I am also skeptical of it. I think the idea is that if you have pervasive microtransactions, and smart contracts which can participate in them, then you can eas

I am also skeptical of it. I think the idea is that if you have pervasive microtransactions, and smart contracts which can participate in them, then you can easily create web applications where revenues are shared with users, in a transparent and predictable way. Consider Facebook. Facebook is an advertising platform: advertisers pay money in exchange for users looking at ads; users look at ads. But the users don't receive the money! Facebook keeps the money. A Web 3.0 version could pass some fraction of the advertisers' money on to each user; the amount passed on could be based on various aspects of the user's activity, to incentivise them to do things which increase the value of the ads (looking at ads, attracting other users to the site, etc), and to not do things which decrease the value of the ads (driving other users away from the site, posting naughty content, etc). The fundamental theorem of Web 3.0, as i understand it, is that this is both better for users (they get paid), and also better for site operators (users will be attracted by the prospect of getting paid). There are problems with this, even on its own terms. Firstly, every site now has to be structured around some sort of transaction, where somebody is prepared to pay. You can't just have people hanging out aimlessly. Now, maybe that just means that Web 3.0 isn't universal, and there are sites where it doesn't make sense. But the best places on the net have always been places where people hang out aimlessly, so this seems like a substantial lacuna. Secondly, detailed, mechanically applied incentives often end up driving behaviour that isn't what the setter really wanted; you end up with everyone breeding cobras etc. Web 3.0 sites might end up not being better for users or operators. Thirdly, a Web 3.0 site will be less profitable for its operator than an equivalent Web 2.0 site, so it will (often) be less attractive as a thing for an entrepreneur to build. I suppose the theory predicts that Web 3.0 sites will outcompete Web 2.0 sites, so entrepreneurs won't have a choice. Then there are problems where the theory interacts with reality. We already have transactions, without using cryptocurrencies, and as long as users are happy to batch up payments and withdrawals, transactions on sites themselves can be arbitrarily micro. We don't have smart contracts without blockchains, so users would have to trust operators to apply incentives fairly; but people already trust all sorts of companies to do that (credit card rewards, supermarket loyalty points, MMORPG XP, etc), so this isn't a real obstacle. If we wanted to build sites like this, we already could! And then there are the general cryptocurrency / blockchain problems. For every one genuine and sensible attempt to build a site like this, there will be a hundred which are genuine but ill-conceived, and ten thousand which are scams. This is pretty much a market for lemons. So i'm not sure there is any reason for anybody outside of the crypto scam sphere to care about it. It won't take off, and if it did, it would be crap.