A Security Perspective on the Web3 Paradigm | NIST IR 8475
February 25, 2025

NIST has published Internal Report (IR) 8475, A Security Perspective on the Web3 Paradigm.

Since its inception, the internet has constantly developed and improved, moving beyond simple text- and image-based informational websites to a fully interactive and powerful social, collaborative, and communication platform. However, the basis for much of the internet has remained rooted in a client/server-based paradigm, where organizations provide services and applications in exchange for ownership — partial or whole — of the user data posted to those systems.

A growing number of people are exploring what the internet could look like if it were a decentralized system in which users own, manage, and store their own data and collectively participate in hosting and running applications. Many have taken to calling this shift in internet paradigms “Web3.”

This publication:

• • Provides a brief background on the internet
  • Explores some of the concepts behind Web3
  • Explores some of the proposed technologies that could be used
  • Describes some security and privacy concerns that should be kept in mind as Web3 is explored