7 ms·

Web 3 Doesn't Exist

115 points by enigmatic02 5y ago

zarzavat 5y ago
I'm really getting sick of all these vacuous articles about web3. The anti-web3 virtue signalling just as tiresome as the pro-web3 puffery. Even a repost of a 20 year old PG essay or peter norvig's spell checker would be better than this. Something with some technical meat to it, not just a pile of bones.
kuharich 5y ago
Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29785021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29785021
rPlayer6554 5y ago
Isn't a rule on this site not to editorialize the title?
sjtindell 5y ago
A way better web3 take was posted earlier today. This is just hyperbole, some sort of self-hating tech worker thing, and bad thinking. Honestly it’s fantastic to compare the two and see just how useless this blog post is. The better take https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208
- Zetaphor 5y ago
  This was posted written by someone who is known in the space for being a Bitcoin maximalist. This take is hardly surprising
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    Cobie is not known to be a Bitcoin maximalism. If anything, most of his support is behind Ethereum. He just has a healthy dose of skepticism about much of what is happening in the Web3/not-Web3 space.
    - tata71 5y ago
      You are a true crypto punk — gm
  - ShamelessC 5y ago
    > This take is hardly surprising *to crypto enthusiasts.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  The difference is Cobie is a 9 year veteran in the space versus Moxie by his own admission being new to the space. It's not hyperbole, it's pretty grounded, with the conclusion "Web3 doesn’t really exist yet." Which is absolutely true. "I think open, transparent and permissionless systems replacing trusted central authorities is good for the world and can rebalance and decentralize power. I’m hopeful that the financial exuberance in crypto markets can attract brilliant minds away from selling people ads to instead build a more equitable and cooperative future. But I ain’t gonna be surprised if crypto founders are too rich to care anymore and the new web gets built by late-stage capitalism greedcorps that make you buy a fractionalised micropayment NFT on Cardano to operate your electric toothbrush."
  - sollewitt 5y ago
    > "I think open, transparent and permissionless systems replacing trusted central authorities is good for the world and can rebalance and decentralize power. Does this not just shift the power to people who can manipulate the zeitgeist? I imagine a Tucker Carlson demagogue but with the ability to materially affect machinery with economic and social consequences. Imagine things like publicly shaming and doxing everyone who owns the wrong kind of NFT, or is a stakeholder in the wrong kind of enterprise. > I’m hopeful that the financial exuberance in crypto markets can attract brilliant minds away from selling people ads to instead build a more equitable and cooperative future. 1) The people I know who are genuinely fighting for equity are not attracted by the promise of riches. The financial exuberance actively attracts the wrong crowd. 2)I'm also interested in addressing inequity, but if one were to seriously try to build systems with equity and cooperation as goals, why would blockchain technology be a good choice knowing what we know in 2022?
    - tata71 5y ago
      > Imagine things like publicly shaming and doxing everyone who owns the wrong kind of NFT You've never seen a viral video of a poor child in a school being harassed for wearing a pair of shoes that weren't adequately cool?
      - 5y ago
fennecfoxen 5y ago
> Bitcoin moved from “darkweb drug money” to an institution-grade store of value asset in the space of a decade without a central authority to guide it. "Institution-grade store of value?" Maybe if you mean an asylum.
- qzw 5y ago
  Remember the "institution-grade" investment instruments called CDOs[0]? Pepperidge Farm remembers[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
- caymanjim 5y ago
  I'm not sure "institution-grade store of value" is a term that has any specific meaning, but I don't think it's patently incorrect when global investment banks have billions in the space. And this is coming from someone who thinks crypto is a joke.
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    The phrase "institution-grade" have the strongest meaning in commercial real estate, where they tend to be brand new buildings without any real risk of falling apart during your holding period. They are lower-risk assets. On the other hand, if you're talking about something bonds, you're more likely to hear about "investment-grade" bonds to describe the lower-risk investments. In other words, the exact opposite of Bitcoin, easily one the most volatile assets on the market. (If you want any more volatility, you need to start trading derivatives.) A few billion in speculative investments doesn't make this "institutional" in a hundreds-of-trillion-dollar market, either.
- magicjosh 5y ago
