web3 is not a thing
Photo by Matthieu Joannon on Unsplash

web3 is not a thing

web3 is not "the next version of the web." It's not even a clearly defined vision of the next version of the web. It's a marketing term coined by blockchain enthusiasts to make it sound like their vision of the future is inevitable. It is not. web3 right now is not a thing, and it will never be the next version of the web, because the web doesn't have versions.

Adopting the marketing language of an idea lends legitimacy to the idea and makes it sound real even when it's not. It creates a feeling of inevitability, makes people think "oh, if this is going to be the future, I better get on it now!" while in reality it is nothing of the sort.

We need to find a better term for this thing blockchain enthusiasts call "web3" so people don't confuse it with the web. "Blockchain All The Way Down" perhaps? Or "tokenomics?" Or more honestly "Blockchain-Based Utopianism?"

Before my web3 followers get all stressed by this, here's the thing: For the "next version of the web" described (vaguely and without any meaningful detail) by the term "web3" to happen, the entire infrastructure of the web and the internet needs to be rewired and re-engineered. It's not feasible, even if we all decided that this was the way to go. Which is not going to happen, because the infrastructure of the web and the internet is mission critical for everything from your friend's hobby project to the power plant feeding your house electricity. Making the web dependent on the blockchain simply will not work. Ever. Under even utopian circumstances.

For the thing they call "web3" to work, the entire web needs to be centralized on the Ethereum blockchain. "What do you mean centralized on the blockchain! The blockchain is DEcentralized!" Sure. But: We would need to trade the current distributed DNS system with some form of blockchain-based ENS meaning every domain query would go to the blockchain. If there are multiple web3 blockchains serving their own versions of ENS, where a domain points will depend on what blockchain you're querying. A single blockchain is required for stability.

Also, for this vision of the web to work, all current data on the web would need to be transferred to decentralized hosting. The size of the internet would need to increase at least 2x to ensure every piece of content exists at least in two locations. Again, unfeasible even in under utopian circumstances.

We have to stop echoing the claim that web3 will somehow solve the problems of web 2.0. The very premise here is wrong. Most of the critiques levelled against web 2.0 by web3 enthusiasts (centralization, data hoarding, corporate monetization, censorship) are actually critiques of Surveillance Capitalism, not web 2.0.

Web 2.0 doesn't require Surveillance Capitalism. Surveillance Capitalism is a layer built on top of our web technologies that exploits the user patterns and data traffic on web 2.0 to build models of our behaviour. Having a public ledger where every transaction is public and can be used to build models is not solving for the problem. In a very real way, the proposed web3 is built for Surveillance Capitalism, as if it is an inevitability and should therefore become the standard: It not only makes modelling behaviour based on all transactions infinitely easier because all the data is public, it makes it possible to track everyone based on every single thing they do.

"Oh, but now each user can choose who they want to share their data with!" There are two problems with this argument: 1. It is horribly inequitable - rich people get to keep their data, while poor people must sell it to live. 2. It's naiive. The data is public. It'll be used. Why do you think the Surveillance Capitalists who became billionaires off web 2.0 are pouring billions into web3? I'll give you a hint: It's not because web3 will take power away from them and give it to "the people."

"But pseudonymity!" Yeah. It's PSEUDOnumous. If all our transactions are on the public ledger, it would be incredibly straight-forward for ML and AI to figure out exactly who owns every single wallet, and only the most crafty among us would be able to hide our identities.

This whole idea is built on naiive and utopian assumptions about how the internet works and how humans interact with it. It has nothing to do with the web and everything to do with money. Calling it "web3" lends the legitimacy of the web to an idea that will never be the web.

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Morten Rand-Hendriksen is a Senior Staff Instructor at?LinkedIn Learning?(formerly Lynda.com) focusing on?front-end web development and the next generation of the web platform. He believes in the open web.

Originally posted on mor10.com

Header photo: Matthieu Joannon on Unsplash

I really like your Javascript course, you do a great job being energetic it really helps keep my foucs.

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Niels Erik Andersen

Advisor, doer, and experienced board member. Making manufacturers more profitable and sustainable.

2 年

Maybe I am just not smart enough to understand web3, to me it looks like another over-marketed technology hype based on less-than-half-truths. The claim is that web3 is decentralized and the current web is centralized and owned by the big tech players. Can someone explain to me: * how the current web is centralized beyond ICANN (which is not one of the big tech players)? * how a linear chain of blocks can become a web and be more decentralized than a web? I am just tired of having to spend the precious time of my colleagues and myself to learn about the latest buzz-word that turns out to have no value. I am tired of having investors chase the latest fad and asking innovation companies to just implement "this new technology" without understanding how it will create customer value. We need the evaluation of real practitioners in the field. Listen to Warren Buffet's explanation of why Bitcoin has no value: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/30/warren-buffett-gives-his-most-expansive-explanation-for-why-he-doesnt-believe-in-bitcoin.html - he may be 91 years old, but he knows a thing or two about business. Sellers of crypto currencies and NFTs are just scam artists. #web3 #web30 #warrenbuffett #berkshirehathaway #blockchain

John Austin

Educator | Residential & Investment Realtor | Sustainable Packaging Consultant

2 年

great take, sir

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Leo Giordani

Mograph Artist @Manscaped, Creative Direction, Hero Designer @Caviar.

2 年

Morten you should make some NFT’s !

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Chris Anatalio

Senior Developer Advocate @ Stellar Development Foundation | Technical Instructor @ Pluralsight | Prev ConsenSys

2 年

You raise a lot of valid criticisms but I think there is some fundamental misalignment with how this article represents how some of these technologies work. Blockchain technologies are not networking technologies, they are distributed databases that build on existing internet technologies. Blockchain does not replace the 7 Layer OSI model, it is integrated into it. For instance, the article seems to state that ENS is a replacement for DNS when actually it's just a basic mapping and lookup between a string and a hash with associated metadata. It's just a system to look up data in a distributed database. It uses some of the same syntax as DNS such as dot-delimited strings which may be why it's confusing.

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