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A typical web3 site consists of two parts: The first is the smart contract code that lives on the blockchain, which handles the tasks that a typical server backend would handle (keeping and changing state, producing outputs given certain inputs, etc).
The second is a web frontend typically deployed to a decentralized service like IPFS to provide interactions with the backend contract, however this isn't the only way a web3 site can be made. You can also have the front end as something the user runs locally, or you can eschew the front end entirely, as it's also possible to programmatically interact with smart contracts directly (analogous to the command line in a way).
An example of such a site would be the decentralized trading exchange Uniswap located at https://app.uniswap.org/. Rather than calling a centralized API endpoint to populate the front end, all the data is being pulled through interactions with contracts on the blockchain. Smart contracts can provide read-only data fee free, and you only have to pay to interact with the site when you're doing something that would change state.
If you just want to store and host files like a website, there's a few projects in that vein that I know of - Arweave (https://www.arweave.org/), IPFS (https://ipfs.io/), and Filecoin (https://filecoin.io/).
IMO these projects are aiming at a new form of sovereignty on the internet that doesn't/can't exist currently - the ability to have your data be permanently stored and accessible on the web. Google can decide to kill Google Photos, and every email provider on the planet can delete everyone's old emails if they so choose. It's unlikely, yes, but the ability to put something on the internet permanently surely has some novel value to it, even if just as an open building block to something bigger than the sum of its parts.
A massive part of what's going on right now in the crypto space is people experimenting with these new protocols and tools like smart contracts and DAOs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organ...) and attempting to figure out new and novel things to do with them. Web3 is a moniker du-jour to try to encompass these experiments in finance, governance, art, and collaboration.
When the internet was early, people were doing the same, and it gave rise to new forms of art, online gaming, radically different access to banking, ecommerce, and low latency, (basically) free, video calling anywhere in the world. Imagine trying to explain Twitch.tv or Facebook to someone in the early 90s when people were paying for long distance calls and stamps. The groundwork for these things was being created as people were inventing DNS, HTTP, etc etc, but in the same way that NeoPets was not the ultimate expression of online gaming (but had influence on it nonetheless), the things we're seeing today are not the ultimate expression of what "web3" will eventually be but instead a bunch of passionate people trying to figure out what revolutionary things can be built with these new unique tools.
If you just want to store and host files like a website, there's a few projects in that vein that I know of - Arweave (https://www.arweave.org/), IPFS (https://ipfs.io/), and Filecoin (https://filecoin.io/).
IMO these projects are aiming at a new form of sovereignty on the internet that doesn't/can't exist currently - the ability to have your data be permanently stored and accessible on the web. Google can decide to kill Google Photos, and every email provider on the planet can delete everyone's old emails if they so choose. It's unlikely, yes, but the ability to put something on the internet permanently surely has some novel value to it, even if just as an open building block to something bigger than the sum of its parts.
A massive part of what's going on right now in the crypto space is people experimenting with these new protocols and tools like smart contracts and DAOs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organ...) and attempting to figure out new and novel things to do with them. Web3 is a moniker du-jour to try to encompass these experiments in finance, governance, art, and collaboration.
When the internet was early, people were doing the same, and it gave rise to new forms of art, online gaming, radically different access to banking, ecommerce, and low latency, (basically) free, video calling anywhere in the world. Imagine trying to explain Twitch.tv or Facebook to someone in the early 90s when people were paying for long distance calls and stamps. The groundwork for these things was being created as people were inventing DNS, HTTP, etc etc, but in the same way that NeoPets was not the ultimate expression of online gaming (but had influence on it nonetheless), the things we're seeing today are not the ultimate expression of what "web3" will eventually be but instead a bunch of passionate people trying to figure out what revolutionary things can be built with these new unique tools.