15
54 Comments

Is web3 going to replace web2?

What will happen to Twitter and others?? Will they change their business model?

Wow, this is crazy.

  1. 16

    I don't see why they would. The vast majority of websites wouldn't see any benefit from web3, unless there's some major examples I don't know of (feel free to educate).

    1. 3

      The websites getting the "vast majority of traffic" these days are Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/YouTube/etc. You could spend years creating something there and get shut down for whatever reason. All the hard work. Gone. That's a major selling point for web 3.0, where you keep a "permanent" profile on the ledger and all of the providers merely provide a user-facing UI of your data.

      1. 2

        Same goes for web3.

        Information kept in the ledger doesn't mean it'll be on the front-end. Facebook ban you keeping everything in their database while no longer exposing to world. Any web3 front-end can blacklist you and avoid displaying your interactions on the front-end.

        One way to avoid this censorship is to interact with the blockchain with own tools preferably from local machines. Even in this scenario; there will be collective ban-lists like ad-block to avoid facing disturbing content.

        If that wasn't the case, web3 will be a nightmare. We will see photos that we never suppose to see, read stories that we never suppose to read. In addition no government would let you have such content in the internet.

      2. 1

        What service(s) do you use which were web2, but are now web3?

    2. 0

      This is specifically for social tools - Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Medium etc, they make money off users' content and the users don't get any share of the profits. While Web3 is trying to democratize that. I would not mind getting $10 a month on Facebook, it can pay for some subscriptions.

  2. 8

    Moxie Marlinspike (the Signal founder) makes a very thoughtful argument that web3 will only incentivize the creation of more web2 platforms around web3 concepts. Furthermore, he claims that due to the inherent features of web3 these platforms will be worse than traditional web2 platforms.

    No matter if you like or dislike web3, the blog post is a very interesting and thought-provoking read.

    1. 4

      No matter how many times I hear the name I always smile at how cool the name Moxie Marlinspike sounds.

    2. 2

      Thank nikwen...very useful

    3. 2

      Thanks for sending the link our way Nikwen. Going to read it this weekend!

  3. 5

    Nothing will happen to Twitter. Web3 is slow like hell. You can't build Twitter on Web3. And it even doesn't make any sense. Web3 is just the addition to Web2.

    1. 3

      Not true. Web3 does not have to be slow and you can build Twitter on Web3.

      The DeSo (Decentralized Social) blockchain is a Layer 1 blockchain built specifically for building social media apps on top of it.

      The beauty of using a decentralized blockchain for social media is that the content is part of the blockchain and so the apps are just the view into that content.

      While there are different clients for Twitter, Twitter ultimately has the end control of the API. And, as far as I know, Facebook doesn't allow anyone to build alternative UIs for their data.

      In contrast, the first DeSo account I created was on Bitclout (https://bitclout.com/). Later I discovered Diamond (https://diamondapp.com/), which has a much better UI. Because everything is on the blockchain, all I had to do is log into Diamond and all my content was there.

      The ability to provide alternative UIs and/or algorithms for social media content I think will be a compelling use case for people to move to Web3.

      You can read more about how DeSo specifically works at https://academy.moralis.io/blog/what-is-the-decentralized-social-deso-network-and-the-deso-token

      1. 2

        I'm wondering how fast it is. Like if you post something and get push notifications and stuff like that.

        1. 3

          Just posted this via Diamond and it was near instantaneous:
          https://diamondapp.com/posts/d2fca3ceb2f75e329c6939a642757352e24461b50e73114629e3f57237f4e243

          And the same post immediately appeared on BitClout as well:
          https://bitclout.com/posts/d2fca3ceb2f75e329c6939a642757352e24461b50e73114629e3f57237f4e243

          Can't speak to push notifications, because I have those turned off on almost all apps by default. But I don't see why they wouldn't be immediate as well.

    2. 2

      What if you just use one aspect of Web3, such as points/coins to users for their activity?

      1. 1

        That may work. But for legal businesses, as I do I still have to have a bank account because it's just required by the government. So anything that I earn has to be transferred to EUR that's in my account and that's taxable then. So for me, it would be just one another unnecessary level I have to develop.

    3. 1

      In essence, it is. Nothing will happen to Twitter.

    4. 1

      This is definitely not true as there already is a web3 twitter. It was foolishly built on a bitcoin fork instead of something fast like Solana or Avalanche and it still got over a million users.

      1. 1

        Avalanche and Solana are not decentralized.

        1. 1

          That’s an odd claim.

      2. 1

        All of the "Web3" apps are hosted on AWS. Having that in mind they still fail to produce needed efficiency. How a decentralized blockchain like Solana can be stopped by devs? It can since it's BS, not a decentralized blockchain

      3. 1

        I doubt it is fully web3 powered. I'm not talking about the code itself but the DB part.

        1. 1

          Have you run a node (custom or not) or worked with it in any significant capacity?

  4. 5

    I met with with hundreds of startups with Web3 related ideas but didn't really see any business ideas that don't function or don't make sense without what we call Web 3.

    1. 2

      What if you gave actual tokens instead of random points within any app?

      1. 1

        My view is - the key difference, that people value, between the "random points" and tokens is that tokens are easier to be exchanged with real currency. Not because it is unhackable.

        Let's say Blizzard starts exchange in game points with USD but it's under their control. I don't think nobody would care whether it's on blockchain network.

  5. 2

    ⚡️ Hi! ⚡️

    🌏 The Internet we have today is damaged because, first of all, we do not control our data. It's been around 30 years since the mass adoption of the www. We still depend on the idea of stand-alone computers, where information is centrally stored and managed (centralized) on a server and dispatched or retrieved by a client.

