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Can anybody tell me why so many people think that Web 3 = NFTs + crypto currencies? NFTs and crypto currencies are a part of what people think the Web 3.0 will

by Kovah 5y ago

Can anybody tell me why so many people think that Web 3 = NFTs + crypto currencies? NFTs and crypto currencies are a part of what people think the Web 3.0 will be, but they are definitely not synonyms. The author, however, seem to have did that.

omgtehlion 5y ago
Because this is how "web3" is marketed (pushed) to masses...
- da-x 5y ago
  For what I gather, Web3 is marketed as a 'generic ownership' ledger, i.e. not just for 'a replacement for money', which was the purpose for which cryptocurrencies were so far perceived in the mainstream public eye. How it connects to NFTs - investors putting real money into Web3 would want to hike on the supposed ability to invent assets out of thin air and sell supposed ownership on them for real money at a profit. There are many people wanting to own NFTs right now (even if many people equals to just %1 of all people and never about it). As for the legality of it, maybe we can think of it as being a scam as much as companies selling tamagotchis [1] in the 90's are or were a scam. It was somewhat in fashion to own one back then. At one point it was quite profitable to manufacture and sell them. However, now and possibly forever the volumes at the peak of the fad would never be restored. At least right now, in 2022, perhaps the current trend of owning an NFT collection and presenting it to others is somewhat driven by vanity in a similar way. Perhaps it's the future with NFTs. Can't say I agree with the present situation, and I'm kinda hoping people will find better things to do with their hard-owned money. [1] - A Brief History of Tamagotchi | Innovation | Smithsonian Magazine - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/keeping-tamagotchi-alive-180979264/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/keeping-tamagotchi...
paganel 5y ago
Not the author, but an article on web3 from earlier today that was shared in here was almost only focusing on NFTs + money (I guess crypto). I haven't followed the subject all that close but I can't say that I have read other descriptions of it, i.e. something that wasn't focused on how to make money.
mypastself 5y ago
Yeah, the other article critical of Web3 currently on the frontpage (written by Moxie) tries to understand the technology and develop an actual thesis. This one is comparatively extremely shallow, and the author seems proud of his ignorance of the topic.
stephen_g 5y ago
Because cryptocurrency and NFT people are the ones who came up with the current "web3" concept and are the ones pushing the whole thing. Personally, I expect the real "next-generation" of the web will turn out to be something different (who knows exactly what at this point though!), but this small set of people are trying to tie cryptocurrency and NFTs into the very definition of next-generation web.
- AniseAbyss 5y ago
  Desperate for a practical application of cryptocurrency. It's been what, 15 years? I'm still using € and $.
  - beebmam 5y ago
    Why be desperate? Cryptocurrencies are the dream of scammers and money launderers and criminals in general. Let them burn in hell
    - toastal 5y ago
      Then someone drops in to remind this comment that USD and other paper is still preferred and less traceable. These arguments are always the same on both sides.
    - xiphias2 5y ago
      I hear this all the time on HN, but when I meet people in real life who own cryptocurrencies, they are educated people with real jobs and too many things going on well for going into prison for crimes. Why is HN so different than my experience? Have you met a lot of criminals who own BTC?
      - AniseAbyss 5y ago
        It's not scamming. Was what Soros did with the British pound in the early 90s scamming? There are a lot of people who think they can swim with the sharks. Good luck with that.
grey-area 5y ago
Can you tell me what you think web3 is in concrete terms? What problems does it solve?
- Kovah 5y ago
  "The third Web" by Tante is a really great write-up: https://tante.cc/2021/12/17/the-third-web/ https://tante.cc/2021/12/17/the-third-web/
  - alpha_squared 5y ago
    > One could write whole encyclopedias on the many different stacks of technologies that have been built on top of one another under the Web3 umbrella. Some Web3 people probably have. But for this piece we’ll focus on three technologies: First blockchain data structures, second a very specific artifact on blockchains called a non-fungible token (NFT) and third an organizational structure called a DAO. We’ll limit ourselves to this in order to keep this text somewhat brief and somewhat comprehensible for everyone. Does that mean web3 isn't "just blockchains and NFTs" but also DAOs? That doesn't seem all that different from the initial assumption of it broadly being about cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
- newacc9 5y ago
  I think the most charitable interpretation is a future where you don't have to "export your data" from facebook or google or fortnight, because your data is encrypted on the blockchain: your emails, your social graph, your avatar, your virtual real estate. fwiw I don't think you can provide enough bandwidth, disk space and computes to achieve this, but good luck. "85 terabytes per year is totally fine" -vitalik https://twitter.com/zndtoshi/status/1478387674335559681 https://twitter.com/zndtoshi/status/1478387674335559681
cblconfederate 5y ago
web3 is a marketing term, and this is absolutely how it is marketed. TBH i think it is a good thing. Web3 and the finance bros that popularize it should die with it, and we should keep working with the truly decentralized fundamentals, not with intermediaries.
chrisco255 5y ago
The term Web3 was coined by Gavin Wood, Co-founder of Ethereum and Polkadot as well as the Web3 Foundation (https://web3.foundation/about/ https://web3.foundation/about/). The crypto community is the biggest part of the push for it, so it's natural that people would make that connection. However, I consider any web tech that has user ownership or decentralization as a principle to be Web3. Some non-crypto examples would be Mastadon, Matrix, GunDB, and IPFS (although IPFS does have crypto-backed pinning services, such as Filecoin and Arweave, IPFS itself is agnostic to crypto).
jasode 5y ago
>NFTs and crypto currencies are a part of what people think the Web 3.0 will be, but they are definitely not synonyms. The author, however, seem to have did that. Regardless of the original or intended definitions of "Web3", it will end up being whatever the masses think it is. To recap some history: - "web3" circa ~2014 when coined by Gavin Wood covered 3 concepts without mentioning NFTs : (1) hash-ids of static content instead of urls (2) p2p encrypted messaging (3) consensus engine. (One of the earlier essays from 2014: https://gavwood.com/web3lt.html https://gavwood.com/web3lt.html) - "web3" circa ~2021 emphasizing the "token economy" (e.g. NFTs) popularized by Chris Dixon (a16z VC): this is the current news mania with celebrities selling jpgs, etc Therefore "web3==NFTs" narrative has overtaken the original Gavin Wood narrative. Analogous situation of evolution of terms was the "internet". In the 1980s, "internet" included Gopher, telnet, USENET, ftp. (E.g. I used to be able to telnet into public computers before all firewalls and Linux configs shut off telnet access.) But Gopher/USENET/etc faded and HTTP became the dominant idea of what "internet" is. NFTs now have constant press coverage of eye-popping sale amounts from celebrities and OpenSea founders are now paper billionaires. Therefore, NFTs dominate the meaning of "web3" because getting rich is more sexy to talk about than encrypted-p2p-communications-based-on-hash-identities.
- w_TF 5y ago
  also the definition of an NFT becoming an ugly tradeable jpeg
nudpiedo 5y ago
Here is the why: At the moment NFTs + crypto cover up to 95% of web3’s marketing visible functionalities. Additionally no killer “app” has been shown to the public where it demonstrate an intangible value over previous technology, at least that the public understands it.
amelius 5y ago
Let's skip to Web4, where power consumption reduction and overconsumption reduction are the main drivers, not money.

