Web 3 Doesn't Exist(cobie.substack.com)
cobie.substack.com
Web 3 Doesn't Exist
https://cobie.substack.com/p/wtf-is-web3
14 comments
Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29785021
Isn't a rule on this site not to editorialize the title?
A way better web3 take was posted earlier today. This is just hyperbole, some sort of self-hating tech worker thing, and bad thinking. Honestly it’s fantastic to compare the two and see just how useless this blog post is. The better take https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208
The difference is Cobie is a 9 year veteran in the space versus Moxie by his own admission being new to the space.
It's not hyperbole, it's pretty grounded, with the conclusion "Web3 doesn’t really exist yet." Which is absolutely true.
"I think open, transparent and permissionless systems replacing trusted central authorities is good for the world and can rebalance and decentralize power.
I’m hopeful that the financial exuberance in crypto markets can attract brilliant minds away from selling people ads to instead build a more equitable and cooperative future.
But I ain’t gonna be surprised if crypto founders are too rich to care anymore and the new web gets built by late-stage capitalism greedcorps that make you buy a fractionalised micropayment NFT on Cardano to operate your electric toothbrush."
It's not hyperbole, it's pretty grounded, with the conclusion "Web3 doesn’t really exist yet." Which is absolutely true.
"I think open, transparent and permissionless systems replacing trusted central authorities is good for the world and can rebalance and decentralize power.
I’m hopeful that the financial exuberance in crypto markets can attract brilliant minds away from selling people ads to instead build a more equitable and cooperative future.
But I ain’t gonna be surprised if crypto founders are too rich to care anymore and the new web gets built by late-stage capitalism greedcorps that make you buy a fractionalised micropayment NFT on Cardano to operate your electric toothbrush."
> "I think open, transparent and permissionless systems replacing trusted central authorities is good for the world and can rebalance and decentralize power.
Does this not just shift the power to people who can manipulate the zeitgeist? I imagine a Tucker Carlson demagogue but with the ability to materially affect machinery with economic and social consequences. Imagine things like publicly shaming and doxing everyone who owns the wrong kind of NFT, or is a stakeholder in the wrong kind of enterprise.
> I’m hopeful that the financial exuberance in crypto markets can attract brilliant minds away from selling people ads to instead build a more equitable and cooperative future.
1) The people I know who are genuinely fighting for equity are not attracted by the promise of riches. The financial exuberance actively attracts the wrong crowd.
2)I'm also interested in addressing inequity, but if one were to seriously try to build systems with equity and cooperation as goals, why would blockchain technology be a good choice knowing what we know in 2022?
Does this not just shift the power to people who can manipulate the zeitgeist? I imagine a Tucker Carlson demagogue but with the ability to materially affect machinery with economic and social consequences. Imagine things like publicly shaming and doxing everyone who owns the wrong kind of NFT, or is a stakeholder in the wrong kind of enterprise.
> I’m hopeful that the financial exuberance in crypto markets can attract brilliant minds away from selling people ads to instead build a more equitable and cooperative future.
1) The people I know who are genuinely fighting for equity are not attracted by the promise of riches. The financial exuberance actively attracts the wrong crowd.
2)I'm also interested in addressing inequity, but if one were to seriously try to build systems with equity and cooperation as goals, why would blockchain technology be a good choice knowing what we know in 2022?
> Imagine things like publicly shaming and doxing everyone who owns the wrong kind of NFT, or is a stakeholder in the wrong kind of enterprise.
Where would they do this public shaming at? On Twitter or Facebook? Presumably Web3 social networks will be much more fragmented than the megalithic social networks of today.
It's also non-trivial to de-anonymize an Ethereum wallet that hasn't made an effort to be public (by registering an ENS and listing it in public, for example). I personally have dozens of wallets. They're not traceable to each other in any way and I fund them independently from each other.
1) I think what he means is that some of our brightest minds are currently making $250K or more working for FAANG companies or similar. It's all well and good for people not to have money be someone's primary driver, but if you're making $250K a year at big tech co. it's gonna be hard to leave for a risky Web3 endeavor if the upside doesn't make up for the stability of the current role.
