Core Question
What is Web4, along with Web 1, 2, and 3?
Web1
I will be flying through Web1, 2, 3 because this is more of background. Web4 will be in greater detail.
Web1 was the very first version of the world wide web (www). It consisted mainly of simple static pages, with very under optimized and developed logic such as checkout, security, accounts, and real time updates all being either nonexistent or poorly done. You had to create a new username and password for every single site, and risk it being stolen by hackers. The style of sites was very blocky, kind of like rectangle/squares everywhere of different links to pages and colors.
Web2
Web2 is the one we are all familiar with. This is where we get all the sites we know of today. Web2 is Web1 but with logic and more complex functions. We now have checkouts, account linking, antibot systems, google sign ins, and passkeys. Web2 has a lot of logic built into, which allows us to perform everything that Web1 couldn't.
Web3
This is the more recent one of the 3. Web3 is essentially everything the same as Web2, except we start to add crypto and blockchains into the mix. It allows you to link your wallet to a website, serving as your sort of account, which only you can have. You basically navigate the web, use websites, and go about your life all using a crypto wallet. It is safer than Web1 or 2, as it runs on cryptography, and as long as you don't reveal your master key or recovery phrase, sign malicious smart contracts, or install malware onto your device, it is vastly safer than what we have now. However, companies exploring this are not going the direction of everyone having a wallet. Instead, they are looking at having something where you sign in as normal, but under the hood, you have a wallet. Still very much under development.
Web4
This is the big one. Now, it is worth keeping in mind that we are years and I personally think at least a decade before seeing this web version. This is because we are still very early into Web3, and the infrastructure needed for Web4 is not readily available nor affordable for mass adoption.
Web4 is basically where AI and humans coincide. We have our AI agent that performs all of our online things for us. It buys products, it responds to emails and texts, and it can keep track of our finances. However, as amazing as it would be to have an AI agent do everything for you, there are concerns regarding this. Two of those are privacy and the lack of control.
When it comes to AI agents doing stuff for you on your behalf, it'll have to have your information in order to execute whatever it needs to. This would mean trusting the people behind the AI that they won't sell or misuse your information in any way, shape, or form. That is a lot of trust to put into a single authority, which is why the general public is so apprehensive, along with analysts.
If AI does everything for you on its own, you can no longer say yes or no, it just does it. All you do is set a boundary (like keep my crypto 60% BTC, 25% ETH, and 15% SOL) That means that if a hacker manages to get into your AI, it could start executing malicious instructions like sending your money to their account, or buying stuff and shipping it somewhere else, as long as it stays within your boundaries. Meanwhile, you would be scrambling to stop the bleeding before it is too late.
Overall, I think Web4 is still very new and needs a lot more thinking about. However, I do believe that in the not too distant future, we'll have a hybrid, with AI having some capabilities on its own, but nothing that is risky (think like reading, summarizing, and sending emails instantly, giving you a break down of it, but more advanced than what we have now).
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