A Review of Gaps between Web 4.0 and Web 3.0 Intelligent Network Infrastructure

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development of Web 4.0, highlighting its distinct features, the gaps with Web 3.0, and the role of decentralized AI and infrastructure in shaping the next generation of the web.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of Web 4.0's features, emphasizing decentralized AI, infrastructure, and the technological gaps from Web 3.0, guiding future research directions.

Findings

Web 4.0 emphasizes native intelligence and decentralization.

Decentralized AI services are key to Web 4.0's ecosystem.

Bridging Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 involves blockchain and advanced routing protocols.

Abstract

World Wide Web is speeding up its pace into an intelligent and decentralized ecosystem, as seen in the campaign of Web 3.0 and forthcoming Web 4.0. Marked by the Europe Commission's latest mention of Web 4.0, a race towards strategic Web 4.0 success has started. Web 4.0 is committed to bringing the next technological transition with an open, secure, trustworthy fairness and digital ecosystem for individuals and businesses in private and public sectors. Despite overlapping scopes and objectives of Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 from academic and industrial perspectives, there are distinct and definitive features and gaps for the next generation of WWW. In this review, a brief introduction to WWW development unravels the entangled but consistent requirement of a more vivid web experience, enhancing human-centric experience in both societal and technical aspects. Moreover, the review brings a decentralized intelligence prospect of view on native AI entities for Web 4.0, envisioning sustainable, autonomous and decentralized AI services for the entire Web 4.0 environment, powering a self-sustainable Decentralized Physical and Software Infrastructure for Computing Force Network, Semantic Network, Virtual/Mixed Reality, and Privacy-preserving content presumption. The review aims to reveal that Web 4.0 offers native intelligence with focused thinking on utilizing decentralized physical infrastructure, in addition to sole requirements on decentralization, bridging the gap between Web 4.0 and Web 3.0 advances with the latest future-shaping blockchain-enabled computing and network routing protocols.