2) I think ENS is a great example. Here is a domain registration entity that considers itself a public good: https://ens.domains/. A few weeks ago, they airdropped governance tokens to anyone who had registered a .eth domain in the past several years that they have existed. When you claim your tokens, you delegate your votes to a representative who represents you on the ENS board.
Those delegates make various proposals and vote on changes to the protocol: https://docs.ens.domains/v/governance/governance-proposals/e...
If a delegate starts acting a way you don't like, you can switch your votes to a different delegate in the next round.
The token itself has monetary value (the marketcap for ENS has ranged near $1B) but it also has intangible value. Hundreds of thousands of users were airdropped equity in a protocol that will have a significant part to play in the transition to Web3. They can participate in governance forum discussions and influence outcomes, such as which workgroups to prioritize or how to spend the treasury, or just passively hold the token and enjoy a return on its growth as a protocol.
ENS was not funded by VCs. They created a product and then transitioned ownership of that product to the community. That's pretty remarkable.
I think DAO governance and token-based incentivizes are still in early days. But I'm already quite impressed by what I see. There's a vast array of experimentation, but this sort of structure can be created for anything, from charity to SaaS to gaming to creative collectives.
Where would they do this public shaming at? On Twitter or Facebook? Presumably Web3 social networks will be much more fragmented than the megalithic social networks of today.
It's also non-trivial to de-anonymize an Ethereum wallet that hasn't made an effort to be public (by registering an ENS and listing it in public, for example). I personally have dozens of wallets. They're not traceable to each other in any way and I fund them independently from each other.
1) I think what he means is that some of our brightest minds are currently making $250K or more working for FAANG companies or similar. It's all well and good for people not to have money be someone's primary driver, but if you're making $250K a year at big tech co. it's gonna be hard to leave for a risky Web3 endeavor if the upside doesn't make up for the stability of the current role.
2) I think ENS is a great example. Here is a domain registration entity that considers itself a public good: https://ens.domains/. A few weeks ago, they airdropped governance tokens to anyone who had registered a .eth domain in the past several years that they have existed. When you claim your tokens, you delegate your votes to a representative who represents you on the ENS board.
Those delegates make various proposals and vote on changes to the protocol: https://docs.ens.domains/v/governance/governance-proposals/e...
If a delegate starts acting a way you don't like, you can switch your votes to a different delegate in the next round.
The token itself has monetary value (the marketcap for ENS has ranged near $1B) but it also has intangible value. Hundreds of thousands of users were airdropped equity in a protocol that will have a significant part to play in the transition to Web3. They can participate in governance forum discussions and influence outcomes, such as which workgroups to prioritize or how to spend the treasury, or just passively hold the token and enjoy a return on its growth as a protocol.
ENS was not funded by VCs. They created a product and then transitioned ownership of that product to the community. That's pretty remarkable.
I think DAO governance and token-based incentivizes are still in early days. But I'm already quite impressed by what I see. There's a vast array of experimentation, but this sort of structure can be created for anything, from charity to SaaS to gaming to creative collectives.
I might be misunderstanding again, but with DAOs it seems like you go from "one (wo)man one vote" to "one token one vote", which exacerbates the worst of money-in-politics - any entity with sufficient influence can literally be bought out.
> Imagine things like publicly shaming and doxing everyone who owns the wrong kind of NFT
You've never seen a viral video of a poor child in a school being harassed for wearing a pair of shoes that weren't adequately cool?
You've never seen a viral video of a poor child in a school being harassed for wearing a pair of shoes that weren't adequately cool?
you're arguing with a straw man because the equivalent would be to automatically harass everyone which ever bought this kind of shoes or maybe even had the audacity to buy second hand
This is something that doesn't really translate well between the online world and real life, because the mob mentality is the default on the web. That's not the case for real life thankfully - at least not where I live.
This is something that doesn't really translate well between the online world and real life, because the mob mentality is the default on the web. That's not the case for real life thankfully - at least not where I live.
> Does this not just shift the power to people who can manipulate the zeitgeist?
If you mean those who can read and write well, then yes.
