For those who don't understand Web3...
From the many conversations I've had with my friends and people outside of the crypto world, this space looks scary.
The term "Crypto" is too often associated with "scams" and "speculation," and it feels intimidating to jump into this space without any previous knowledge. People are having a hard time feeling like there are any good resources out there explaining the technology/term.
Actually, there are plenty, but I understand it might be complicated to differentiate the good from the bad ones without knowing what you're searching for.
First, let's talk about Web3.
The terms "Web3" or "Decentralized Web" are slowly taking over "Crypto." Web3 is a broader term that comes without the 2017 baggage of the word "Crypto," and that is more reminiscent of the evolution of the internet as we know it today, solving the most pressing problems of Web2 platforms through Crypto mechanisms.
I found these essays "Wtf is Web3" and "Why Web3" very insightful. It's also interesting to read essays that raised concerns about this technology, such as "My first impressions of web3" or "Web3".
Web3 is a broad term that englobes Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Social Tokens, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), Non-Fungible tokens (NFTs), all being a specific niche in the broader Web3 ecosystem.
I'm the most bullish about DAOs and Social Tokens, as it has the power to change the way we're working in our daily lives. In a way the average person can understand, I've written many essays explaining Blockchain Basics, why Social Tokens might be the next revolution in Web3, and How thousands of employees are escaping 9-5 to go work for DAOs. You can also check this tweet, gathering the best resources to jump into Web3.
Finally, there are entire communities with the goal of helping anyone understand the Web3 space better. I couldn't recommend you more to check OdysseyDAO, a community creating high-quality, 100% free web3 education in an ELI5 way.
After spending 8 months in this space, I fully realized the potential of this technology, but I must admit it took long months before understanding it. I hope this article will save you some months of learning and gives you a better understanding of the hype around Web3.
After reading some of the essays highlighted in this article, you might have even more questions. If it's the case, feel free to ask them in the comments or DM me on Twitter, I will be happy to help.
WAGMI 🚀
Here's a good explanation of Web3: https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/web3-fraud
Probably the best link in this page.
I am all for the word of "decentralization" on web3 hype if it means moving out from big tech: social media, cloud services, search, duopoly in mobile etc.. to something better. But it is not that, it is a scheme to rebrand crypto and somehow magically explaining that blockchain would actually be a better technology than a database for storing data. If you say that loud someone tells you "but you just don't understand it".
Exactly. And what most people don't realize, is that the block chain/crypto/NFT/web3 space is already more centralized than the rest of the internet.
But you just don't understand it. Stop with the FUD already! Crypto is the future! You don't wanna get rich! Then stay poor!
I feel like by focusing solely on decentralization, you're missing the point. First, I agree that we're far from a perfect solution, and we could even say the UX in crypto is even worse than in Web2. But all of the brightest people in this planet are leaving their job to tackle these problems because the possibilities are almost infinite. At least, crypto has the merit to drive technical and social innovation and develop a playing ground for a better understanding of economic and governance mechanisms.
Second, this is simply a fun and welcoming economy, and millions of people found their tribe by buying NFTs or joining DAOs. It has nothing with decentralization, but the Culture and values some communities have developed in less than a year are truly remarkable. Crypto is all about Culture in the end.
Lastly, and that's why I'm so bullish about this space, Social Tokens allow to create economy at scale and create trust within people worldwide, share fairly the upside, and facilitate collaboration. Again, maybe it's not decentralized, but no tools can do it on Web2.
Even after almost a year in the space, I don't fully understand this technology's technical aspects, similar to I don't fully understand how the Internet works. But I don't care because it allows me to have experiences that were impossible in the past, and I've met incredible people along my journey.
I don't want to convince you here, and you're right, from tools built today, few are decentralized, but I'm simply not sure it's what matters.
I'm sorry, but none of what you said here makes sense form a technical or economical point of view.
This is an arbitrary definition. Who are "the brightest people in the world?". All Nobel prize winners? All scientists from the top 10 research universities in the world? I'm pretty sure 0 of them has left their job to start working in crypto.
No. It hasn't done any of these things in the past 13 years. And if you claim that it will change something, then we're at a point in time where you need to list concrete things and evidence. We're past the grace period of hand waving.
No, they don't. Block chains cannot work at scale, not even with proof of stake or some other consensus mechanism. It's inherent to their definition. The whole space is already more centralized than the rest of the web. A block chain only creates trust on the block chain, but as soon as you interact with the real world, you need to trust that people enter the correct data into the block chain. Now, we're back at the current system, where you need government and other institutions that create trust. And, this is a good sytem. Nobody in their right mind wants to live in a world where code is law.
Maybe you should put some time into understanding it, especially if you go on to tell other people that this is the best thing since sliced bread.
