What is Web5?
Web5 is the evolution of a new Web platform that enables decentralized applications and protocols built on Bitcoin blockchain. Web5 is a consolidation of Web3 and Web2 and promises to solve the issue of protecting user’s personal data.
What does the current Web lack?
Nowadays web users have hundreds of accounts and passwords that are difficult to remember and third parties keep user’s identity and their personal data. The latest Web3 also isn’t a truly decentralized platform as the identity and personal data are residing on various venture capitalists and limited partners.
What Web5 offers?
Web5 platform offers decentralized identity and data storage to web applications. Developers can create better user experience and users can hold their data and identity.
Web5 platform will support two use cases: users will have the ability to “own their data” and “control their identity”. These use cases will be implemented by wallets, Decentralized Web Nodes (DWN), and Decentralized Web Apps (DWA).
Web5 will employ blockchain technology that uses Bitcoin. By this double-spending problems can be avoided and a peer-to-peer bitcoin digital currency can be built. Web5 will utilize an open public permission less layer 2 Decentralized Identifier network called ION and Bitcoin blockchain will be its backbone.
Web5 Features
- Decentralized Web Platform – A platform that enables secure transmission of data and decentralized Verifiable Credentials (VC).
- Decentralized Identities – A self generated, self owned and universally discoverable identifiers. These Ids are based on identity norms from Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF). The foundation has formed a Decentralized Identifier (DID) and the IDs are reserved on blockchain.
- Provision to develop Decentralized Apps – By using Self-Sovereign Identity SDK (SSI-SDK) SSI wallets can be developed by any web developer.
- Ownership of content to user – Verifiable Credentials will be handled by an SSI approach.
- Decentralized Web Nodes – Implementation of Decentralized Identity Foundation’s (DIF) decentralized data storage standard.
Web5 Workflow
Web5 is built on Decentralized Identity Foundation’s Sidetree protocol and ION network. It doesn’t require any tokens, trusted validators or other consensus mechanisms.
DWNs are datastores that act like a mesh and permits a single entity to manage numerous nodes in sync. It can send and store encrypted public messages to facilitate Decentralized Apps and protocols.
Decentralized Identifiers are cryptographically generated globally unique permanent identifiers that are self-generated and self-owned.
Self-Sovereign Identity SDK (SSI-SDK) helps developers create self-sovereign identity-based applications
In Web5 people can create their identity and utilize it to access and switch between various Decentralized Apps while securing their data. Identity will store people’s information, authorization and data for foreign connections and applications within their Decentralized Web Nodes.
Identity Wallet will act as a game changer by offering a UI for managing credentials and data in Decentralized Web Nodes, Decentralized ID function, Credential function, Content Management and Decentralized ID authentication and authorization.
Final Thoughts
Today Web5 remains as a vision of near future, but only future will say what it will bring to us.
