I remember reading around that time that some people were wondering whether Semantic Web or IoT become Web 3.0. Unfortunately I won't find the references without a lot of googling. On the other hand Semantic Web is pretty much dead, HTML5 being not related to XML rather went further away again IMHO. Also IoT didn't seem to find the adaption as expected for home users, at least I don't find myself interacting with IoT devices on a day to day basis.

That said, IPFS servers and clients are there but it's not in use. So it would be quite a stretch to call that "officially" Web 3.0 until it will be in use by a significant amount of end user applications. Until now also blockchain (read Bitcoin) payment is very exceptional despite tons of frameworks, libraries, servers and clients. Even for the semantic web there are bizillions of tools but the information value remains questionable.

Looking back at Web 2.0, the transition went much more smoothly from static Web 1.0 to usage of "DHTML", HTML 4.0 with much JS/Ajax and eventually popular services making a lot of use of it, namely Facebook and Google including their plugins that were embedded on lots of websites at that time and still are.

Anyways, would be nice if a new development would get traction...

The semantic web without transactions is like the www without hyperlinks. How do you weight anything? Who cares about a pristine, motionless dataset?

Maybe crypto transactions, basic at first but growing in complexity as each industry works out their own standards is how a decentralized semantic web will eventually energe

It is ironic that he later gave thumbs up to DRM which is like putting a black hole in the web. Maybe he lost faith in the web or just made a mistake.