Three Questions to Answer Before Choosing Web3 for Your Next Project
Web3 promised to be a revolution that would forever change the way we interact with the web. Its inception caused a sort of gold rush: entrepreneurs founded startups to build the Web3 version of everything out there, investors funded what felt like every Web3 project put in front of them, and developers chased juicy salaries and options packages in the hot new space.
But the romanticism of Web3 has faded, and somewhat dramatically. A weakening economy had VCs pumping the brakes on new technology investments, especially in the volatile Web3 domain. Even large, seemingly “safe” Web3 companies, such as those in the business of crypto wallets and online trading platforms, underwent massive layoffs. Recently, its left many developers, and the broader tech sector, wondering what kinds of products and services actually did fit into the Web3 infrastructure.
In this article, we’ll break down how Web3 works, as well as its advantages and limitations, through a series of questions aimed to help you answer the question: should I consider Web3 for my next project?
We’ve ordered these questions in chronological order.
Table Of Contents
1. Is an Immutable Ledger the Best Fit for Your Back-end?
The defining technology of the Web3 platform is the use of a Blockchain, which is a data structure that keeps records of transactions as a ledger. Unlike traditional data storage solutions that allow for CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, Delete), blockchains are designed to be immutable. You can’t edit or delete information from them, only add new information at the end. This makes it a great fit when traceability is needed, as no one will be able to modify the data in any way.
The idea of a Blockchain has been around since the eighties, but it took decades to take off. That’s largely because it can be hard to find use cases that truly benefit from this feature. For instance, you probably wouldn’t want your social media posts to be immutable, as you may want to delete an old picture or defamatory post made about you.
For this reason, most people hadn’t ever heard about blockchains until 2009, when Bitcoin proposed building a peer-to-peer electronic cash system based on it. A ledger keeping track of transactions (in this case, cryptocurrency) is certainly a great fit for blockchain, as it really benefits from its immutability.