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Aaah, the ethereum + swarm + whisper infographic, oh I have missed you so. This criticism he levies at web3 here is the core reason I stopped believing in the

Aaah, the ethereum + swarm + whisper infographic, oh I have missed you so. This criticism he levies at web3 here is the core reason I stopped believing in the vision. I was a big fan of it when ethereum launched mainnet. Mist browser, a reference interface for a truly decentralized internet. The vision: decentralized message transport, file storage and consensus/finality/incentivization for applications that need it. What a beautiful idea. Instead we got metamask and http websites selling us erc20 tokens. I think I probably agree that a big part of it is transaction fees. I think though that the Ethereum project abandoning the idea of a reference client left people to develop with the tools they had. There's no money in building a new browser for a different kind of web. There is money in selling DAO tokens to supposedly fund a lock that can be locked and unlocked by sending a cryptographically signed transaction executed on every node on a network and paid for for no good reason to be kept on record forever by everyone on the network. Don't have the decentralized tools to build it? Eh, fuck it, just build a website with pretty animations and flat monochrome icons that fade in and out as you scroll. As long as they can send us ETH we are happy, we will decentralize the rest later when someone else does the heavy lifting. We needed mist to make this happen. The reason web3 failed is because the only part of it that ever actually worked was ethereum, and that's all that's needed to get people to give you their money. If we had bootstrapped with swarm and whisper them there would've been no excuse from dapp builders why all they have is a regular website, and scams wouldn't have become so prolific because we would have a baseline standard: the whole thing has to be decentralized or you're not getting a dime.

try_the_bass 3y ago
I feel the same. I used to be pretty into the concept and values of Ethereum, until I realized the values of those actually building the network weren't what I thought they were, and thus weren't aligned with mine. Funny you mention said lock, because the pivot and associated fallout there was what really revealed (to me) that the creators of Ethereum cared more about the "currency" aspect than the "crypto" aspect. From that point on, you could see this reflected in every decision made about the development and direction of Ethereum and the associated ecosystem. There were numerous core protocol decisions that ultimately came down to "better for future users of the network or better for current users of the network", and the latter won out every time, especially when economics were involved--and they're always involved with a cryptocurrency. Number go up, and whatnot.

try_the_bass 3y ago

I feel the same. I used to be pretty into the concept and values of Ethereum, until I realized the values of those actually building the network weren't what I thought they were, and thus weren't aligned with mine. Funny you mention said lock, because the pivot and associated fallout there was what really revealed (to me) that the creators of Ethereum cared more about the "currency" aspect than the "crypto" aspect. From that point on, you could see this reflected in every decision made about the development and direction of Ethereum and the associated ecosystem. There were numerous core protocol decisions that ultimately came down to "better for future users of the network or better for current users of the network", and the latter won out every time, especially when economics were involved--and they're always involved with a cryptocurrency. Number go up, and whatnot.