web0 manifesto

“Blockchain” is a class of technologies. I don’t think I would even call it a specific technology. It’s more akin to “packet switching” than it is akin to “Ethernet” or “TCP&#x2F;IP”.<p>I can understand some critics’ opposition to cryptocurrencies on public policy grounds (although I think most critics are too broad in their critique), or their opposition to NFTs based on the fact that many NFTs are bullshit don’t represent ownership of anything at all (although I think that will not always be the case).<p>What I don’t understand—and where these critics loose credibility with me—is their rejection of the entire class of blockchain technologies.<p>If you don’t want to use a blockchain to build your app, fine! Don’t do it!<p>But if I want to build my app with a blockchain integration, or using a blockchain to store a portion of my data, what’s your problem with that?<p>To me, it all sounds very similar to, “don’t build your app using Microsoft tech, only use open source” or “don’t use NoSQL for storage, use an RDBMS instead.” It’s like a new version of those ridiculous religious wars people would have over technology preferences, only now higher-stakes and even more passionate.

I don’t mean to be stupid, but what’s the manifesto? All I get on this page is a form to sign the manifesto. The actual manifesto is…what?

I don&#x27;t even get the idea of these web versions. They just seem like buzzwords to me.<p>Sure there are differences in the general trends with how people interact with the web and internet, but it&#x27;s more complicated than that.<p>I understand the difference between Web1 an Web2 since web pages have become a lot more interactive over the years, but that doesn&#x27;t justify making special terms for old and modern sites. Nobody goes around saying &quot;this website is Web1 and this one is Web2.&quot; If a website looks old you just say it looks old.<p>There&#x27;s no specific cutoff point that makes sense for web versions. Websites have slowly become more and more interactive over the years. Since pages started to become interactive, there have been so many changes to the web that are arguably just as worthy to get their own version numbers. CSS has gained so much more functionality, JavaScript has become a compilation target, and with the advent of WebAssembly, virtually any programming language to be used on the web.<p>All of the things that make Web3 different from Web2 seem like niche use cases for the web, not something that will replace everything like more interactive web pages have. There won&#x27;t be any decentralized websites, there will just be a bunch of regular websites where you create an account to interact with technology that has been around for over a decade.<p>The other changes I mentioned actually pertain to the web, while the trendy stuff like the &quot;metaverse&quot; and &quot;blockchain&quot; actually have nothing to do with the web. Maybe they can interact with the web, but a lot of things can interact with the web. With the click of a button I can have virtually anything delivered to my doorstep, but for some reason owning a picture of a monkey is more impressive to some people.

How ridiculous that the main feature is to &quot;sign&quot; the document but it asks for name and email instead of a cryptographic signature

This seems silly. Blockchain is a means of achieving decentralisation, arguable one of the better ways as it currently stands. People abuse it by doing stupid shit like NFT, but that doesn&#x27;t invalidate the use-cases for blockchain. That&#x27;s like saying RDBMS systems are bullshit because people make banks with them and banks manage fictional money.<p>Block chain solves a real problem of trust (albeit with some caveats). NFTs do no such thing.

What is this current trend of being &quot;anti&quot; [insert your favorite hated component here], without even offering an alternative or a precise description of what is being proposed?<p>I would have expected at least a one-pager summing up what is the proposal about: The topic of decentralization is obviously very interesting and I wanted to read something technical about an alternative to &quot;web3&quot;. Until then...

I&#x27;ve been a fan of blockchains ever since I found bitcoin well over a decade ago. I&#x27;m a huge fan of decentralization, but the limits of blockchains have been pretty clear for a long time now.<p>While blockchains are cool and possibly fully decentralized, they don&#x27;t scale well. So far we&#x27;re no closer to finding a way to scale without making it more centralized. As usage goes up, centralization goes up too. One can no longer host a full node on basically any hardware.<p>I fully understand that people are sceptical. The amount of bullshit is insane, and basically no users have any idea about how any of this works. I&#x27;ve seen a lot of sites and services that promises you amazing things, without giving any details about how it archives it. Most people don&#x27;t care if it works in a sensible way,they just don&#x27;t want to miss out.