  This is a reference to the Fortune 500 companies like Square, Tesla, and Blackrock that hold thousands of bitcoin on their balance sheet. You can see the current tallies at https://bitcointreasuries.net/ https://bitcointreasuries.net/
dheera 5y ago
What especially doesn't exist is Web "3.0". What's next, 3.1 LTS? 3.2.4 beta2? I wish people would stop abusing semantic versioning and tacking on a ".0" just because it looks funky cool to businessy types.
- justinator 5y ago
  I'm old enough to remember Web 2.0 just meant AJAX/XMLHTTPRequest.
  - kmonsen 5y ago
    That was really slick when it first arrived!
  - dheera 5y ago
    I had XMLHTTPRequest functionality before they even released it by exploiting a MSIE bug. I didn't tell them about it, since I could also read files on users' hard drives, and I didn't want them to remove the feature (bug), but it did enable the future of the web on my tiny little websites before people even started talking about XMLHTTPRequest.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  There is no central web repo following semantic versioning. It's not a coding term. It's a useful abstraction for distinguishing the web as it exists today vs. the web we're trying to build.
  - dheera 5y ago
    It's not even a web that's being built. Even Ethereum relies on TCP and UDP ports which are Web 1 as far as I care. Invent some new "XYP" or whatever that isn't TCP or UDP and you can call it Web 2, maybe.
    - chrisco255 5y ago
      You don't have to overthink it. Web 2.0 wasn't a real thing either. It was generally marked by the expansion of real-time interactive applications on the web that didn't need to refresh for state updates. It's just an abstraction, not a technical term. Think of it as the third generation of web applications.
chrisco255 5y ago
Title should be 'WTF Is Web 3' (actual article title) or 'Web 3 Doesn't Exist, Yet' (mentioned toward the end).
supperburg 5y ago
I remember when bitcoin first became super mainstream popular in 2016ish. I had read the shatoshi white paper in 2011 so I already understood exactly what bitcoin was and the implications of it. And I will never forget in 2016 seeing the sky go black with a plague of misinformation. It’s really striking because after the plague had descended, I saw that it would have been very very difficult for a younger person to find a straightforward answer to what exactly bitcoin was. And the average joe? Literally every person seemed to have their own explanation of what bitcoin was, all equally wrong. With web3 there doesn’t even seem to be a white paper.
shp0ngle 5y ago
I just don’t understand why is it called “web3” when it’s emphatically not a part of world wide web. Web 2.0 was. Web 2.0 is an extension of the web. Original Web 3.0 was some kind of semantic web vaporware with XML or something, but it was still strongly part of world wide web. “web 3” is just not part of world wide web. But whatever, I just substitute “web3” for “blockchain and cryptocurrency” and that’s it
- doopy1 5y ago
  It is part of the web though on the frontend.
- tata71 5y ago
  Substitute it for "reinventing the internet to have APIs and usable UI/UX as a default, not an afterthought", much closer.
  - someoneelse9 5y ago
    Substitute it for "useless technologies built on blockchain because it's the coolest technology rn"
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nbzso 5y ago
Where is the world wide web in this? Ops, my mistake. This is not Web 3.0, this is web3.
Geee 5y ago
I believe in decentralized web, but I don't believe in tokenization of apps. I think the tokenization aspect is throwing off everyone, and allowing greed to overpower innovation. It's possible to build decentralized apps and use Bitcoin on Lightning Network as a incentive/payment/consensus mechanism if needed. There's no need for someone to "own" the app or protocol. This model can be seen as an alternative to the VC and cryptobro-driven Web3, which Cobie is talking about. See Sphinx Chat [0] or Impervious [1] for example. (before anyone says that Bitcoin doesn't scale to that, yes it does to millions of transactions per second with Lightning Network) [0] https://sphinx.chat https://sphinx.chat [1] https://www.impervious.ai https://www.impervious.ai
mro_name 5y ago
The most significant improvement to the web will be to enable active participation of laypersons. On their own behalf, without a gatekeeper. But it takes guts for experts to advocate such, as it shrinks their importance. It is possible, plug: I have a POC at https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo/ https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo/
vehemenz 5y ago
The title is actually "Wtf is web3". Quick PSA for anyone who likes using the word "exist(s)" or "there are/is" indiscriminately. In English, use like this serves as shorthand or as a recommendation about how we should better use language. If you position is that something doesn't exist—whatever that means—then you don't understand your own position enough to write about it.
- pixl97 5y ago
  I disagree. Writing about what you heard but don't understand or seem to be able to grasp is perfectly fine. Especially in a topic where there is a wide area for charlitians that will try to scam you to exist.