    I've written an article on this one here: https://thecryptojournal.substack.com/p/2022-the-year-of-web-30-tokens-trends

    I think the answer is definitely ⚡️ YES!!!! ⚡️

  6. 2

    According to Naval, it's not a matter of "if", but "when". Most web 2.0 platforms that don't adapt will just die out (like with most disruptions).

    It's a really interesting field that's still very early IMO.

    1. 2

      Yes, I am in the same boat with this topic. Big changes in the near future.

  7. 1

    I don't think replace is the correct word. Just is a new era. New problems.

  8. 1

    Web3 is ponzi for now.

  9. 1

    Web3 tech isn't friendly to general audiences.
    It's really neat for financial engineering and I can see it taking over a large chunk of fintech after a while, but it's not replacing anything imo

  10. 1

    Web3 enables Web2 products to provide more value and reward for traditional supply sides of marketplaces for creators of all kinds. Looking forward to seeing what rumbles into viability. 👍

  11. 1

    If you consider web3 as decentralization then of course everything will eventually get decentralized.

    But this will take time. We need to reimagine a few things about the internet.

    First of all, decentralization doesn't mean blockchains. There are multiple ways to do it.

    We already use some of those. Torrent P2P messaging are some examples.

    However, the vast majority of the internet we use is centralized. A single entity has whole control over the platforms we use.

    I think this has to change.

    Like Linux, the users need to have control over the platforms on the internet too.

    Most importantly messages and emails.

    The email service provider and the messaging apps we use are controlled by some top companies. They have all of our data including our private messages.

    But imagine if we send out private encrypted messages them even then it'll be much more secure than what we use today.

  12. 1

    Possibly not. Most of the concepts (possibly all but blockchain) that are now hyped under web3 have existed before. Apparently many others came to the same conclusion that web 2.0 services are going to be built around web3 services, so we don't really gain anything from it.
    I come to this conclusion from personal experience, with chat apps. In the early 2000's we had an overflow in chat applications which segregated many communities. Some greybeards came up with the genius idea of making shared protocols, one if which was XMPP. This was adapted by many of these chat platforms even facebook used it. It allowed cross-platform communication just like email. With the rise of all these social platforms facebook and most others abandoned these open protocols in favor of locking their users to their respective platforms. One could say they did it to fight spam, but that hardly fits the case.
    There's almost no mechanism which would prevent a company based around web3 to just ditch the core and replace it with something more convenient or lucrative.

  13. 1

    web3 is a solution in search of a problem

  14. 1

    Every content-driven business model of web 2 can be upgraded to web 3 just by giving users the property of their content. You can monetize your content as you wish, e.g. you could monetize (sell) your most recent "Youtube" video (NFT) from day one just because of its potential...

  15. 1

    Just to add fuel to the fire :P

    https://web3isgoinggreat.com

    I fear web3 is just like IoT and automatic driving: it's a future that's always X years away.

  16. 1

    I think the bubble who understand Web3 is way to small. It will take decades to get even on the same lvl as Web2.

  17. 1

    It's never going to happen.
    The main issues are that Web3 is slow and expensive. The entry point for an average user is ridiculously insane.

    1. 1

      Will it remain the same in near future?

      1. 1

        There has been little improvement in decentralization and speed of blockchains made in the past 5 years since the first big bull run in 2017. Then a lot of smart people joined blockchain projects just to make and flip tokens in the market.

        I don't believe that a blockchain that is decentralized and both can handle mass adoption tx count will come in the foreseeable future.

  18. 1

    "Web3" is not a real future of decentralized Internet. It is more about a Ponzi scheme and energy-wasting now than decentralized computing.
    The real future of decentralized Internet will be when I can make a host and spread my dApps worldwide for $5/mo, like in Web 2. Not like current "I pay $10 for a single transaction"

    1. 1

      You are painting a caricature here. You can also have instant, 0 fee transactions, that don't consume a lot of energy because of Proof of Stake.

      1. 1

        POS is an oligarchic model. You need to have 32Eth ($96K) to run a validator. This is the price of apartments in my country. Yeah, it saves energy, that's good.
        And any transaction always will cost an expensive gas.
        Ethereum (and all other main-trend blockchains) models are not scalable and expensive - due to single state for whole nework

        1. 2

          But why are you concentrated on Ethereum? There are plenty of other cryptocurrencies out there that are way better.

          First up there is Nano (https://nano.org/), which has literally 0 fees and instant transactions, thanks to it's block-lattice technology: https://blog.nano.org/nano-how-2-blocks-and-lattices-dd209208834d . The current version is also spam-proof (because with 0 fees you can have that problem).

          About electricity consumption of Nano, it can do 7000tps on the power of a single windmill (calculation here https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/7ucw1a/the_entire_nano_network_is_so_efficient_that/).

          And if you talk about scaling and smart contracts, there are also some nice technologies out now. Like Radix for example, which has real parallell calculations: https://www.radixdlt.com/post/how-radix-engine-is-designed-to-scale-dapps. So scalability is not a bottleneck anymore.

          I get it that Bitcoin and Ethereum are very popular, but that doesn't mean there aren't alternatives that can actually solve a lot of previous problems.

    2. 1

      Interesting. Is the transaction cost going to come down?

  19. 0

    Picture the average 40 year old, then think how this person will setup a wallet.

    1. 3

      Install metamask and then click “create”?

      1. 2

        People use passwords like password1 and you want them to keep a private key around?

        Web3 is just tech people being excited about the technology. Don't expect anything soon.

        1. 1

          You may be right. Who knows?

    2. 2

      I am an average 38-year-old, I guess I'll be fine. lol

      1. 1

        You're on indie hackers though, we're the minority. People have hard time with instagram for example. You can't expect much.

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