by Kovah 5y ago

omgtehlion 5y ago

Because this is how "web3" is marketed (pushed) to masses...

da-x 5y ago
For what I gather, Web3 is marketed as a 'generic ownership' ledger, i.e. not just for 'a replacement for money', which was the purpose for which cryptocurrencies were so far perceived in the mainstream public eye. How it connects to NFTs - investors putting real money into Web3 would want to hike on the supposed ability to invent assets out of thin air and sell supposed ownership on them for real money at a profit. There are many people wanting to own NFTs right now (even if many people equals to just %1 of all people and never about it). As for the legality of it, maybe we can think of it as being a scam as much as companies selling tamagotchis [1] in the 90's are or were a scam. It was somewhat in fashion to own one back then. At one point it was quite profitable to manufacture and sell them. However, now and possibly forever the volumes at the peak of the fad would never be restored. At least right now, in 2022, perhaps the current trend of owning an NFT collection and presenting it to others is somewhat driven by vanity in a similar way. Perhaps it's the future with NFTs. Can't say I agree with the present situation, and I'm kinda hoping people will find better things to do with their hard-owned money. [1] - A Brief History of Tamagotchi | Innovation | Smithsonian Magazine - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/keeping-tamagotchi-alive-180979264/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/keeping-tamagotchi...

paganel 5y ago

Not the author, but an article on web3 from earlier today that was shared in here was almost only focusing on NFTs + money (I guess crypto). I haven't followed the subject all that close but I can't say that I have read other descriptions of it, i.e. something that wasn't focused on how to make money.

mypastself 5y ago

Yeah, the other article critical of Web3 currently on the frontpage (written by Moxie) tries to understand the technology and develop an actual thesis. This one is comparatively extremely shallow, and the author seems proud of his ignorance of the topic.

stephen_g 5y ago

Because cryptocurrency and NFT people are the ones who came up with the current "web3" concept and are the ones pushing the whole thing. Personally, I expect the real "next-generation" of the web will turn out to be something different (who knows exactly what at this point though!), but this small set of people are trying to tie cryptocurrency and NFTs into the very definition of next-generation web.