115 points by enigmatic02 5y ago

I'm really getting sick of all these vacuous articles about web3. The anti-web3 virtue signalling just as tiresome as the pro-web3 puffery. Even a repost of a 20 year old PG essay or peter norvig's spell checker would be better than this. Something with some technical meat to it, not just a pile of bones.

kuharich 5y ago

Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29785021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29785021

rPlayer6554 5y ago

Isn't a rule on this site not to editorialize the title?

sjtindell 5y ago

A way better web3 take was posted earlier today. This is just hyperbole, some sort of self-hating tech worker thing, and bad thinking. Honestly it’s fantastic to compare the two and see just how useless this blog post is. The better take https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208

Zetaphor 5y ago
This was posted written by someone who is known in the space for being a Bitcoin maximalist. This take is hardly surprising
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  Cobie is not known to be a Bitcoin maximalism. If anything, most of his support is behind Ethereum. He just has a healthy dose of skepticism about much of what is happening in the Web3/not-Web3 space.
  - tata71 5y ago
    You are a true crypto punk — gm
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  > This take is hardly surprising *to crypto enthusiasts.
chrisco255 5y ago
The difference is Cobie is a 9 year veteran in the space versus Moxie by his own admission being new to the space. It's not hyperbole, it's pretty grounded, with the conclusion "Web3 doesn’t really exist yet." Which is absolutely true. "I think open, transparent and permissionless systems replacing trusted central authorities is good for the world and can rebalance and decentralize power. I’m hopeful that the financial exuberance in crypto markets can attract brilliant minds away from selling people ads to instead build a more equitable and cooperative future. But I ain’t gonna be surprised if crypto founders are too rich to care anymore and the new web gets built by late-stage capitalism greedcorps that make you buy a fractionalised micropayment NFT on Cardano to operate your electric toothbrush."
- sollewitt 5y ago
  > "I think open, transparent and permissionless systems replacing trusted central authorities is good for the world and can rebalance and decentralize power. Does this not just shift the power to people who can manipulate the zeitgeist? I imagine a Tucker Carlson demagogue but with the ability to materially affect machinery with economic and social consequences. Imagine things like publicly shaming and doxing everyone who owns the wrong kind of NFT, or is a stakeholder in the wrong kind of enterprise. > I’m hopeful that the financial exuberance in crypto markets can attract brilliant minds away from selling people ads to instead build a more equitable and cooperative future. 1) The people I know who are genuinely fighting for equity are not attracted by the promise of riches. The financial exuberance actively attracts the wrong crowd. 2)I'm also interested in addressing inequity, but if one were to seriously try to build systems with equity and cooperation as goals, why would blockchain technology be a good choice knowing what we know in 2022?
  - tata71 5y ago
    > Imagine things like publicly shaming and doxing everyone who owns the wrong kind of NFT You've never seen a viral video of a poor child in a school being harassed for wearing a pair of shoes that weren't adequately cool?
    - 5y ago

fennecfoxen 5y ago

> Bitcoin moved from “darkweb drug money” to an institution-grade store of value asset in the space of a decade without a central authority to guide it. "Institution-grade store of value?" Maybe if you mean an asylum.

qzw 5y ago
Remember the "institution-grade" investment instruments called CDOs[0]? Pepperidge Farm remembers[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
caymanjim 5y ago
I'm not sure "institution-grade store of value" is a term that has any specific meaning, but I don't think it's patently incorrect when global investment banks have billions in the space. And this is coming from someone who thinks crypto is a joke.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  The phrase "institution-grade" have the strongest meaning in commercial real estate, where they tend to be brand new buildings without any real risk of falling apart during your holding period. They are lower-risk assets. On the other hand, if you're talking about something bonds, you're more likely to hear about "investment-grade" bonds to describe the lower-risk investments. In other words, the exact opposite of Bitcoin, easily one the most volatile assets on the market. (If you want any more volatility, you need to start trading derivatives.) A few billion in speculative investments doesn't make this "institutional" in a hundreds-of-trillion-dollar market, either.
magicjosh 5y ago
This is a reference to the Fortune 500 companies like Square, Tesla, and Blackrock that hold thousands of bitcoin on their balance sheet. You can see the current tallies at https://bitcointreasuries.net/ https://bitcointreasuries.net/

dheera 5y ago

What especially doesn't exist is Web "3.0". What's next, 3.1 LTS? 3.2.4 beta2? I wish people would stop abusing semantic versioning and tacking on a ".0" just because it looks funky cool to businessy types.