If you mean those who can read and write well, then yes.
> crypto founders are too rich to care anymore
I'm sure some are, but the money that's pouring into web3 development isn't all coming from traditional VC firms. 1 Bitcoin goes a lot further these days, and getting USD for it has never been easier.
I'm sure some are, but the money that's pouring into web3 development isn't all coming from traditional VC firms. 1 Bitcoin goes a lot further these days, and getting USD for it has never been easier.
This was posted written by someone who is known in the space for being a Bitcoin maximalist. This take is hardly surprising
Cobie is not known to be a Bitcoin maximalism. If anything, most of his support is behind Ethereum.
He just has a healthy dose of skepticism about much of what is happening in the Web3/not-Web3 space.
He just has a healthy dose of skepticism about much of what is happening in the Web3/not-Web3 space.
You are a true crypto punk — gm
> This take is hardly surprising
*to crypto enthusiasts.
*to crypto enthusiasts.
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> Bitcoin moved from “darkweb drug money” to an institution-grade store of value asset in the space of a decade without a central authority to guide it.
"Institution-grade store of value?" Maybe if you mean an asylum.
"Institution-grade store of value?" Maybe if you mean an asylum.
This is a reference to the Fortune 500 companies like Square, Tesla, and Blackrock that hold thousands of bitcoin on their balance sheet.
You can see the current tallies at https://bitcointreasuries.net/
You can see the current tallies at https://bitcointreasuries.net/
Oh, sure, but just because it's on your balance sheet doesn't mean it's a "store of value". Quite often it may be speculative. Bitcoin is much better at being speculative than storing value, after all.
Great link, thanks.
At the time I looked, MicroStrategy’s market cap is lower than the amount of bitcoin it holds. That has to be awkward if you’re an employee there.
At the time I looked, MicroStrategy’s market cap is lower than the amount of bitcoin it holds. That has to be awkward if you’re an employee there.
Remember the "institution-grade" investment instruments called CDOs[0]? Pepperidge Farm remembers[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
I'm not sure "institution-grade store of value" is a term that has any specific meaning, but I don't think it's patently incorrect when global investment banks have billions in the space. And this is coming from someone who thinks crypto is a joke.
The phrase "institution-grade" have the strongest meaning in commercial real estate, where they tend to be brand new buildings without any real risk of falling apart during your holding period. They are lower-risk assets. On the other hand, if you're talking about something bonds, you're more likely to hear about "investment-grade" bonds to describe the lower-risk investments. In other words, the exact opposite of Bitcoin, easily one the most volatile assets on the market. (If you want any more volatility, you need to start trading derivatives.)
A few billion in speculative investments doesn't make this "institutional" in a hundreds-of-trillion-dollar market, either.
A few billion in speculative investments doesn't make this "institutional" in a hundreds-of-trillion-dollar market, either.
What especially doesn't exist is Web "3.0". What's next, 3.1 LTS? 3.2.4 beta2? I wish people would stop abusing semantic versioning and tacking on a ".0" just because it looks funky cool to businessy types.
There is no central web repo following semantic versioning. It's not a coding term. It's a useful abstraction for distinguishing the web as it exists today vs. the web we're trying to build.
It's not even a web that's being built.
Even Ethereum relies on TCP and UDP ports which are Web 1 as far as I care.
Invent some new "XYP" or whatever that isn't TCP or UDP and you can call it Web 2, maybe.
Even Ethereum relies on TCP and UDP ports which are Web 1 as far as I care.
Invent some new "XYP" or whatever that isn't TCP or UDP and you can call it Web 2, maybe.
You don't have to overthink it. Web 2.0 wasn't a real thing either. It was generally marked by the expansion of real-time interactive applications on the web that didn't need to refresh for state updates.
It's just an abstraction, not a technical term. Think of it as the third generation of web applications.
It's just an abstraction, not a technical term. Think of it as the third generation of web applications.
So people should stop putting ".0" at the end of it, at least.
If ".1" doesn't make sense, ".0" doesn't either.
It's like if I said Rush Hour 2.0. It makes no sense.
