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Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

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Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#31

Post by arilotter »

I work fulltime at a Web3 startup & have been for almost 5 years, and we're building a non-custodial smart contract wallet + everything else you need for web3 SDK & a trading card game using web3 tech. the b2b stuff is going great, tons and tons and tons of integrators and devs using our SDKs every day. the sentiment in the gaming world has always been pretty negative towards web3, so nothing feels different now ;)

large multinational brands are dropping nft collabs often right now - adidas, tons of high fashion, etc. & many other other big brands are working on them behind closed doors

i don't think it's going anywhere, and most people are just building out tech and infra

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#32

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #18
favflam wrote: post #4

The only cash flows into the ecosystem have been from ICOs. The SEC is cracking down on such activities. Besides investment cash flow, I don't think there have been any revenue generating ventures that cater to customers outside the Web3 ecosystem. The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems. I am curious how people will answer your second question.

> The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems. That happens in the US this month, but it has nothing to do with crypto. The Federal Reserve System is launching FedNow, a 24/7 instant settlement system which obsoletes middlemen such as Zelle, Paypal, and Venmo. This is like Pix in Brazil, SEPA in the EU, WePay in China, etc. - a fast payment system run by banks and se…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#33

Post by exyi »

cirgue wrote: post #14
graypegg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least applications built upon the “we call the OpenAI api” product strategy are less scammy than Web3 felt.

Never fear, we’ll get there

Exactly, the AI chatbots is the perfect technology for autoscamming people.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#34

Post by nailer »

26fingies wrote: post #19
Animats wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems. That happens in the US this month, but it has nothing to do with crypto. The Federal Reserve System is launching FedNow, a 24/7 instant settlement system which obsoletes middlemen such as Zelle, Paypal, and Venmo. This is like Pix in Brazil, SEPA in the EU, WePay in China, etc. - a fast payment system run by banks and se…

one of the really nice things about SEPA is the 0-fee instant transfer (ime 45-60 seconds). Will FedNow be able to do the same thing?

Crypto is 1-2 seconds for about 0.0025 USD worldwide right now.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#35

Post by _delirium »

cirgue wrote: post #14
graypegg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least applications built upon the “we call the OpenAI api” product strategy are less scammy than Web3 felt.

Never fear, we’ll get there

There are definitely a bunch of outright scammers already operating in that space. A bunch of the “AI-powered” browser extensions are just malware, for example. https://www.pcmag.com/news/beware-ai-scams-meta-blocks-1000-...

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#36

Post by nailer »

Animats wrote: post #18
favflam wrote: post #4

The only cash flows into the ecosystem have been from ICOs. The SEC is cracking down on such activities. Besides investment cash flow, I don't think there have been any revenue generating ventures that cater to customers outside the Web3 ecosystem. The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems. I am curious how people will answer your second question.

> The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems. That happens in the US this month, but it has nothing to do with crypto. The Federal Reserve System is launching FedNow, a 24/7 instant settlement system which obsoletes middlemen such as Zelle, Paypal, and Venmo. This is like Pix in Brazil, SEPA in the EU, WePay in China, etc. - a fast payment system run by banks and se…

> The Federal Reserve System is launching FedNow, a 24/7 instant settlement system which obsoletes middlemen such as Zelle, Paypal, and Venmo

So exactly like crypto except US specific.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#37

Post by rsynnott »

AI (remember the period a few years back when everything was briefly a chatbot startup? Microsoft Tay era) -> blockchain -> web3 (blockchain renamed) -> metaverse -> AI (LLM era).

It's the circle of hype... There'll be something else along shortly.

(Some of the surviving web3 startups literally seem to have rebranded into LLM startups.)

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#38

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

favflam wrote: post #4

The only cash flows into the ecosystem have been from ICOs. The SEC is cracking down on such activities. Besides investment cash flow, I don't think there have been any revenue generating ventures that cater to customers outside the Web3 ecosystem. The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems. I am curious how people will answer your second question.

> The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems.

1000%. The one place where I think blockchain and crypto can have real utility is from large, legacy financial institutions upgrading their very, very, very antiquated backend settlement technology and processes.

Of course, backend enterprise tech is pretty "boring", and the transition will take many years/decades given that our existing financial system currently depends on these old settlement systems that are based on manual, file based-processes from the first half of the last century. This is not the kind of technology transition likely to attract celebrity endorsements or bubblicious "crypto towns" like Miami and Austin.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#39

Post by arilotter »

austin-cheney wrote: post #29

The joke of it is that Web3 claims to be the answer to decentralization... but in every case of Web3 there is some reliance upon a block chain. If the block chain is limited to only the client and not on any server, therefore unnecessary and worthless, it would then be not centralized. I get the impression nobody takes the time to actually parse the word decentralization . It only means not centralized, but that appl…

> * No DNS

DHT with either bootstrapping or literally just rip through every single IPv4 addr and see if it's a peer lol.

> * No identity manager

How do you know what your friends' phone numbers or emails are? Ask them. No centralized DB needed.

> * No shared server. A server is fine so long as you are the only client that can access it as a server or other clients are currently known and prior authenticated (a peer).

Ethereum (and many of its sibling/child evm chains) clients can run on a Raspberry Pi. It's really not that hard to run a node, and could be packaged into common usage easily.

> * No root certificate or certificate authority or CRL.

Yeah, this is the big one for sure that needs to be solved :)

> * No blockchain

What is wrong with a public distributed ledger?

> * No shared database or other shared services

Not sure what this applies to.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#40

Post by elwebmaster »

Animats wrote: post #18
favflam wrote: post #4

The only cash flows into the ecosystem have been from ICOs. The SEC is cracking down on such activities. Besides investment cash flow, I don't think there have been any revenue generating ventures that cater to customers outside the Web3 ecosystem. The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems. I am curious how people will answer your second question.

> The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems. That happens in the US this month, but it has nothing to do with crypto. The Federal Reserve System is launching FedNow, a 24/7 instant settlement system which obsoletes middlemen such as Zelle, Paypal, and Venmo. This is like Pix in Brazil, SEPA in the EU, WePay in China, etc. - a fast payment system run by banks and se…

Sounds like ACH
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