justinator 5y ago
I'm old enough to remember Web 2.0 just meant AJAX/XMLHTTPRequest.
- kmonsen 5y ago
  That was really slick when it first arrived!
- dheera 5y ago
  I had XMLHTTPRequest functionality before they even released it by exploiting a MSIE bug. I didn't tell them about it, since I could also read files on users' hard drives, and I didn't want them to remove the feature (bug), but it did enable the future of the web on my tiny little websites before people even started talking about XMLHTTPRequest.
chrisco255 5y ago
There is no central web repo following semantic versioning. It's not a coding term. It's a useful abstraction for distinguishing the web as it exists today vs. the web we're trying to build.
- dheera 5y ago
  It's not even a web that's being built. Even Ethereum relies on TCP and UDP ports which are Web 1 as far as I care. Invent some new "XYP" or whatever that isn't TCP or UDP and you can call it Web 2, maybe.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    You don't have to overthink it. Web 2.0 wasn't a real thing either. It was generally marked by the expansion of real-time interactive applications on the web that didn't need to refresh for state updates. It's just an abstraction, not a technical term. Think of it as the third generation of web applications.

chrisco255 5y ago

Title should be 'WTF Is Web 3' (actual article title) or 'Web 3 Doesn't Exist, Yet' (mentioned toward the end).

supperburg 5y ago

I remember when bitcoin first became super mainstream popular in 2016ish. I had read the shatoshi white paper in 2011 so I already understood exactly what bitcoin was and the implications of it. And I will never forget in 2016 seeing the sky go black with a plague of misinformation. It’s really striking because after the plague had descended, I saw that it would have been very very difficult for a younger person to find a straightforward answer to what exactly bitcoin was. And the average joe? Literally every person seemed to have their own explanation of what bitcoin was, all equally wrong. With web3 there doesn’t even seem to be a white paper.

shp0ngle 5y ago

I just don’t understand why is it called “web3” when it’s emphatically not a part of world wide web. Web 2.0 was. Web 2.0 is an extension of the web. Original Web 3.0 was some kind of semantic web vaporware with XML or something, but it was still strongly part of world wide web. “web 3” is just not part of world wide web. But whatever, I just substitute “web3” for “blockchain and cryptocurrency” and that’s it

doopy1 5y ago
It is part of the web though on the frontend.
tata71 5y ago
Substitute it for "reinventing the internet to have APIs and usable UI/UX as a default, not an afterthought", much closer.
- someoneelse9 5y ago
  Substitute it for "useless technologies built on blockchain because it's the coolest technology rn"

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nbzso 5y ago

Where is the world wide web in this? Ops, my mistake. This is not Web 3.0, this is web3.

Geee 5y ago

I believe in decentralized web, but I don't believe in tokenization of apps. I think the tokenization aspect is throwing off everyone, and allowing greed to overpower innovation. It's possible to build decentralized apps and use Bitcoin on Lightning Network as a incentive/payment/consensus mechanism if needed. There's no need for someone to "own" the app or protocol. This model can be seen as an alternative to the VC and cryptobro-driven Web3, which Cobie is talking about. See Sphinx Chat [0] or Impervious [1] for example. (before anyone says that Bitcoin doesn't scale to that, yes it does to millions of transactions per second with Lightning Network) [0] https://sphinx.chat https://sphinx.chat [1] https://www.impervious.ai https://www.impervious.ai

mro_name 5y ago

The most significant improvement to the web will be to enable active participation of laypersons. On their own behalf, without a gatekeeper. But it takes guts for experts to advocate such, as it shrinks their importance. It is possible, plug: I have a POC at https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo/ https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo/

vehemenz 5y ago

The title is actually "Wtf is web3". Quick PSA for anyone who likes using the word "exist(s)" or "there are/is" indiscriminately. In English, use like this serves as shorthand or as a recommendation about how we should better use language. If you position is that something doesn't exist—whatever that means—then you don't understand your own position enough to write about it.

pixl97 5y ago
I disagree. Writing about what you heard but don't understand or seem to be able to grasp is perfectly fine. Especially in a topic where there is a wide area for charlitians that will try to scam you to exist.