If ".1" doesn't make sense, ".0" doesn't either.
It's like if I said Rush Hour 2.0. It makes no sense.
I'm old enough to remember Web 2.0 just meant AJAX/XMLHTTPRequest.
I had XMLHTTPRequest functionality before they even released it by exploiting a MSIE bug.
I didn't tell them about it, since I could also read files on users' hard drives, and I didn't want them to remove the feature (bug), but it did enable the future of the web on my tiny little websites before people even started talking about XMLHTTPRequest.
I didn't tell them about it, since I could also read files on users' hard drives, and I didn't want them to remove the feature (bug), but it did enable the future of the web on my tiny little websites before people even started talking about XMLHTTPRequest.
That was really slick when it first arrived!
I'm really getting sick of all these vacuous articles about web3. The anti-web3 virtue signalling just as tiresome as the pro-web3 puffery. Even a repost of a 20 year old PG essay or peter norvig's spell checker would be better than this. Something with some technical meat to it, not just a pile of bones.
Title should be 'WTF Is Web 3' (actual article title) or 'Web 3 Doesn't Exist, Yet' (mentioned toward the end).
I remember when bitcoin first became super mainstream popular in 2016ish. I had read the shatoshi white paper in 2011 so I already understood exactly what bitcoin was and the implications of it. And I will never forget in 2016 seeing the sky go black with a plague of misinformation. It’s really striking because after the plague had descended, I saw that it would have been very very difficult for a younger person to find a straightforward answer to what exactly bitcoin was. And the average joe? Literally every person seemed to have their own explanation of what bitcoin was, all equally wrong. With web3 there doesn’t even seem to be a white paper.
I just don’t understand why is it called “web3” when it’s emphatically not a part of world wide web.
Web 2.0 was. Web 2.0 is an extension of the web.
Original Web 3.0 was some kind of semantic web vaporware with XML or something, but it was still strongly part of world wide web.
“web 3” is just not part of world wide web.
But whatever, I just substitute “web3” for “blockchain and cryptocurrency” and that’s it
Web 2.0 was. Web 2.0 is an extension of the web.
Original Web 3.0 was some kind of semantic web vaporware with XML or something, but it was still strongly part of world wide web.
“web 3” is just not part of world wide web.
But whatever, I just substitute “web3” for “blockchain and cryptocurrency” and that’s it
Substitute it for "reinventing the internet to have APIs and usable UI/UX as a default, not an afterthought", much closer.
Substitute it for "useless technologies built on blockchain because it's the coolest technology rn"
It is part of the web though on the frontend.
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Where is the world wide web in this?
Ops, my mistake. This is not Web 3.0, this is web3.
I believe in decentralized web, but I don't believe in tokenization of apps. I think the tokenization aspect is throwing off everyone, and allowing greed to overpower innovation. It's possible to build decentralized apps and use Bitcoin on Lightning Network as a incentive/payment/consensus mechanism if needed. There's no need for someone to "own" the app or protocol. This model can be seen as an alternative to the VC and cryptobro-driven Web3, which Cobie is talking about. See Sphinx Chat [0] or Impervious [1] for example.
(before anyone says that Bitcoin doesn't scale to that, yes it does to millions of transactions per second with Lightning Network)
[0] https://sphinx.chat [1] https://www.impervious.ai
(before anyone says that Bitcoin doesn't scale to that, yes it does to millions of transactions per second with Lightning Network)
[0] https://sphinx.chat [1] https://www.impervious.ai
The most significant improvement to the web will be to enable active participation of laypersons. On their own behalf, without a gatekeeper.
But it takes guts for experts to advocate such, as it shrinks their importance.
It is possible, plug: I have a POC at https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo/
But it takes guts for experts to advocate such, as it shrinks their importance.
It is possible, plug: I have a POC at https://demo.mro.name/shaarligo/
Quick PSA for anyone who likes using the word "exist(s)" or "there are/is" indiscriminately. In English, use like this serves as shorthand or as a recommendation about how we should better use language.
If you position is that something doesn't exist—whatever that means—then you don't understand your own position enough to write about it.