AniseAbyss 5y ago
Desperate for a practical application of cryptocurrency. It's been what, 15 years? I'm still using € and $.
- beebmam 5y ago
  Why be desperate? Cryptocurrencies are the dream of scammers and money launderers and criminals in general. Let them burn in hell
  - toastal 5y ago
    Then someone drops in to remind this comment that USD and other paper is still preferred and less traceable. These arguments are always the same on both sides.
  - xiphias2 5y ago
    I hear this all the time on HN, but when I meet people in real life who own cryptocurrencies, they are educated people with real jobs and too many things going on well for going into prison for crimes. Why is HN so different than my experience? Have you met a lot of criminals who own BTC?
    - AniseAbyss 5y ago
      It's not scamming. Was what Soros did with the British pound in the early 90s scamming? There are a lot of people who think they can swim with the sharks. Good luck with that.

grey-area 5y ago

Can you tell me what you think web3 is in concrete terms? What problems does it solve?

Kovah 5y ago
"The third Web" by Tante is a really great write-up: https://tante.cc/2021/12/17/the-third-web/ https://tante.cc/2021/12/17/the-third-web/
- alpha_squared 5y ago
  > One could write whole encyclopedias on the many different stacks of technologies that have been built on top of one another under the Web3 umbrella. Some Web3 people probably have. But for this piece we’ll focus on three technologies: First blockchain data structures, second a very specific artifact on blockchains called a non-fungible token (NFT) and third an organizational structure called a DAO. We’ll limit ourselves to this in order to keep this text somewhat brief and somewhat comprehensible for everyone. Does that mean web3 isn't "just blockchains and NFTs" but also DAOs? That doesn't seem all that different from the initial assumption of it broadly being about cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
newacc9 5y ago
I think the most charitable interpretation is a future where you don't have to "export your data" from facebook or google or fortnight, because your data is encrypted on the blockchain: your emails, your social graph, your avatar, your virtual real estate. fwiw I don't think you can provide enough bandwidth, disk space and computes to achieve this, but good luck. "85 terabytes per year is totally fine" -vitalik https://twitter.com/zndtoshi/status/1478387674335559681 https://twitter.com/zndtoshi/status/1478387674335559681

cblconfederate 5y ago

web3 is a marketing term, and this is absolutely how it is marketed. TBH i think it is a good thing. Web3 and the finance bros that popularize it should die with it, and we should keep working with the truly decentralized fundamentals, not with intermediaries.

chrisco255 5y ago

The term Web3 was coined by Gavin Wood, Co-founder of Ethereum and Polkadot as well as the Web3 Foundation (https://web3.foundation/about/ https://web3.foundation/about/). The crypto community is the biggest part of the push for it, so it's natural that people would make that connection. However, I consider any web tech that has user ownership or decentralization as a principle to be Web3. Some non-crypto examples would be Mastadon, Matrix, GunDB, and IPFS (although IPFS does have crypto-backed pinning services, such as Filecoin and Arweave, IPFS itself is agnostic to crypto).

jasode 5y ago

>NFTs and crypto currencies are a part of what people think the Web 3.0 will be, but they are definitely not synonyms. The author, however, seem to have did that. Regardless of the original or intended definitions of "Web3", it will end up being whatever the masses think it is. To recap some history: - "web3" circa ~2014 when coined by Gavin Wood covered 3 concepts without mentioning NFTs : (1) hash-ids of static content instead of urls (2) p2p encrypted messaging (3) consensus engine. (One of the earlier essays from 2014: https://gavwood.com/web3lt.html https://gavwood.com/web3lt.html) - "web3" circa ~2021 emphasizing the "token economy" (e.g. NFTs) popularized by Chris Dixon (a16z VC): this is the current news mania with celebrities selling jpgs, etc Therefore "web3==NFTs" narrative has overtaken the original Gavin Wood narrative. Analogous situation of evolution of terms was the "internet". In the 1980s, "internet" included Gopher, telnet, USENET, ftp. (E.g. I used to be able to telnet into public computers before all firewalls and Linux configs shut off telnet access.) But Gopher/USENET/etc faded and HTTP became the dominant idea of what "internet" is. NFTs now have constant press coverage of eye-popping sale amounts from celebrities and OpenSea founders are now paper billionaires. Therefore, NFTs dominate the meaning of "web3" because getting rich is more sexy to talk about than encrypted-p2p-communications-based-on-hash-identities.

w_TF 5y ago
also the definition of an NFT becoming an ugly tradeable jpeg

nudpiedo 5y ago

Here is the why: At the moment NFTs + crypto cover up to 95% of web3’s marketing visible functionalities. Additionally no killer “app” has been shown to the public where it demonstrate an intangible value over previous technology, at least that the public understands it.

amelius 5y ago

Let's skip to Web4, where power consumption reduction and overconsumption reduction are the main drivers, not money.