Web 2.0

Web 2.0 describes the internet era that took shape in the early 2000s, when static, read-only pages gave way to interactive sites built around user contribution. The label was popularized after O'Reilly Media and Dale Dougherty used it for a 2004 industry conference, with Tim O'Reilly later framing it as the "web as platform": software delivered as a continually updated service that improves as more people use it, rather than a program installed once and left alone.

Practically, Web 2.0 is the internet most people still use every day. It is built on a small number of large, centralized platforms that host, moderate, and monetize content that users themselves create: social feeds, product reviews, video uploads, and comment threads. These companies control the underlying databases, set the rules for participation, and profit chiefly through advertising built on user data and attention.

In crypto conversations, Web 2.0 is invoked mainly as the baseline that WEB3 proposes to move beyond. Where Web 2.0 concentrates data, identity, and revenue with a handful of corporations, Web3 aims to distribute those functions across a blockchain, letting users hold their own assets in a wallet and interact through a DApp (Decentralized Application) instead of a company-run server. Critics, including some of Web 2.0's original architects, argue this contrast is oversold given how few decentralized products have matched the usability of incumbent platforms. Even so, the term remains a useful shorthand for the centralized model that current blockchain projects position themselves against.