Web 3 is Flawed

&quot;Web3&quot; isn&#x27;t even able to solve problems it&#x27;s supposed to solve.<p>The big pitch was that you could have non-copyable items which you could move between virtual worlds. The Second Life &#x2F; Open Simulator ecosystem already has that problem. People looked into NFTs as a way to solve it, and concluded it would not help.<p>You can download content and upload it as new content, perhaps with a minor mod, creating a new object. This is called &quot;copybotting&quot; in Second Life and Open Simulator. As with any copyright violation, you can file DMCA takedown requests if you find a copy of your stuff.<p>Would NFTs stop copybotting? No. They just protect the object&#x27;s ID, not its content. You can still copy the content. If you want to copy a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT image and make a poster of it, the NFT system does nothing to stop you. It&#x27;s not even clear that&#x27;s a copyright violation in the US, since BAYC images are computer-generated.<p>Many NFTs don&#x27;t even have an on-chain cryptographic hash of the content, only a URL for some server. Nor do most NFTs have their NFT ID watermarked into the actual content. So the NFT doesn&#x27;t even give you a verifiable proof of ownership independent of the creator&#x27;s server. There isn&#x27;t info that would allow a server to tell if a new image upload is a copy of an existing item. An image search might help, but that doesn&#x27;t need NFTs. Decentraland&#x27;s solution to this problem is to charge a $500 &quot;curation fee&quot; to get an object onto their platform, which cuts down content to the point that they can check for duplicates.<p>NFTs are thus useless for their claimed purpose.

Don&#x27;t encourage them. There is no Web3 and if there ever is, it&#x27;s not fucking blockchain apps.<p>What these hucksters call Web3 is the digital equivalent of essential oils. Blockchain apps have no real productive use beyond selling them to each other. Calling the whole thing Web3 was a fairly transparent grasp at trying to legitimize the whole charade.

Crypto was sold as the hedge against inflation. Well, how did that go? Inflation started creeping up and crypto crashed. That&#x27;s not the hedge I&#x27;m looking for.<p>What problem does Web3 solve? It helps us better manage nonsense. As we face fuel shortages, potential food shortages, a recession and stagflation I wouldn&#x27;t want to be in the business of solving make-believe problems. If you&#x27;re not doing work for a business that&#x27;s providing tangible value to their customers then you&#x27;re likely to be out of a job soon. All it takes is another rate hike of 25 basis points and we&#x27;re in a whole new ballgame - and unlike 2008, which was fueled by financial nonsense that had been going on the preceding 10 years, we&#x27;re going to have bona fide supply shortages to contend with as well.

Whatever&#x27;s next is just user-level PKI and DNS.<p>Can I roll a private&#x2F;public key pair and use it to authenticate everywhere as the user BabyFarkMcgeeZax? Can I authorize Spotify to BabyFarkMcgeeZax&#x2F;playlist?<p>In theory, I can use an OAuth provider for this kind of stuff, but then who owns what? Why can&#x27;t I host my own content wherever I want and allow different permissions to it? Why can&#x27;t I delegate certain things to some provider and revoke it when I want? How does anyone get paid for being such a service provider, especially with the idea that the data is host proof in some cases and thus can&#x27;t be monetized?<p>Blockchains &#x2F; tokens are trying to answer this question. Most are data that doesn&#x27;t fit on a blockchain or are issuing tokens with arbitrary monetary policies and following them up with bad fiscal policy.<p>Thus far most of Web3 just requires some algebra to see a database that doesn&#x27;t solve these problems.

I&#x27;ve been using EVM blockchain as an immutable registry &#x2F; ledger to record small bits of data linked to IPFS to record events. These are supposed to be immutable by me or anyone else (essentially they act like logs and events).<p>Is there &quot;regular&quot; immutable events database like this that I don&#x27;t have to host myself, has a super easy-to-use API, and costs less than $5&#x2F;mo, but keeps my data around after I stop paying for it?

