The is often acknowledged as a nebulous umbrella term for a suite of new technologies that will revamp many aspects of the modern web over the next few years. Some endeavors include overhauling core protocols for routing web traffic, while others involve upending the centralized data storage and sharing models that have allowed big tech firms to build vast moats of wealth.

In any case, the primary emphasis has been a bold return to the origins of the Internet. Projects are chipping away at the stranglehold of major tech firms and financial intermediaries whose collateral deficiencies continue to surface.

The current iteration of the web has drifted away from its decentralized origins. Initially crafted by Tim Berners-Lee to serve an open community of users and developers, the web has been hijacked by major players (e.g., Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple) to lock-in users and extract value from them.

Consequently, abuses of data privacy, security vulnerabilities, and subpar performance have followed suit. But that early vision for a decentralized web never dissipated.

Behind grassroots projects in the early 2000s such as Napster, Tor, and BitTorrent was a narrative burrowed deep into Internet user sentiment — a return to decentralization. Unfortunately, many of these projects have been outshined by their centralized counterparts over the years. Wielding user-friendly applications, companies have flourished extracting value from users by building platforms on top of the Internet’s core protocols.

Flashy (and free) apps like Facebook herded users into vast closed networks of value capture, effectively launching the modern age of the social media and advertising paradigm. But with all that social interaction and web tracking has come censorship problems, privacy abuses, and more political consequences — all of which are a product of centralized data control.

Grassroots projects like Tor and BitTorrent were pushed to the background during the meteoric rise of the likes of Google and Amazon. And it wasn’t until Satoshi Nakamoto reignited a decentralized and cypherpunk ethos with his release of the Bitcoin Whitepaper that the movement towards decentralized grasped a foothold again.

Over the last several years, and bolstered by the rise of an entire crypto industry, decentralization is once again a primary effort among a ballooning community of supporters. Emerging protocols like IPFS are leading the way in a fundamental shift of the web as we know it, and the implications are tangible. And surviving projects from the early 2000s such as Tor, I2P, and even Mixnets are making significant strides.

Now, an entire generation of projects and developers are striving towards the original vision of the decentralized web conceived by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990 at CERN. With technological breakthroughs by their side, we sought out 231 projects (out of 631 respondents) with a tech background currently working on the bleeding-edge of the new Web 3.0 — the decentralized one.

The responses cover a myriad of topics, provide some intriguing insight into ongoing progress, and highlight some of the major hurdles still facing the manifestation of a thriving new Web. Like all major technological endeavors, there are bound to be bumps along the road, but the picture painted by the respondents is promising, and well worth your time.

There are notable rifts about what constitutes the new Web, but our report sheds light on some of the general principles maintained by developers working in the space, and how differentiating between the DWeb and Web 3.0 applies to real-world scenarios. Specifically, the respondents are strongly aligned across three main points — data sovereignty, privacy, and robustness (e.g., censorship-resistance).

All other responses can be broadly injected into these three categories, with subtle differences and nuanced mixed in.

Our report begins by examining some of the most salient problems with the current web and concludes with how the new Web can overcome its obstacles, as expressed by our respondents. The respondents were mostly software engineers, but also included founders, business ops, students, and investors.

Summary of Report

Some of the most salient takeaways are highlighted below.

Key insights:

However, the foundation and opportunity to decentralize the web are palpable, and if the ongoing viral COVID-19 pandemic has any silver lining, it may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back on a wholesale transition to more decentralized services.

Welcome to the Decentralized Developer 2020 report.

Web 3.0 vs DWeb

We had to construct the DWeb report by navigating several nuances in the perception of distributed web technologies vs. the Web 3.0. Specifically, how developers and community supporters differentiate the prospects of the two rather nebulous terms.

The responses from the survey indicate that, although different emphases and language are deployed by different groups, the overall goals and vision of the DWeb and Web 3.0 have significant crossover.

Differentiating between the two isn’t entirely semantic either. The Web 3.0, primarily pushed by the blockchain community, places stark importance on commercial developments like finance, e-commerce, AI, security, and big data for enterprises. On the contrary, DWeb proponents (e.g., IPFS & The Internet Archive) are more ideologically-driven, focusing on decentralization, data sovereignty, security, privacy, and censorship-resistance. DWeb projects have diverged more from the blockchain narrative to encompass a broader set of technological innovations.

At a high level, the two perceptions of the web’s next iteration are not in conflict, and may actually complement each other more than anything. In terms of navigating the report, it’s best to lean your outlook to that of the vision of DWeb proponents, and how those technological developments (e.g., P2P communication, decentralized storage, data privacy) will shape the infrastructure of the future web.

As far as the more internal argument over what constitutes DWeb, you can view the issue as one of more semantics. The shared ideological vision of a decentralized web breeds many of the same outcomes despite slight nuances in opinion, which the responses below indicate.

Study Participants & Demographics

The study was completed by 631 respondents, of which, 231 are actively working on DWeb-related projects.

The survey contained 38 questions. The percentage distribution in the answers is premised on the unlimited selection for the multiple-choice questions — answers will total to more than 100 percent in most cases.

The demographics of this report focused primarily on developers and engineers working on projects related to the DWeb or contained crossover with some of the DWeb’s blossoming technology suite. We did not target blockchain developers explicitly, and they comprised only a small allocation of the overall respondents.

Of the 645 respondents, 417 cited a direct tech background.

For those of you who would like to dig for more information, we have also published the anonymized .