Ask HN: What is the state of Web 3.0? From an engineer to an engineer.

It’s still hype, driven by VCs that have an investment in crypto.<p>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.

Here are two projects that I&#x27;ve found helpful to understand the possibilities.<p>Helium - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.helium.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.helium.com&#x2F;</a> Building out wireless infrastructure for both IoT devices and 5G more recently<p>Arweave - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.arweave.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.arweave.org&#x2F;</a> Provides a permanent storage solution where you pay once upfront<p>They are both building a new decentralized network to provide a service and using tokens to share ownership in the network and align incentives.<p>Of course it&#x27;s too early to say whether they will succeed in their respective mission.<p>Disclaimer: Not affiliated with either project but I do work in Web3

Currently, any legitimate promise that Web 3.0 might have is confounded and overshadowed by the grifts it enables.

If you&#x27;re interested, the most important thing to know is that there&#x27;s real, low-level work happening, but you won&#x27;t read about it on HN, at least not now at the beginning of 2022. Looking at the low-effort&#x2F;dead comments on this thread should help you understand why.<p>I&#x27;ll let someone else speak to specific projects, but I&#x27;ll note Block (neé Square) and Meta (neé Facebook)&#x27;s made big moves last year near&#x2F;adjacent to web3, so there&#x27;s interest in it from monied groups.<p>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&#x2F;webpages on the frontend a place for skills development. I&#x27;ve had difficulty finding some of the meanings and ramifications alluded to elsewhere in the space[2] though.<p>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&#x27;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&#x27;t get past how dumb they are.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@kanewallmann_71759&#x2F;an-untrustworthy-pinball-machine-d9dcd07882c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@kanewallmann_71759&#x2F;an-untrustworthy-pinb...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;cat5749&#x2F;status&#x2F;1476813266462539779" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;cat5749&#x2F;status&#x2F;1476813266462539779</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29778852" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29778852</a>

It&#x27;s a huge space and I got into it around Feb&#x2F;March of 2021. Some interesting applications I noticed are:<p>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 &#x2F; AAVE &#x2F; TraderJoe.xyz to name a few<p>2. Exchange Tokens - A simple application to swap between two tokens (ERC-20). Example: Uniswap, QuickSwap, etc<p>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&#x27;s - ERC 721 Standard Example: Aavegotchi, Axie Infinity, etc<p>Interesting research is happening in the field of cryptography - Zero Knowledge Proofs, Verkle Trees. Foundations&#x2F;Companies: Matterlabs, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon<p>A lot of work is happening in app development tooling: Solidity, Ganache, Brownie, etc

Akash Network - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;akash.network&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;akash.network&#x2F;</a> A decentralized, censorship-resistant alternative to AWS and othe cloud providers.<p>UnFederal Reserve - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.unfederalreserve.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.unfederalreserve.com&#x2F;</a> Fund of funds that allows crypto holders to provide cash to non-bank lenders<p>Basic Attention Token - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;basicattentiontoken.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;basicattentiontoken.org&#x2F;</a> Ad-free browsing(among other things)<p>Enjin - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;enjin.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;enjin.io</a> - tradeable assets for a digital economy<p>Robonomics - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;robonomics.network" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;robonomics.network</a> - Open-source platform for IoT applications.<p>Conceal Network - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;conceal.network&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;conceal.network&#x2F;</a> - Decentralized finance, private transactions and encrypted messaging.<p>...and at least a thousand more.

The cake is a lie.<p>(I&#x27;m sorry, I realize this is a low effort comment and am unable to resist making it anyway.)

Wow, I guess I totally missed web 2.0. I thought that one has never happened. It was called “semantic web” back in the day.

it is just another compute with some properties and some storage. ecosystem is far from decentralized, most of things are closed and with no community governance. much hype and hundreds same projects. feels like internet of 95. so never was there. but feels like that.