When will Web 3.0 be released?

Much of Web 3.0 is already here, since blockchain and its applications are increasingly becoming a reality. Still, it took over 10 years to transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, and most observers expect it to take just as long, if not longer, to fully implement and reshape the web into Web 3.0.

Some of the Web. 3.0 trends that have been on experts' radars for a few years are bearing fruit. Tokenization of web assets is already happening. Gartner predicts that 25% of businesses will have decentralized apps by 2024 but will wrap them inside centralized applications. Social media companies, notably Meta, are beginning to offer metaverse content created by users. Major brands including Starbucks and the NBA have started offering NFTs.

Separate semantic webs have been around for years in the search engine optimization that websites use to structure information so that search engines like Google can scan and summarize their pages more accurately. Semantic webs are often geared to specific categories or functions, such as products or employee skills, to help narrow the task of cataloging words.

Web 2.0 heavyweights, including Google, Meta and Microsoft, recently added blockchain features to some of their products and labeled them "Web 3.0," perhaps to capitalize on the Web 3.0 hype.

Nonetheless, predictions about Web 3.0's arrival are notoriously unreliable. Some optimists expected it to be here 15 years ago. Given that its core technologies are still emerging and just becoming practical, Web 3.0 is probably at least a decade off -- a view largely confirmed by industry analysts.