I&#x27;m ever the optimist so believe the fallout from these blockchain experiments will likely leave at least one useful idea&#x2F;technology in the ruins for future us to build on

My world view, summarized to the simplest term, is “incentives”. You can find places and times where people act altruistically. We all do it regularly. We most reliably act altruistically when it comes to our own families, with our children as the highest recipient of our altruism.<p>When you get beyond the immediate family, relying on altruism as the organizing principle starts to break down.<p>Societies that provide incentives for delivering value to other citizens - going to work, doing a job, becoming wealthy if you drastically improve society - will win long term over those that provide disincentives to hard work and providing value.<p>Web3 and crypto provide artificial scarcity to digital goods. This is an experiment in economics. I believe providing economic incentives, when properly aligned with the tasks desired, can result in a more efficient and successful internet. Relying solely on volunteers in any group has very rarely worked - even the largest non-profits have highly paid directors and legions of paid employees. This is not some revolutionary idea, other than the fact that digital goods can have artificial scarcity.

A thread earlier this year between Box &amp; Airbnb&#x27;s CEOs basically highlighted this point: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;bchesky&#x2F;status&#x2F;1477808318915612677" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;bchesky&#x2F;status&#x2F;1477808318915612677</a>

After failing to solve the financial system with crypto and digital rights with NFTs the desperate search of a solution seeking a problem moves on to Web3. Hint: it&#x27;s not here either.<p>Take something as simple as identity. In the Web3 world that&#x27;s basically a wallet. lose your access to an account on a website currently and you can reset it. Lose your Web3 ID key? Well, you need a &quot;smart&quot; contract for recovery. I&#x27;ve seen variations on this such as nominating some other wallets who can give a consensus for what is essentially a takeover to recover your account.<p>These are really just more attack vectors created on the altar of automation and blockchain.

Web3 isn&#x27;t blockchain.<p>Blockchain just one potential category of technologies or set of implementations. Web 2.0 was not defined by its technologies or implementations, it was defined by its value proposition. So, forget blockchain... at a higher level, Web3 is going to be about ownership.<p>Billions of people gave Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc. value by creating the content that made those products useful. Web3 still has a lot to workout, and as much as blockchain is trying to co-opt web3, it may not be a part of it in the end -- but the people who create the content will get paid this time around. That is what will define Web3.

My favorite use of crypto is having “cash” stored in a wallet that can’t be seized by anyone. Until someone ties me up and starts threatening two start hitting me with a baseball bat.

As with all things crypto, the product is number go up... until it doesn&#x27;t, and by then the insiders have taken profits. Rinse and repeat.

Web3 (smart contracts) can (as in right now) reduce the level of trust required to persuade people to use certain services (or at least parts of them).<p>For example: crowdfunding platforms. I can write a smart contract that reasonably and securely associates unique IDs to Ethereum wallets, keeps track of wallets that donate to a specific ID and refunds donators or rewards the wallets associated with the IDs according to explicitly set rules (ie. minimum currency threshold). I can then create a website for it, deploy it as &quot;givemeyourmoney.xyz&quot; and still be considered (and verified) trustworthy and safe just because everyone can read the contract&#x27;s behavior.<p>Without a smart contract, everyone would understandably think the site is a scam and wouldn&#x27;t use it - even if it was totally legitimate. That&#x27;s obviously an extreme example, but that basic attribute has a lot of other implications.<p>The problems with smart contracts begin once you have to codify a rule that isn&#x27;t so easy to translate into code (ie. it turns out that a crowdfunded project was a scam). Now people are creating DAOs to deal with situations like that, with at best mixed results.<p>But what if you need to verify that a condition has been met that isn&#x27;t based on the blockchain, like checking if someone actually did deliver the pizza that someone else ordered? Then you&#x27;re completely screwed.<p>You could say that these problems are <i>eventually</i> solve-able if the right hardware&#x2F;software infrastructure was created to address them, but if so then it&#x27;s at least a decade away from being verifiable and therefore useful.<p>Anyways, regardless of what could be possible it looks like web3 people are more interested in scamming each other because non-technical users can&#x27;t read smart contracts and few people do any proper auditing.

Nah, missing the point. I’ll still stand by some web3 idea like using an NFT as some kind of license to access a service using web3 auth is a true and valid use case. It doesn’t need a monetary-like token but it does need a single record bound to an address stored eternally.<p>Jpeg NFTs are dumb, cos the record is public. But a singular record that can out of band handle authorizations? Neat.

Cryptocurrency is not money... yet.<p>Money is inherently a liability of the issuer. No one is liable to accept bitcoin (for example) as payment, therefore it is not money.<p>However, if you can build a currency that represents real world assets, liabilities, and&#x2F;or collateral, then it potentially becomes money, and can solve real problems such as liquidity in markets.

