What's Your Opinion on Web3?

I constantly wonder whether there is something I am missing about Web3. Am just too old and perhaps out of touch to understand the hype? Sometime between 2015-2019 I probably made upwards of 20.000+ manual trades with smart contracts, and even build my own dapps. I felt like a ETH/Decentralization and Web3 apostle. But everything just felt so useless to me in the end (except the easy money I was making). Nowadays, web3 feels even more useless, and even more scammy. The "use-cases" and "scarity" to me sound like some exotic products that are packaged for the gullible to waste their money in a unregulated, hyper gambling echo chamber of the internet. But of course, perhaps I am still missing the point.

I feel like a lot of people use the term "web3" which in and of itself, doesn't convey too much information. I feel like this question should be asked within the context of web3's components:

- The ability to login to many platforms without needing to create an account on that specific platform (universal login as mentioned by others)

- Being able to use the decentralized ledger as a database -- this is currently only done with art NFTs - but could literally be done with SO much else

- Being able to create dApps that run on their own and are maintained by a community -- i.e., apps that don't pit the user incentives against the incentives for the company owning the apps (dating apps are a good example of this)

- Decentralized storage. Not keeping everything in S3 -- not saying this is better for in-production, but just mentioning with web3 - people are finally open to this type of thing as opposed to just saying "let's just host it on S3".

- Community. As corny and overused as this word is, I know. But specifically finding a project, hopping on their Discord, contributing, asking questions, etc.

Web3 is as much an ethos as it is a "specific thing". It's a rejection of the walled-garden, data hoarding techniques of past platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Google, etc) and a recognition that there is enough pie for a lot of smaller, more niche teams to have a piece.

I still haven't heard a good reason.

I hear ideas from gamers and anti-big-tech folks, but none of it really sounds all that useful. But I'm also the kind of person who prints off their boarding pass at the airport because I prefer having a reliable piece of paper to get me on the plane.

Cryptocurrency and blockchains aside, I feel like if folks really cared about public authentication and proof of identity, then something like Keybase would be far more popular than it is. So idk, I've not been convinced yet.

It’s a dystopian vision that would make the internet worse for 95% of its users. Only thing it would do is bring the worst attributes of the physical world into the digital one.

People arguing that it could be a counter to the centralization of “web 2.0” should really be pushing for open source software that you can run locally on your computer and is free and abundant for everyone to use, instead of pushing for an inefficient distributed system that forces scarcity in the digital realm. Worst problem with the introduction of Ajax and Web 2.0 was the shift from owning and running desktop software to the “cloud” and Saas subscriptions where things you depend on could go away or be changed underneath you at any moment.

I like NFTs, but not art NFTs. Having NFTs represent actual in-game assets with unique stats that can be used across different games in a permissionless way, seems like a way to empower gamers as we buy more and more digital-only items.

I also like the idea of NFTs as game licenses. If the XBOX uses something like an Ethereum address as your XBOX account, it can verify what games you own by checking if you own the NFT that represents that game’s license. At that point, even if XBOX live shuts down support for XBOX 360 games in 20 years, my 360 will still be able to play any game I have the media for (ex: digital game copy on a USB drive).

I also like the idea of universal login using Ethereum addresses. I don’t want my identity to be owned by Microsoft, Google, Apple, of Facebook. I’d rather it be something I own (a public/private key pair) along with some known place to store attestations about who I am and what I can do (a blockchain). Those attestations could be stored off-chain, but that becomes difficult for users to maintain and program.

Web3 is basically synonymous with defi right now, but I agree, there's a lot of potential in the next few years/decades.

I'm fed up with institutions like Facebook having unchecked control over who uses their platform when so much digital infrastructure is built on it. I realize it's not a popular idea with the HN crowd, but I think a revolution is coming, with decentralized tech at the forefront. Like it or not, most decentralized tech has seen very limited adoption, and an inability to compensate nodes seems to be a contributor to that.