Blockchain is a nice technology for having distributed consensus databases. NFTs are a good tool for protocols, identity and uniqueness in a decentralised system.<p>So they want decentralisation and reject some key technologies and tools to enable it?<p>I think it&#x27;s time we dissociate the the technologies from its use. Blockchain is more than a ledger of monetary transactions. NFT is more than NFT art.

How about &quot;the web&quot; as a moniker, without a serial number? That is how the thing started and that is how it still can be used. HTTP still works, HTML still works, links still work and with that the web still works. Add whatever whiz-bang gadgetry you want but make sure the thing still works without the makeup and you&#x27;re on the web - congratulations.

Reminds me of when it seemed like a reasonable thing to do to host a website on the world wide web from my home network.<p>The web was always decentralised, but various motivations and reasonable tradeoffs caused it accumulate a lot of crap. Maybe the point is that Web3 isn&#x27;t really different in this respect.

&gt; web0 = decentralisation<p>It’s already the thing, and it’s called Web 1.0. Oh, wait a second. This manifesto is from the same guy who basically stole the idea of indie web, called it “small web”, created poorly designed JS framework for it and made a website with big “please donate” button. Yep, seems legit.

I am getting an `alert(1)` when visiting this site. This smells like cross-site scripting. Beware.

I don&#x27;t see the point of this?

The page uses HTML5 and it&#x27;s responsive, so it&#x27;s at least web 2.0

Flagged because it looks like this site has been XSS&#x27;d

There is really very little content here, particularly compared to the amount of well worn argument that it’s likely to engender.

&gt; In other words, web0 is web3 without all the corporate right-libertarian Silicon Valley bullshit.<p>Yikes.Since when decentralization has been something different than a right&#x2F;libertarian position?If anything not having centralized power is specifically that.<p>I see this train of thought from figures like Tim Pool (and even much &quot;higher&quot; intellectually speaking,not gonna name them), who seem to think free software and&#x2F;or decentralization is a social and left-leaning issue and proposition.It&#x27;s not, if you want to bring politics into discussion at least be accurate about it.Owning your own data,not being censored at will and having more control is a right&#x2F;libertarian position, or at least not in anti-thesis with it.However people seem to think the internet is&#x2F;can be used somehow as tool of revolutionaries against the state, that&#x27;s not how it works(at least right now, where you don&#x27;t have access to it w&#x2F;o the government knowing about it).<p>Maybe it&#x27;s only referring to the disgusting SV corporate aspect in the economic sense from things like NFTs, but this is vastly overblown.Corporations are not the ones selling the most NFTs snake oil right now, people are.Corporations only want to facilitate this sh*t show, I don&#x27;t have a problem with that as long as the network is not centralized by them.(which is not, but people kind of pretend the internet is decentralized which is rather funny)

Another movement or group defined more or less only by what it is against rather than what it is for?

A petition is irrelevant. All that matters is a race to a product.

Thanks for the XSS Jo mama !

Web0 should have meant offline-only Desktop apps that are built with web technology like Electron.

Why was this post flagged?

Why do they authors consider blockchain + NFTs + metaverse“ to be “libertarian bullshit” but not decentralisation?

What the hell is this? Not sure what this manifesto is trying to achieve.

There is nothing political about web3, it has nothing to do with right libertarian. A blockchain is simply a database with decentralized writing properties and distributed reading properties.<p>Since when do databases have political leaning? That website is completely nuts.

Saying that NFTs and blockchain were &quot;right-libertarian&quot; is just polemic. Why is HN offering a public space for &#x2F;pol&#x2F;?<p>Please take your agitation elsewhere, guys.

It&#x27;s always funny to me that these people can find so much support with this romance.