Web3 is (mostly) Nonsense

I’ve been a technologist for the better part of 25 years. I am now 50.

I’ve participated in all three phases of the Internet - 1.0, 2.0, and now this thing called “Web3”.

I’ve contracted or worked with all the major Internet companies (now known as “FAAMGs” or Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft & Google)

I was an early architect of distributed ledger technologies (what are now called “blockchains”).

I was an early adopter of Bitcoin, and helped build the first point-of-sale system with it.

I am the co-founder of an NFT streaming content platform. This sounds odd to say, but it’s a legitimate, patentable technology.

(You’d be amazed at how many so-called blockchain technologies aren’t legitimate, patentable technologies.)

I’ve had some successes, a lot of failures, and garnered a lot of learning about how financial, technological and social systems actually work.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked all over the globe. I’ve seen a lot, and have been surprised by a lot.

Unfortunately, very little of what I’ve experienced and observed over 25 years translates with any decent sense to this thing called “Web3”.

It’s an infrastructure problem.

Talk to any legitimate enterprise developer or cryptographer and they’ll tell you the exact same thing.

Where there’s a problem with infrastructure, there’s a problem with the system.

Where there’s a problem with the system, there’s a problem with the people running it.

If there’s one thing you need to take away from this short post it is this: Don’t believe the hype.

If you know how to build real technologies, then build infrastructure that provides a real utility to the people and their ecologies.

If you don’t know how to build real technologies, then participate in initiatives you understand, and can really stand behind.

All else is designed for centralized profit and control.

It’s nigh time we started doing well by actually doing good for others, and doing right by the planet.

Without wokism and greenwashing (which tend to go hand-in-hand.)

See you on the other side.

https://yesterweb.org/no-to-web3/