Polkadot has once again been vocal about its commitment to developing more blockchain bridges to allow its ecosystem to connect with external networks, facilitating cross-chain integration and interoperability.
The blockchain network has become increasingly popular among developers and investors, quickly becoming one of the hottest projects in the blockchain ecosystem as its cryptocurrency DOT reaches the top 6 by market capitalization.
Polkadot Makes Web3 Easier
Polkadot was designed to provide an alternative to traditional blockchain networks like Ethereum by focusing on scalability, interoperability, and security able to use parachains and bridges to connect its ecosystem with other networks.
Differentiated bridges are currently supported by Polkadot Web 3 Foundation grants including Interlay, Snowfork, Darwinia, Centrifuge, ChainX, and Bifrost.
By providing financial and technical support to such projects, the Polkadot team aims to boost the evolution of the decentralized internet (Web3) by facilitating the integration of different ecosystems while removing the need for central authorities that can result in the creation of silos and censorship over how people make use of the web.
The development of a decentralized internet has gained increased support from experts like Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, as concerns over increasing power over the internet by certain companies continue to gain notoriety.
The Need for a Decentralized Internet
Back in 2009, Tim Berners-Lee said in a seminar: “The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past.” Now, 12 years later, he continues to work to achieve his original vision of free internet.
With companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter continuing to monopolize the internet and creating data silos as they capitalize on user data, concerns about privacy and censorship have been on the rise over the last months.
Governments around the world have started antitrust lawsuits and other actions against these silos, as was the case of Australia when it required Google and Facebook to pay for journalism.
This specific example is noteworthy because Facebook opposed the legislation by shutting down its new services in the country, a demonstration of the power these companies have.
But is not only governments the ones closely keeping an eye on these companies, as users and free-speech advocates around the world have been monitoring events like Parler’s lawsuit against Amazon Web Services after the cloud computing giant removed the social media platform from its servers.
Multiple Web3 protocols such as InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Dat are currently under development and being integrated into modern web browsers to provide users with easier access to decentralized websites, which has been the major barrier of entry for new users.
The Crypto Market and Web3 Are a Perfect Match
While Polkadot aims to boost the development and adoption of Web3, it is debatable whether it is a web3 project or not. However, there are many blockchain and cryptocurrency projects focused specifically on improving the way people would interact with the web3 of the future.
Projects like Ocean Protocols, Streamr, Numerai, Filecoin, and many others, have been creating solutions for users to take control over how their data and content is distributed, obtained, and used, creating decentralized alternatives to the major platforms used in the centralized web.
The use of private data by companies like Google and Facebook has been one of the biggest drivers of the Web3 movement, as they not only capitalize on the conversion of the user into the product but scandals like that of Cambridge Analytica have shown the potential impact they can have in other areas beyond marketing.
Privacy and More
But privacy is not the only advantage of web3 over a centralized internet, as it also provides more resiliency against censorship or technical issues that could cause outages or data losses by using distributed protocols that ensure the removal of single points of failure.
This increasing interest in a decentralized internet has been reflected in the cryptomarket by the increasing price of the cryptocurrencies used by the platforms, with projects like Ocean, Filecoin, Siacoin, and Numeraire experiencing gains of up to 68% in the last 2 weeks.
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