Word Web 3 was originally Fabric By co-founder of the athronum Gavin wood A safe, decentralized, colleague to colleague version of the Internet. The idea of creating an internet was Based on Blockchain technology And without a colleague to colleague network, big data centers or third -party providers. These days, however, the blockchain is the most famous as a tool enabling cryptocurrency. Most recentTrump administration has Lax On a pro-cryptocurrency trend, promoting blockchain Popularity and media prominence.
The cryptography is central for the functioning of blockchain, whether for a decentralized web or for cryptocurrency. Each time a cryptocurrency transaction is introduced, all parties involved in the transaction need to be safely proved that they agree to transfer. This is done through one digital signature: A cryptographic protocol that produces a secret, private key that is unique to each user and a public key that shares users. Then, private key is used to generate a unique signature for each transaction. The public key can be used to verify that, in fact, the signature was created by the holder of the private key. In this way, web 3 in every avatar depends a lot on cryptography.
To learn more about the development of web3 and the role of cryptography, we caught together Riyadh WahbiElectrical and Computer Engineering Assistant Professor at Carnegie Melon University and co-founder of hardware-supported web 3 security platforms and CEO Cubist,
Wahbi explained what the web 3 meant, what it has become, and how the hardware-supported cryptography will enable its future.
Web3 began as a reaction that came before
IEEE spectrum: What is Web3?
Riyadh Wahbi: This is the most difficult question that you are going to ask till now, because I do not know how to answer in this way that satisfies everyone.
The word web3 was coined around 2018, by those who saw how to develop the web. Web 1.0 was the first web bubble, dot com bubble. Web 2.0 is largely speaking that Google and Facebook and Microsoft and Microsoft and Apple and Netflix, etc. and perception, especially from those who had originally coined the word web 3, was that these companies originally took the web in the wrong direction, because you have gone to the speech. You use Gmail for free because Google is mining your email to sell better advertisements, etc. Web3 originally had a reaction to it. The initial supporters of the Web3 originally said, “We don’t want that. We want to withdraw our belongings. I want to own our own data, and perhaps cryptocurrency and blockchain is the way there.” So it is that the word came originally.
Now what does the word mean?
Wahbi: Now this does not mean that there is anything like this. Now web3 is a broad ecosystem around cryptocurrency and blockchain-based technologies. And I think that basically all the financial products of that revolutionary spirit have gone in favor of building and earned a lot of money in doing it. As far as I can tell, the term has actually changed from a lack of privacy and a response to lack of sovereignty in its own data, “Hey, this is a technique that has something to do with blockchain.” Maybe you can buy some kind of speculative meme coins and make a bunch of money doing it. So I don’t know, perhaps at the end took a dark turn. Things go on in this way.
How are those two definitions added?
Wahbi: Cryptography actually fits into a revolutionary spirit, in the sense that those who want to close the chains of Google and Facebook, etc. were the principle- “The way we will do that we will create this technique that we will build which is amazing and which gives us all these great qualities.” And they were going to do this using some advanced cryptographic technologies. This is the reason that there are many people who are critical researchers in universities who are also deeply involved in any kind of cryptocurrency. Because it is such that there is a sea change in the way the use of cryptography in the world.
20 years ago, it used to be that if you were actually working on any kind of cryptography, even if you are theoretical or how practical, how much you do it, you knew that there was not much chance that no one of it was really used in the world until it was extremely practical and extremely focused on solving some immediate problems. And it used to be just the case that people were very conservative about what kind of cryptography they used. Originally, everyone thought, “We do not need any of this crazy goods. This is all theory. Nobody cares. The only item we need is what lets you join Amazon and safely buy goods.” The rise of cryptocurrency has been brought in such a way that cryptography is deployed in the world, where now if you can come with some interesting functionality that some advanced cryptography is capable, perhaps someone is going to try and can turn it into a product that they can sell.
Web3 is both good and bad for cryptography
What has it affected the Cryptographic community?
Wahbi: It is both good and bad. It is good that it means that there is a lot of inspiration to make interesting, quiet accessories. And as a researcher in cryptography, I like it because it means that more research money is being inserted in cryptography.
This is a good side. The bad side is that people were so conservative about deploying new cryptography that it is easy to wrong the security system. The default of cryptography is broken (to believe everything) is broken. You have to be very, very careful that every change you do is not returning your cryptography in default position. I am not saying that people in the web3 are not careful. they are. This is just from the nature of things, because it is a very fast deadline, there is a lot of pressure to push the goods in production. And I think the negative side is that we have seen a little broken. It is expected that people will not have the reason for losing money of money. And I think the historical records exclude it, people lose money of money because other people are really dishonest, not because cryptography is broken for most parts. But cryptography can also be broken, and it can also be worrisome. But I would say from the point of view of someone who is doing research in cryptography, the impact of web 3 on the cryptographic community is generally a good thing.
Now you are focused on hardware security. Can you explain what he is?
Wahbi: Any cryptocurrency has the property that if I hold some tokens, and I want to send it to someone else, the way I do it by creating a digital signature that says, I want to spend this token. The secret key is the one that lets you generate a signature. So if you have 10 atheriums (cryptocurrency coins), and they are all protected by this key, and one takes a copy of your key, then life is bad.
With a digital signature key it can just sit on your hard drive, and then you get some malware, and now someone has quietly stole your key. These big, broadly targeted malware campaigns have come, where millions and millions of people have stolen their keys. So now the criminals just count all the money sitting there, which they have stolen, and unlike a bank, there is no reverse transaction.
Hardware comes here. This is not really a web 3 technology, it is old, good things. These devices are called hardware security modules, and they have been used for several decades. It is a physical device, and this device can run some cryptographic algorithms. And it knows enough when you explain it, “Hey, please generate me a key,” it can safely generate you a key. And when you explain it, “Please give me a signature,” it can safely give you a signature. But the important thing is that it is designed, the key never leaves this piece of hardware. It was a piece of data in a physical object. And we know how to secure the physical object.
You are working on expanding hardware security for more use cases. Can you explain what you are doing?
Wahbi: There are two issues with standard hardware security modules.
Number one, you need more cryptography support, so if you are trading actively, you need to be able to apply digital signatures for very early transactions. And number two, you need a way to express that it is not just a key that can generate any signature. This is a key that has also linked to any kind of policy that says that these are a type of signature that is fine to generate, and not everything else is allowed to add additional protection. These are the two directions that we have that enable our technology within the traditional hardware security module.
We start with the safety that is provided by the traditional hardware security module, and we expand it using it, in fact another piece of reliable hardware called reliable execution environment. We extend it to support the cryptography required for web 3 and to support this rich programable policy layer, allowing you to say, “This key is only intended for this specific type of use,” or “ever tries to pay with this key, first I have to check whether the recipient is subject to restrictions,” or any other rules. So in the end, we have not only a hardware security module, we have this reliable execution environment and this policy layer, and it is all other cryptographic items that together give us a hardware security module together that is actually designed for the web 3 usage case.
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