In this next segment of Building on web3, Edge & Node developer relations engineer Nader Dabit expands upon the web3 stack and how developers can conceptualize the various facets of building on web3.

I transitioned into web3 in April 2021 after being a traditional full-stack developer for around 10 years. While diving into all of these new technologies and ideas, the first thing I wanted to know was “what is the web3 stack?”.

定义web3堆栈

When building a traditional web or mobile application, I often depend on a handful of building blocks to get the job done.

1. API / app servers (REST or GraphQL)
2. Authentication layer (managed or hand-rolled)
3. Database
4. Client-side frameworks, platforms, and libraries
5. File storage

Using these core components, I can build out most of the types of applications I would like to, or at least get most of the way there. So what did this look like in web3?

It turns out, the answer to this is not so straightforward because:

1. The paradigm is completely different in many ways
2. The web3 tools, technologies, and ecosystem are less mature than web2

It was also harder for me to understand how to get up and running with, and build out, web3 applications because I was approaching the problems in the same way that I was in the web2 world.

After working, researching, experimenting, and building things over the past 8 months or so I’d like to share what I’ve learned.

What is web3?

Before we define the web3 stack, let’s attempt to define web3. There are countless definitions depending on who you ask, but to me I find this definition spot on:

Web3 is the stack of protocols that enable fully decentralized applications.

With this decentralized tech stack, we can begin building out decentralized applications which have their own set implications and characteristics.