"Web 3.0." - Is it just hype or is there substance?

Remember the beginning of the internet? Dial-up robot sounds, slow speeds, web pages you couldn't interact with, your mom picking up the phone and your connection dying... the good ol' times.

If you grew up in the 90's you've definitely witnessed the evolution of the worldwide web. From shitty read-only web pages, to the interactive high quality pages, with smooth user interfaces and a carefully crafted code behind them.

Internet as we know now it, is called "Web 2.0." Truth is, it is largely controlled by the big corps such as Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon and the likes. The companies that own the most user data are the ones who control it. The internet is now fully centred around advertisement, SEO and clicks, search results and more recently, AI and LLMs.

A few courses I did on crypto a few years back have mentioned the idea of "Web 3.0.", which is basically the idea of a decentralized, trustless, interoperable internet.

To be honest, I found the idea exciting and it made me believe there's even more depth into the whole blockchain and DeFi thing. Having just a few companies control most of the worldwide web is the epitome of centralization and capitalism.

But ever since, the only thing that I've seen around is the term "Web 3.0." being thrown around ambiguously, the same way DeFi was thrown around in 2017 and NFTs in 2021.

Projects that have died years ago are still trying to market themselves as "Web 3.0. innovators", or "Web 3.0. entrepreneurs." This makes me feel that there's actually 0 substance behind the whole idea and it's just being used by every scammy or dead project as purely a marketing term. And I really doubt that the average joe even knows how the term came to be.

So anyway, I want to do more research on this to see if there's actual substance and actual development happening around this, but before that I want to see what this community thinks about Web 3.0. I know most of you will quickly disregard it as a fad but I really want to read some interesting opinions from both sides of the spectrum. Any developers here that have actively worked on Web 3.0. projects? Any OGs that have heard the term since its infancy? Hit me.