However, the resources are scarce and I want to understand what is the state of Web 3.0 as of now, early 2022? Is there any work, beyond the high-level concepts? Are there active projects in the domain (by startups or important investments from tech giants)? Research (institutional or not)?
Being a software developer, how is Web 3.0 being materialized in a sense of software engineering? Being interested in blockchain (not cryptocurrency), what are the things to look for today to stay up to date?
Since there’s no strong technical argument, implementation doesn’t matter, if you want to pitch something just use what they own a lot of (Bitcoin, Ethereum) somehow.
Helium - https://www.helium.com/ Building out wireless infrastructure for both IoT devices and 5G more recently
Arweave - https://www.arweave.org/ Provides a permanent storage solution where you pay once upfront
They are both building a new decentralized network to provide a service and using tokens to share ownership in the network and align incentives.
Of course it's too early to say whether they will succeed in their respective mission.
Disclaimer: Not affiliated with either project but I do work in Web3
I'll let someone else speak to specific projects, but I'll note Block (neé Square) and Meta (neé Facebook)'s made big moves last year near/adjacent to web3, so there's interest in it from monied groups.
As far as software engineering for Web3, the Untrustworthy Pinball Machine[0] and Year token[1] hint at the complex, low-level machinery that web3 is built on top of. Implementing non-trivial programs on top of the EVM, or other blockchains (eg Solana) is one area, as is web3.js wallet-enabled apps/webpages on the frontend a place for skills development. I've had difficulty finding some of the meanings and ramifications alluded to elsewhere in the space[2] though.
Thing is, because this is all built on top of cryptocurrency blockchains, you do have to get engaged with cryptocurrency somewhat in order to engage with web3. That doesn't mean you have to make irrational financial decisions but eg taking the time to understand the implementation details of NFTs is going to be difficult if you can't get past how dumb they are.
[0] https://medium.com/@kanewallmann_71759/an-untrustworthy-pinb...
1. Lending Apps - A trusted decentralized application to deposit collateral and earn more interest than a traditional bank. And then use the same application to take a loan on the basis of the deposited collateral. Example Apps: Compound / AAVE / TraderJoe.xyz to name a few
2. Exchange Tokens - A simple application to swap between two tokens (ERC-20). Example: Uniswap, QuickSwap, etc
3. Ownership of digital goods - Imagine if all the digital goods someone owned in Farmville could be sold, traded, exchanged. All of this is possible due to NFT's - ERC 721 Standard Example: Aavegotchi, Axie Infinity, etc
Interesting research is happening in the field of cryptography - Zero Knowledge Proofs, Verkle Trees. Foundations/Companies: Matterlabs, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon
A lot of work is happening in app development tooling: Solidity, Ganache, Brownie, etc
UnFederal Reserve - https://www.unfederalreserve.com/ Fund of funds that allows crypto holders to provide cash to non-bank lenders
Basic Attention Token - https://basicattentiontoken.org/ Ad-free browsing(among other things)
Enjin - https://enjin.io - tradeable assets for a digital economy
Robonomics - https://robonomics.network - Open-source platform for IoT applications.
Conceal Network - https://conceal.network/ - Decentralized finance, private transactions and encrypted messaging.
...and at least a thousand more.
(I'm sorry, I realize this is a low effort comment and am unable to resist making it anyway.)