Web3 Basics: From Read-Only to Read-Write-Own
A short tour of what Web3 means — user-owned data, open protocols, and verifiable infrastructure — and how it differs from the platform-centric web.
01The three eras of the web
Web 1.0 was read-only: static pages you could view but not change. Web 2.0 made the web read-write, but handed control of data and infrastructure to a handful of platforms. Web3 aims for read-write-own: users hold their own data and identity, and the protocols they rely on are open and verifiable rather than owned by a single company.
02Why it matters
For Apex, Web3 is the context in which sovereignty becomes a first-class property. When the infrastructure is open and user-owned, the risk of a single actor quietly changing the rules — or quietly changing the AI models you depend on — drops. That is the same sovereignty thesis Apex applies to AI compute.