Are we wrong about Web3?

I'm going to reprise a comment of mine that I posted on a similar HN article some time ago.

Over the years I've witnessed a lot of heated debates on HN... Is the JS ecosystem actually too complex? Is PHP really a fractal of bad design? Is learning vim worth the effort or is it all hype? Is golang fundamentally broken because it lacks(lacked) generics? Does anyone ever actually need k8s? Is nosql always the wrong choice? Is the linux desktop experience truly productive or should you just use a mac? Types or no types? 100% test coverage or overkill? X or Wayland? Gnome2 or Unity? Android or iPhone etc...

Yet, only in the cryptocurrency debate do defenders have to offer up a disclaimer about all the scams, hype, vaporware, fraud, waste, hacks, speculation, crime and other insanity before proceeding to make an appeal to the nebulous hope of future possibilities, as if cryptocurrency isn't older than instagram....

One time I rented a unit in working-class neighborhood for 6 months and not surprisingly the amount of junk mail was half what I was used to.

I just don't get web3 and what problems it solves. People say it solves centralization but I see no means of accomplishing this. I can't see how it doesn't end up like email. Sure, you can host your own email, but the service is very centralized. Yeah, gmail, yahoo, and hotmail might only host 51% of emails, but how many of those other email addresses are fake, temporary, or for bots? If you sample from people around you it is hard to find an address outside these domains and so the sampling likelihood doesn't match the model's probabilities. Email is highly centralized. We can similarly see high centralization in browsers. Functionally there isn't much difference between Chrome and FireFox yet people will promote one over the other with such religious fervor that you'd think they offer different functionalities.

Web3 has no mechanism to prevent centralization. There are such things as natural monopolies, and these typically happen through network effects. This network effect is so powerful that everyone uses Google Maps. Web3 does nothing to prevent this (we even have to ask if we want to prevent this). So what is it solving? Hosting monopolies? If that's what it is solving then it seems like there are likely better ways and no need for the blockchain.

I even say this as someone that thinks there's value in cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Yeah, a lot of scammers in the area, but I can see some utility in the ideas (but huge noise to signal ratio). I just can't see any signal in web3.

> Ownership of content

Blockchains do nothing to advance this cause, it's a technical shell game, "ownership of content" is already possible without blockchains.

> Federation between platforms

Same as above.

> trustless publishing

Same as above.

"Web3" is a highly technical MLM scheme, it's not a solution to the concerns you have expressed.

Looking at the author's LinkedIn, I see Luke has no engineering background, and no STEM experience. His expertise before becoming cofounder of Terminus is in diplomacy and marketing. It's weird to be write articles on Git and Terminus being Web3 without a clear understanding of either.

I can only imagine the DMs flying around in their company's slack after this post went out.