I&#x27;ve played with it a little bit, there are some cool use-cases here and there but the wild speculation and get-rich quick schemes kill it&#x27;s usefulness<p>IMO It&#x27;s likely there will be an iteration of protocols and storage mechanisms that will be more useful in the future<p>I also think &quot;Web3&quot; is probably the dumbest imaginable branding

I posted about this on LI recently:<p>&quot;What is the value of cryptocurrency&#x2F;blockchain&#x2F;web3? Why should anyone care?<p>Here is my opinion (as a developer who studied and built blockchains):<p>It allows digital information (value) to be open&#x2F;free (as in not under the control or in the power of another) and virtually permanent.<p>That&#x27;s basically it.<p>If you want digital money, we already got that (Cash app, Venmo, online&#x2F;mobile banking, etc.).<p>You want digital collectibles, that&#x27;s been around forever in games, etc.<p>But I think we all know most people see value purely in the speculation. Be careful not to confuse all the &quot;innovation&quot; and hype as real substance, because most of the time someone is trying to PUMP and DUMP, which can make a lot of money. Just look at any of the thousands of blockchains&#x2F;coins that are no longer used or traded, but were supposed to change the world.&quot;

Some useful rules around Web3:<p>1. The most beautiful and innovative things being done in the Web3 space are much more beautiful and innovative than anything you will do in your life.<p>2. The most dastardly things being done in the Web3 space are much more dastardly than anything you will do in your life.<p>Now for the two broad camps of people I see here:<p>a. People who think 2. is not relevant to pursuing 1.<p>b. People who think 2. can never justify pursuing 1. – or even finding out about it.<p>Look at the kids: the day is better spent curious.

&gt; Web 2 gave us Wikipedia, Google search, Facebook and more<p>Wikipedia and Google pre-date Web 2.0. Facebook is arguable.

what isn’t “flawed?”<p>in the least it’d be inaccurate to say that web3 has not provided something of a paradigm-shifting mechanism for artists to get paid<p>web3 is also kinda new &amp; if not web3 then what evolve &#x2F; direction &#x2F; next level for the www ?

The basic premise of web3 is decentralization of <i>value transfer</i> and <i>digital ownership</i>. Examples of <i>value transfer</i>: payments, swapping assets, escrow, auctions, crowdfunds. Examples of <i>digital ownership</i>: limited-edition art ownership, domain names, collectibles, game assets, shares, access tokens, user accounts, private keys, and maybe eventually other assets.<p>Real-world use cases could replace parts of PayPal, Patreon, Bandcamp or Kickstarter with a crypto-native solution to decentralize some parts of payments, user accounts, and ownership. Where is the killer Web3 app? It&#x27;s only been a ~year or so since Web3 has entered mainstream consciousness, and the few-years-old tech is still far from a usable state. Crypto has a long way yet to go: Proof of Stake, rollups, zk privacy preservation, light clients, and a host of other solutions need to be first solved for it to be widely usable. In the meantime, most current Web3 apps are best to view as high-risk &quot;beta&quot; experiments.<p>&gt; The Web was about making information accessible to all, Web 3 is trying to provide value to a few, where everything is done for the benefit of the few rather than benefit of all.<p>This is a gross misunderstanding of web3. Take a look at NFT art world, almost all the media and information is freely accessible, to the point that it is regularly ridiculed with &quot;Right Click Save&quot; by the out-crowd. This is distinctly different than Patreon and Bandcamp models, where artists might put digital media behind a paywall, making the information only accessible to a limited few. See more here[1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mirror.xyz&#x2F;herndondryhurst.eth&#x2F;S-W2ZXRbrcy8bVGrKwMXSou63gWir7RJ9xs6wUn_h-0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mirror.xyz&#x2F;herndondryhurst.eth&#x2F;S-W2ZXRbrcy8bVGrKwMXS...</a>

web2 didn&#x27;t give us google, facebook, or wikipedia?<p>the internet never made any promises about being an equalizer?

Why do people keep talking about something that doesn&#x27;t even exist?

TL;DR -&gt; just ignore this post as it has no substance and it has no arguments. It is just a rant about something which is not clear, but not even examples are given to make their point.

Most of my problems are being solved by web3. Maybe you have different problems, the kind that facebook can solve.

We are in a prison surounded by high walls, wire fences and guard towers occupied by watchful guards. Some of us are digging a ditch so we can all escape this hell, and you&#x27;re standing at the entrance yelling at us that the ditch doesn&#x27;t do anything. Why don&#x27;t you help, or at least shut up?