting away from being a content delivery network and into a more dynamic, user-oriented and engageable network. Furthermore, the number of users who now had access to the internet also increased exponentially, changing the whole dynamics of the world wide web, and starting the era of Web 2. While the Web’s back-end technical aspect continued to grow during this period on the base of Web 1, the way the web pages were designed and used changed significantly, Web 2 was a significant upgrade to its previous version as the content now was more user-generated, usable, and interoperable.

However, with Web 2 came centralised services by large corporations (Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook). Whilst the networks offered in Web 2 are much more advanced and useful than those offered in Web 1, the decentralised aspect of the web has been stolen from its users and developers, instead giving power to a handful of large corporations. This is a clear issue, as centralised platforms follow a predictable life cycle that starts with them attracting participants to their platform and ends with them extracting value from the participants as their power hold over the participants grows over time. Similarly, centralised platforms will stop cooperating with network participants and start competing with former partners for the top spot within their industry, and extract as much value as possible from their participants, who have now become reliant on that specific centralised platform. Within Web 3, the ownership and power is decentralised. Users and developers can own slices of internet services through the ownership of tokens, democratising the power and value throughout the network and avoiding the exploitation of its participants by a single company which ends up fighting its own users and partners for the largest slice of the cake.

Currently we are at the beginning of a new era, and Web 3 is the natural next step in the evolution of the web, combining the decentralised, community-governed fundamentals of Web 1 with the functionality of Web 2. Now is the time to get involved with Web 3 and become an influential participant within a network. Within Asset Management, DEXTF is at the forefront of the development of Web 3.0 within its industry. Traditionally, starting up a fund takes a significant amount of capital with painstakingly slow bureaucracy, and regulation, creating high barriers of entry into fund management. DEXTF is democratising the industry, breaking down these barriers and enabling users to create a fund within minutes, at a much lower cost and with greater exposure to innovative crypto assets than traditional means. We, at DEXTF, offer a non-custodial, trustless and permissionless solution which democratises wealth across all users within our network. After developing the world’s first oracle-less asset management protocol on Solana, we have made asset management that much more accessible to our community members. With the help of Web 3 through the Solana blockchain, fast, cheap transactions will help us in achieving our goal of democratising the asset management industry.