Sounds like a ponzi-scheme slash cult to me. Let's be clear: This is a zero-sum game: Every dollar that someone makes comes from a dollar that someone lost. It's a ponzi-scheme and a casino which destroys the environment as a side effect. Cool that you're having fun, but a lot of gullible people have been tricked into this gamble, and lost a lot of money. And many more will lose their life savings, as soon as this house of card comes inevitably trembling down.
The brightest people were previously working on ads. They will go wherever the hot VC money are.
That’s not an explanation at all. It’s just a poorly-reasoned rant from a hater.
Your comment is toxic and derails the thread.
Instead of throwing a general "poorly-reasoned" in there, can you discuss specific arguments from the article and why you think they are wrong?
It's so much easier to dump a link from a hater than to debunk one, but here goes:
The author makes ridiculously sweeping statements, like "Web3 is only about adding an additional layer of complexity in the name of justifying the underlying cryptocurrencies." Has the author not even heard of concerns around censorship resistance, or the idea of a public but encrypted accounts?
For one example, consider Bitclout, the "web3 Twitter". Anybody can write a different client for the same chain that surfaces clouts differently, hides some or has a different UI. It's "open database". Users with accounts on one can move to the other and keep their activity history and connections intact. In fact, here's an example of an alternate client: https://diamondapp.com
Can you do that with Twitter? No. They used to let anyone make an alternative client and then they killed it so they could lean into their ad model. "Don't be evil" isn't as good as "Can't be evil".
A bit further down, the author wrote, " Lets focus primarily on Ethereum, but the same problems appear regardless of the underlying cryptocurrency." and then went on for paragraphs complaining about high gas costs, which isn't a problem on other chains. The author picked the most expensive L1 that supports those kinds of apps, chose not to use an L2 and then presented the result as UNIVERSAL!
I honestly don't know if the author is a highly ideological troll or just ignorant about the space and cobbling together an attack based on other low quality posts written by others. Either way, it's a horrible link to drop in and derail the whole thread with.
I just wish that people writing these inflammatory black-and-white posts would at least build a few projects with the technology and explore the space first.
Isn't this what the federated web has been doing for years, without any money / tokens / ripe holes for scams? What does this really solve that something like federated web alternatives (eg. Mastodon) can't do right now?
As it stands - in current Web 2.0 or whatever the heck we are on - my Nextcloud server (dropbox/gdrive alternative) shares data with my Mastodon instance (twitter alternative), who talks with my friend's Pixelfed (instagram alternative) server, who then shares data to his friend's Pleroma server (different twitter alternative). I can send messages from either / or / all of those services today with no problem.
No tokens / money / wallet / incredibly complicated UX to deal with. Actual useful decentralization.
Also, let's not forget that full transparency means FULL transparency:
PSA: The metadata for your private messages on BitClout is public. That means the sender, recipient, time and size of your messages can be seen by anyone.
https://member.cash/a/98177895a5
That's a lovely thing to know; I'm sure people are going to be super excited to have all of their private message metadata available to view on a public ledger for everyone to scrutinize. Elon Musk is going to be super pumped when everyone realizes he has been messaging Bill Gates on BitClout.
I do agree that federated services have many, though not the full set of what web3 offers.
I don't think web3 UX is "incredibly complicated", though. To be honest, I miss its auth UX when dealing with sites asking for email/password, phone number or Google/FB/etc to log in.
The money part is a big deal, too! One thing blockchains have done elegantly is solve the cold start problem for two-sided marketplaces and networks. The emergence of user-owned and decentralized LooksRare as a replacement for VC-funded OpenSea is very interesting and could not have been done without tokens.
This is heavily chain-dependent. Bitclout is based on Bitcoin (a questionable decision on their part, IMO). That means it's public. I suspect Elon Musk has gotten onto the platform and poked around, but done so pseudonymously and nobody knows which pkey is his. This is very common on similar platforms.
With other chains, such as Monero, it's much harder to track any individual account's history. With Zcash, it's possible to maintain high levels of privacy publicly and issue proof either privately (e.g. to a tax authority) or publicly (e.g. to a prediction tracker) that one's own account was associated with a given transaction.
Thanks for your reply. Don't take this personally, but your response shows that you either lack a basic understanding of computer science, networks and economics, or that you ignore this on purpose.
Let me address your points:
There are (and have been for long time) a lot services that use open protcols. For example, SMTP (email), Matrix, IMPP or ActivityPub (e.g., Mastodon, a Twitter alternative). Services running on these protocols have the same properties that you described, namely decentralization and censorship resistance.
Furthermore, everything being public and permanent is not a good thing. If we don't want to live in a nightmarish techno-anartistic distopia, there are dozens of legitimate reasons why somebody would want to delete something.
The blockchain is not some magic thing. It's a specific type of database that provides a very bad solution to establishing trust without a central authority among a group of actors. Everything you can do with a blockchain database, you can do better with different type of database (like PostgreSQL or Mongo DB). The ONLY reason is why the blockchain is being hyped right now - and this is important - is because people are using it to scam other people into buying into this ponzi scheme. What is more, the current reality of blockchain services shows that it's already more centralized than the rest of the internet, with gate keepers and central authorities left and right.