Greed is a really good motivator for people to step out of their comfort zones a little bit, and has clearly been driving adoption of technology that previously was hard to get people to adopt

I think it's a really neat space to explore and love the idea of provable digital ownership. There's a lot of projects in the space that are interesting ideas, and it is fascinating to see parts of the web stack increasingly decentralized. Whether or not it will be a long term success, who knows. It's a fascinating field to work in, and has given me motivation to run some creative independent ventures that I wouldn't have otherwise. For NFTs there's much more you can do with them than in the current model, and we'll see more increasingly complex and unique usecases from NFT projects in the coming year I'm certain.

Although it is fascinating to see more parts of the webstack increasingly decentralized, I also do not fully buy into the "decentralize everything" ideology that some people in the space have. Some people may not call projects "web3" if they run on traditional infra like AWS, but there is absolutely value in a hybrid model in my mind that leverages a decentralized ledger for proof of digital ownership on top of more traditional infra. I don't think for instance that making a platform to replace existing web2 websites like twitter / FB / your favorite website is the way to look at it, but rather to figure out new ideas and products, maybe fully decentralized, maybe not. To me it doesn't matter, I just want unique, streamlined user experiences that provide value to users who want to participate in the ecosystem. Even if it is just a small community, it's fun.

It will be 5+ years before we can tell it was just a fad or something real. Web 2 was also a flash based hype in it's time like this. However, the architectural and incentive changes are very big with web 3.

Like ipv4 to ipv6, I think small and meaningful feature additions compounding over time are practical whereas resteucturing entire ecosystems has a risk of a slow and inefficient adoption rate

Artificial scarcity is artificial.

Nothing prevents someone from making copies or selling copies that they don't own / have copyright rights over.

In my view it is likely to be a financial success at least over the medium term precisely because it will disempower everyone who's not a substantial capital owner and promises to put very strong ownership validation tools in the hands of those who are.

If you want a distributed system that empowers end users, you're better off dusting off your favourite bittorrent client.

NFTs in particular are essentially just distributed DRM. Though in practice it will likely be circumnavigable for all cases other than verifying ownership on a block chain just like contemporary DRM is today.

But ultimately "Web3" looks to empower capital owners above anyone else, who are already massively empowered. So you have to wonder what the point is other than as a get rich quick scheme for delirious libertarians.

The same forces of wealth based accumulation that exist in the current internet/web will come into fruition in the Web3 world precisely because it is the most powerful centralising force on the internet and does nothing to address this.

Investors desperately want a rotation into a new technology so they can get in on the ground floor of something.

To that end, they are taking blockchain technology that trades unbelievably terrible efficiency for distributed and trustless computing and applying it to everything.

While there are some use cases where this might be a worthwhile tradeoff (voting, for example), it’s a really bad tradeoff for almost everything else we use the internet for today.

I feel that it has potential for some interesting use-cases but that hype is overshadowing clear thinking at the moment.

A lot of the benefits either don't really exist like supporters say they do, or are actually gotchas.

In brief

* single point of failure

* false sense of privacy

* false sense of ownership

* currentlt only for the rich due to costs

I outlined my thoughts here;

https://www.riknieu.com/web3-downsides/

Ask again when interest rates are at 4%.

There is nothing actual web3. It's just a meaningless term used by snake oil salesmen

What is web3 exactly? Is it about world wide web or crypto?

Can't help but pay attention to the recent conversations over the last 3 days between Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, Chris Dixon, Marc Andreessen, and Balaji amongst others. True decentralization and blockchain enabled business models are fascinating.

NFTs are like art collection, without the exclusivity or actual ownership. It's a good deal for artists (yay, money for nothing!) but an extremely bad buy for customers, who will probably eventually grow out of it.

NFTs are just worthless garbage. The assumption here is that the piece of "art" is unique because of the Hash on a Chain. But thats simply a lie, I can simply copying the image. The difference to real world is that in the real world copying is not a 1:1 copy, its just a the same till a certain percentage.

If you integrate it in some game or in the metaverse its still worthless, because you are just a consumer that participates in artifical shortage of a product thats copyable with a simple click.