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Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

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Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#61

Post by throwoutway »

arilotter wrote: post #31

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 ;) l…

> the b2b stuff is going great, tons and tons and tons of integrators and devs using our SDKs every day.

But how much revenue is this pulling in? Are you profitable after 5 years?

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#62

Post by throwoutway »

xk_id wrote: post #59
arilotter wrote: post #31

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 ;) l…

Had to scroll 75% of the comments section to find an actual on topic answer and not just inane cryptoskeptic rants

The person you responded to is a bit of a skeptic. They wrote "i don't think it's going anywhere"

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#63

Post by 26fingies »

nailer wrote: post #34
26fingies wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yea well i pay people in money not crypto

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#64

Post by sshine »

I joined a blockchain startup late 2021, moments before the crypto winter broke out.

I left 15 months later, but they're still going, just did an alpha release.

Because of my work being present on GitHub, I've been contacted by recruiters over email for similar positions several times this year.

I went to two conferences on blockchain and zero-knowledge. Everyone at these conferences seem like serious people working for funded companies, and everyone seems to be okay with there being no customers. It's a little surreal.

It seems that some of the early profit makers in the space are still sinking money into the hope of a future "after the crypto winter" bubble. There is a lot of zero-knowledge hype. Some of the startups that claim to use zero-knowledge cryptography simply aren't.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#65

Post by sushidev »

throwoutway wrote: post #60
sushidev wrote: post #53

I’d say that 95% or more is just scam. People like Sam Bankman Fried. They are all gone or dying now more or less. The strong and real businesses with profits and sustainable revenue models are still up and running. There are quite a few examples. Specifically in web3 (within the blockchain and crypto sphere): https://www.coinbase.com/web3/dapps/swappin-gifts is a real world utility web3 dapp. Maybe the first and onl…

> Overall ranking#495 > Ranking in Swap#125 > No ratings Sounds like a random dapp to push... Are you the author or related to swapping-gifts?

I’m from this sphere. I checked a lot of dapps and when dapps even work, most of the time it’s either gambling, or something completely of no value in the real world. Therefore my comment.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#66

Post by lloydatkinson »

warent wrote: post #20
lloydatkinson wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think everyone knew they’d move onto the next scam

Comparing web3 scams to this new wave of AI is unironically ignorant and delusional. For one small example I literally get daily value from Copilot and happily pay for it, and there is much more beyond this. I've never once gotten meaningful value from web3.

I don’t think Copilot and whatever fresh hell the popularised version of AI is are comparable.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#67

Post by nailer »

oblio wrote: post #41
nailer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, except for the fact that regular people will actually be able to use it to buy potatoes using a real currency, not a "currency" that's more volatile than tulip bulbs were in the 1600s.

i’m not sure if you’ve use crypto before, but people buy things in USDC all the time.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#68

Post by oblio »

nailer wrote: post #67
oblio wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, except for the fact that regular people will actually be able to use it to buy potatoes using a real currency, not a "currency" that's more volatile than tulip bulbs were in the 1600s.

i’m not sure if you’ve use crypto before, but people buy things in USDC all the time.

I'm new at this, I need a bag of potatoes. Where can I buy them with USDC?

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#69

Post by mdaniel »

Animats wrote: post #49
26fingies wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The Fed will charge banks a fee of $0.045 per transaction.[1] Transactions take a few seconds. They must finish within 20 seconds or they time out, and they're expected to take much less time. Here's a technical overview.[2] The bank to Fed to bank API uses IBM MQ and ISO 20022. These are a bit dated but widely used in the financial sector. Down at the bottom, it's XML. [1] https://www.frbservices.org/resources/fees/…

Thank you for posting the actual technical pdf, that was interesting reading

> Certificate-Based Authentication

Heh, so I can look forward to the biennial banking outage as they forget to renew their certs :-D

But in seriousness, I have some experience with x509 auth from the early days of kubernetes using it and unless the system has some robust CRL mechanisms I look forward to knowing how such a scheme will deauthorize users

Interestingly, they also seem to be doing belt-and-suspenders since the messages themselves are signed with the private key of the institution, which appears to be registered out of band from the system itself

Re: Ask HN: What happened to Web3 startups?

#70

Post by photonerd »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #10
photonerd wrote: post #6

Based on my LinkedIn inbox… plenty of them still around & still hiring. They just seem to be less about what was original called “web3” and more about applying crypto to… stuff.

I also still get seemingly pointless pitches about crypto … businesses(?) looking for engineers. Not one have I read and thought hey that sounds like a real business plan

Yeah, most of them are—at best—an interesting feature looking for a business
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