Regarding gas fees: The author literally states:
And even with those smaller chains, the gas fees will start going up as soon as they start being used more. This is inherent to the consensus mechanisms, and this wil never change if you want to have "distributed trust".
The author is not a troll. His name is Nicholas Weaver and he is a lecturer at UC Berkeley. He has incredibly impressive credentials and probably knows more about computer science than all of us on Indie Hackers put together.
The only "ideological" people are crypto promoters like you, who have been tricked into this tech equivalent of buying time shares by VCs and other scammers, who long have cashed out and won't give two fucks once this whole thing burns the lives of all the gullible people to the ground that today think they are part of a new revolution.
If your best response is to launch personal attacks at me, it's not worth engaging. It also breaks IH site rules.
All I'll say is that credentials aren't a magical talisman that prevent one from being a troll and that Nicholas Weaver has colleagues at UC Berkeley who disagree with him. There are also even more credentialed and successful academics from more prestigious institutions such as Stanford who disagree with him, too.
If you hate crypto, that's fine. There are plenty of other groups on IH where you can pursue other types of businesses. But jumping into posts here and bringing this level of ideological fervor to a thread is counter-productive and hostile.
The first rule of Web3 is there are multiple versions:
Web3.1 = Semantic Web
Web3.2 = Decentralised Web
Web3.3 = Crypto web
Imo:
3.3 suffers from hype pushed by VCs who are upset big tech won Web2.
3.2 is where the technically interesting challenges are and where the freedom fighters hang out.
3.1 is the academic perspective that never really got off the ground.
Wow, I went down on a rabbit hole in the past few hours but it was worth it.
Thank you for posting this
Nice write up. The first 4 articles you've linked are pure gems, possibly the best reads on the subject out there. If anyone here is a dev and looking to get into web3, I've put together a little collection of resources: https://www.howtoweb3.guide/
Then is it fair to say web3 is just a marketing term, and "rebrand" of crypto? That's not meant to be a dig at crypto either.
I've read a lot of negative comments re:web3 on HN the other day. People are pissed, that web3 is just a marketing gimmick that was caught by non-industry media.
I'm yet to see a revolutionary benefit of the so-called web3. Web2 changed the way we interact with the whole internet and other people. Web3 is more of a technical and marketing thing really.
Yeah I was also very surprised by the comments on hacker news. I'm also not too keen on the term Web3 - that seems to have been appropriated because it already referred to something nebulous. Look up web3 and (biased search results aside) you'll get 10 different answers for web3, from AI to semantic web to crypto and everything in-between.
I think there is potential for decentralised technologies to be web3 though - applications that have in built identity management, governance protocols, decentralised protocols & access. Web applications that aren't build for the country they're intended to be used in, but applications built by the world, for the world.
However while I'm very excited about the prospects, I think at this moment it's all potential. Only time will tell if it's realised!
Semantic web was Web 3.0, not web3.
HN is particularly deranged when it comes to blockchain these days. A16Z media is a much more useful resource.
HN crowd can be difficult overall, but they are highly influential over the (especially) tech trends.
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I will be learning this web 3 during a particular weekend. Learn and build on that weekend
If there will be Web3, then we're decades away from it.
At the moment there's no blockchain that's decentralized. All of them are centralized in terms of coin/token distribution or mining.
There are more than enough questions that need to be answered before starting to dream about Web3.
Great article! More and more people are talking about Web3, but it cannot be denied that the barrier to entry for Web3 is high due to obscure concepts, difficult-to-read on-chain data, and constantly emerging new topics.
Over the past decade, blockchain has emerged as a groundbreaking innovation in bookkeeping. However, there is a lack of standardization and semantics, and we still attempt to convey information using traditional methods, such as charts and tables.
That's why we founded Mest. We believe that the blockchain requires simple, modern ways to present information, making every anonymous address readable and shareable.
If you're interested in Web3 and on-chain data, Mest is a great starting point. We envision a conversation in which you can discover, explore, and become aware of your wallet using the most familiar language - making the experience truly seamless.
Here you go: https://mest.io/
I think you should be skeptical about web3 but if it does go mainstream you'll be very glad you got in early.
wagmi
Until you can participate in Web3 without having to buy crypto, count me out. I feel crypto3 is just another scheme to prop up crypto assets and pull more people's money into buying some random tokens, disguised under different pretexts.
Same with DAOs: buy some token to be in some organization. Buy more tokens to have more power. The plain idea goes against the core beliefs crypto bros pretend to have.
A more accurate assessment of Web3, from the creator of Signal, the secure messaging app: https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
TLDR: It's good in some areas, bad in many others. It's actually the same story of starting off decentralized but then moving into centralization, because, surprise, people actually don't give a shit about the technology and only care about convenience.
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