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Something that I think a lot of Web3 (and metaverse, et al) proponent types don't understand is that you can't plan out a revolutionary technology. By definitio

by sb057 5y ago

Something that I think a lot of Web3 (and metaverse, et al) proponent types don't understand is that you can't plan out a revolutionary technology. By definition, any wide-reaching society-wide overturning of the current order will behave in ways you can't anticipate. For example, HTTP code 402 "Payment Required" was standardized in 1999 when the W3C anticipated that people would be paying for things over the web, but didn't realize that such an error message wouldn't ever really be used because of how such payments were eventually implemented.

DannyBee 5y ago
I mean, this is true, but it feels like there is a more basic issue of product/market fit here. Even given the comments here about what this stuff is supposed to provide, it's really unclear anyone did even basic diligence. Something as simple as "we went around to different focus groups of developers and said "what are your biggest problems and pain points". Things like "immutability" and "not being shut down" would not be the top 2 for most groups of developers, and i'd bet not in the top 10, either. As a result, every time i hear about "web3" i can't stop hearing the simpsons clip where Stephen Hawking says "i wanted to see your utopia, but now i see it is more of a fruitopia" Don't get me wrong, there are certainly types of apps, etc out there where they are going to say "being shut down" is their biggest problem, but that seems like a really small portion of the total addressable market.
plokiju 5y ago
Why do you feel they don’t understand that?
chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
There's not much central planning going on. For example, the smart contract standards for NFTs came out of existing smart contracts; they standardized a lot of already-existing practices like creating a `transferFrom` function. Emergent standards like that exist to tamp down on contracts creating functions with slightly different function names, behaviors, etc.

by sb057 5y ago

DannyBee 5y ago

I mean, this is true, but it feels like there is a more basic issue of product/market fit here. Even given the comments here about what this stuff is supposed to provide, it's really unclear anyone did even basic diligence. Something as simple as "we went around to different focus groups of developers and said "what are your biggest problems and pain points". Things like "immutability" and "not being shut down" would not be the top 2 for most groups of developers, and i'd bet not in the top 10, either. As a result, every time i hear about "web3" i can't stop hearing the simpsons clip where Stephen Hawking says "i wanted to see your utopia, but now i see it is more of a fruitopia" Don't get me wrong, there are certainly types of apps, etc out there where they are going to say "being shut down" is their biggest problem, but that seems like a really small portion of the total addressable market.

plokiju 5y ago

Why do you feel they don’t understand that?

chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago

There's not much central planning going on. For example, the smart contract standards for NFTs came out of existing smart contracts; they standardized a lot of already-existing practices like creating a `transferFrom` function. Emergent standards like that exist to tamp down on contracts creating functions with slightly different function names, behaviors, etc.