Web3 is a vision for a new version of the internet based on blockchain technology that aims to make the web a more democratic and decentralized ecosystem of applications, tools, and information. However, the technology behind this new iteration of the internet is still in its early days.
There are also significant obstacles that need to be tackled before Web3 technology can reach wider adoption. In this post, we'll look at three of the biggest challenges facing Web3 platforms.
Development
Blockchain technology underpins Web3. Currently, numerous blockchains are attempting to solve various concerns in the crypto space. Some platforms have the distinct selling point of being decentralized, while others pitch themselves as quick and inexpensive.
As a result, there are a multitude of different blockchains with various purposes and applications. This leads to developers needing to have specific skill sets related to the particular blockchain they are building on.
To put this in context, you can build smart contracts (basic blockchain code that handles 'if' and 'but' conditions) in a language called 'Solidity' for Ethereum. To achieve a comparable level of development in Solana, one must first learn the 'Rust' language, and 'Michelson' for Tezos and so on.
Each blockchain has carved itself a niche in terms of programming language, requiring specialized skillsets for each blockchain.
Until more people enter this market, there will be a gap between public expectations and items delivered. This also implies that these developers will be in great demand and well-compensated for their efforts.
PARSIQ Network is a promising solution to the development challenge in Web3 adoption. The platform is a full-suite data network that aims to serve as the backbone for Web3 dApps and protocols. One of the platform's primary solutions is the Tsunami API, which intends to give real-time and historical data querying capabilities to blockchain protocols and their clients (e.g. protocol-oriented dApps).
Data Lakes, which are bespoke integrations of each dApp and protocol, each with its internal logic, are also planned as an additional solution. Third parties interested in these dApps and protocols will be able to obtain them using these specific Lake APIs if the Data Lake idea is implemented.
Interoperability
While Web3 is all about keeping your assets in your wallet rather than entrusting them to a centralized platform, there is one little issue.
Assume you've arrived in the Metaverse (let's name it Metaverse A). As NFTs, you possess a nice set of shoes, sunglasses, and a watch in Metaverse A. Because of these NFTs, you may keep your social clout as a highly recognized person.
Imagine your buddies starting to hang out in a new Metaverse (say Metaverse B). Since you control these assets, you might theoretically transport them to Metaverse B and nothing would have changed. You can't acquire these pricey assets in every Metaverse, can you? However, it is easier said than done.
This is, in fact, one of the primary issues that the blockchain sector is attempting to address. It is known as interoperability, or the capacity of one blockchain to communicate with another.
Assets on one blockchain cannot yet be utilized on the other owing to a lack of interoperability. As a result, owning your goods is no longer as enjoyable.
Some blockchains are attempting to solve these issues through the use of something known as a 'Bridge.' These bridges allow assets to be transferred from one blockchain to another. However, these bridges are often sluggish, costly, and unreliable. As a result, they are mostly unavailable to the general public.
An additional answer to this issue is to attempt to build an ecosystem of blockchains particularly designed for this purpose. Polkadot, Cosmos, Injective, and other blockchains are working on this unique use case.
In a nutshell, this problem is largely unsolved – and there is a lot of potential here. So, if you want to solve this pressing problem, it's time to get started.
Scalability
This is a very complicated problem with blockchain technology, and it is a major impediment to Web3 adoption. This issue originally came to light in 2016 when a game called 'CryptoKitties' got popular.
The game entailed breeding kittens, raising them, and exchanging them with other players. All of this was taking place on the blockchain. However, the game got so popular that the Ethereum network became congested. Gas prices (transaction fees) skyrocketed, making it too costly to play the game.
This generated a discussion on Web3 difficulties that are causing scaling challenges. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin coined the phrase "scalability trilemma."
According to the scalability trilemma, only two elements of security, decentralization, and scalability may be selected at any one moment. However, Layer 2 blockchains could solve this problem.
Layer 2 solutions (like Polygon for example) work by taking transactions off the main blockchain and running them through the L2 blockchains, while the final transaction is sent to Ethereum. This helps to keep things under control by offloading the main blockchain (Ethereum).
PARSIQ is another viable solution to the scalability issues in Web3, one example is their cloud-hosted scalability model. PARSIQ components are deployed in modern architecture as cloud-hosted microservices, which enables the platform to scale easily.
Horizontal scaling would be very difficult to do without such a design, especially given the rising transaction throughput and blockchain data size. To increase speed, the platform also employs a sharded database architecture, which divides the database horizontally across tables to improve performance.
Conclusion
The goal of this post was to go through some of the most important issues with Web3. Whilst there will be some roadblocks along the way to Web3 adoption, there are platforms and protocols that are being developed to deal with the issues outlined above.