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Internet guru Tim O'Reilly on Web3: “Get ready for the crash”

11 points by kordlessagain 5y ago

feketegy 5y ago
The problem is Web3 is there are no real-world use cases for it. This may be my "famous last words" but I don't see why would anything need a blockchain...
- garbagecoder 5y ago
  Not many legal ones, yet, anyway. I'm always struck by how there is basically no mention of bittorrent in conversations about web3. It was web3 (decentralized, cryptography-based) technology that's about 20 years old. And at first the notion was that people would save on server/bandwidth costs by sharing server/bandwidth for large files. But we still have "Moore's Law" or something like it for Internet connectivity and storage space so it ended up being almost exclusively used for piracy. This is more or less exactly what is going on with bitcoin. Right now, people are using it here and there for transactions, but not out of necessity really. There are a few cases in certain countries, as pointed out by people like Garry Kasparov, that being able to avoid the authorities is a good thing. But in general, it's an academic argument because the authorities will do what they need to do. And for a long time, bitcoin was just bittorrent for money. Mostly used for illegal stuff like SilkRoad. So, while there are a few limited use cases now and may be a lot in the future, "trust me bro, it's gonna rule!" isn't good enough for me to put faith or money into.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Consider how useful the BitTorrent protocol is, and how little monetary reward it’s creator saw. Hence why web3 does not make much use of it. The web3 get rich quick faction (crypto for $) is at odds with the web3 technology curious/hobbyist faction (crypto for decentralized service discovery [namecoin], non crypto object storage [IPFS], etc).
    - feketegy 5y ago
      ^^ This is my feeling exactly. There's a lot of noise and get-rich-quick schemes going on currently.
    - garbagecoder 5y ago
      I'm not suggesting web3 should use bittorrent, I'm suggesting it's not new and we've experimented with these ideas before. I'm interested in the technology too and have been experimenting with blockchains for years, but I never saw it as a new 2022-era thing. Both bittorrent and bitcoin are from the 2000s and we've had plenty of time to see what they can and can't do.
- HappySweeney 5y ago
  The only thing I could see it being good for is to monetize websites via client-side mining instead of ads. Without web3, Google would just crush you (as they have to all legit web-mining startups), and with it, you don't need some central company to administer their 30% cut.
garbagecoder 5y ago
Thank you for this, I think O'Reilly's take is actually a lot more balanced than people are giving him credit for. In particular, he does not claim there is no use or there never will be a use for some of these technologies, but that cryptocurrency and NFTs in particular don't do what they say, in particular with respect to decentralization. I'm excited to see what people come up with, but it will probably look as different from what they told us the "Information Superhighway" would be like in 1990 and what it was in 2000.
seanhunter 5y ago
Around 1997 I worked for a company building and hosting websites for folks. My boss, the founder of an internet company said to me "Ecommerce is a total bust. No-one is ever going to send their credit card details to some random company on the internet". The point is that even folks involved in the industry got the first wave of the internet badly wrong because it's really hard to anticipate the future especially when a bunch of creative people are working on something.
- zydex 5y ago
  What happened in the following 4-5 years? A gargantuan crash.
  - bequanna 5y ago
    Being too early is essentially the same thing as being wrong in this case.

11 points by kordlessagain 5y ago

The problem is Web3 is there are no real-world use cases for it. This may be my "famous last words" but I don't see why would anything need a blockchain...

garbagecoder 5y ago
Not many legal ones, yet, anyway. I'm always struck by how there is basically no mention of bittorrent in conversations about web3. It was web3 (decentralized, cryptography-based) technology that's about 20 years old. And at first the notion was that people would save on server/bandwidth costs by sharing server/bandwidth for large files. But we still have "Moore's Law" or something like it for Internet connectivity and storage space so it ended up being almost exclusively used for piracy. This is more or less exactly what is going on with bitcoin. Right now, people are using it here and there for transactions, but not out of necessity really. There are a few cases in certain countries, as pointed out by people like Garry Kasparov, that being able to avoid the authorities is a good thing. But in general, it's an academic argument because the authorities will do what they need to do. And for a long time, bitcoin was just bittorrent for money. Mostly used for illegal stuff like SilkRoad. So, while there are a few limited use cases now and may be a lot in the future, "trust me bro, it's gonna rule!" isn't good enough for me to put faith or money into.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Consider how useful the BitTorrent protocol is, and how little monetary reward it’s creator saw. Hence why web3 does not make much use of it. The web3 get rich quick faction (crypto for $) is at odds with the web3 technology curious/hobbyist faction (crypto for decentralized service discovery [namecoin], non crypto object storage [IPFS], etc).
  - feketegy 5y ago
    ^^ This is my feeling exactly. There's a lot of noise and get-rich-quick schemes going on currently.
  - garbagecoder 5y ago
    I'm not suggesting web3 should use bittorrent, I'm suggesting it's not new and we've experimented with these ideas before. I'm interested in the technology too and have been experimenting with blockchains for years, but I never saw it as a new 2022-era thing. Both bittorrent and bitcoin are from the 2000s and we've had plenty of time to see what they can and can't do.
HappySweeney 5y ago
The only thing I could see it being good for is to monetize websites via client-side mining instead of ads. Without web3, Google would just crush you (as they have to all legit web-mining startups), and with it, you don't need some central company to administer their 30% cut.

garbagecoder 5y ago

Thank you for this, I think O'Reilly's take is actually a lot more balanced than people are giving him credit for. In particular, he does not claim there is no use or there never will be a use for some of these technologies, but that cryptocurrency and NFTs in particular don't do what they say, in particular with respect to decentralization. I'm excited to see what people come up with, but it will probably look as different from what they told us the "Information Superhighway" would be like in 1990 and what it was in 2000.

seanhunter 5y ago

Around 1997 I worked for a company building and hosting websites for folks. My boss, the founder of an internet company said to me "Ecommerce is a total bust. No-one is ever going to send their credit card details to some random company on the internet". The point is that even folks involved in the industry got the first wave of the internet badly wrong because it's really hard to anticipate the future especially when a bunch of creative people are working on something.

zydex 5y ago
What happened in the following 4-5 years? A gargantuan crash.
- bequanna 5y ago
  Being too early is essentially the same thing as being wrong in this case.