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Tech stocks may have taken a fall in recent weeks but that
hasn’t stopped Silicon Valley obsessing with the tech bubble of Web3.
Web3 is a world-changing opportunity to make a better
version of the internet and wrest it away from the capitalist monopolies who
control it today.
article here
Or, it’s a purely speculative enterprise where some people
will make a big chunk of change but most others will just lose.
Is it the future, a scam, or both? asks an article at Vox written
by the aptly named Peter Kafka.
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki recently declared that Web3
represented a “previously unimaginable opportunity to grow the connection
between creators and their fans.”
A flurry of tech workers who are already very well
compensated are leaving their current jobs at what we might call established
web 2.0 companies — including YouTube — for something in Web3, as The New
York Times reports.
The less hyperbolic Li Jin, one of the few prominent
women talking about this technology, says Web3 “is intrinsically tied with
financial value; “Anytime you introduce financial success, that’s what really
incites strong emotion.”
Even when tech bubbles deflate, notes Kafka, you can still
find value in the aftermath.
“At its core, Web3 is a rebranding of crypto and blockchain,
the technology based around a worldwide network of computers that talk to each
other and validate and record transactions without human intervention or
centralized oversight,” he writes.
Another component is NFTs, either a groundbreaking means of
transacting goods and services that breaks the bond of wage slaves to
capitalist masters, or a fad that will die as soon as you invest in it.
“It’s entirely possible that this is all Web3 will be: an
interesting way for people to collect and/or speculate on digital artifacts,”
Kafka says. “That’s potentially meaningful for people who create art and people
who like to buy art.. But if it stops there, it’s not world-changing.”
But with Web3, the argument goes, you take control back from
the Facebooks of the world.
While this is largely theoretical, Kafka explains that this
is by using blockchain, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and
digital tokens.
“Blockchain lets people create their own money, without
permission from any country or bank. It could also, Web 3 boosters say, let
them build anything on the internet they want, without having to rely on
existing platforms like Google or Facebook, or tools like Amazon’s AWS cloud
computing services. And crucially, the new services could be owned, in part, by
the people who built and use them.”
DAOs (“essentially internet collectives”) could enable
digital entrepreneurs to start up and make their companies a success outside of
the traps and restrictions of having to do so via big tech platforms.
DAOs are supposed “to help people organize themselves online
and create organizations that could rival or replace existing companies like
Facebook or Google. Automated blockchain tech is supposed to make it easy to
divvy up ownership and decision-making power among members. You can get into a
DAO by buying into it, or you can get equity based on work you’ve done for the
group, or whatever.”
Jonathan Glick, an entrepreneur and investor is quoted as
saying of DAOs: “It is a quantum leap improvement in the way to organize people
around projects.”
Kafka doesn’t seem convinced. For a start, he points out the
eco-damage of mining crypto currency: “It’s an irresponsible waste of energy in
a world facing a dire climate crisis; some estimates peg yearly bitcoin electrical
usage as the equivalent of a country the size of Sweden.”
An article in The Guardian reports on a Norwegian
bitcoin mining company aiming to reverse fightback against those criticisms.
Another challenge is that Web3, at least in its current
form, “is not even remotely user-friendly” in terms of the ease of downloading
wallets, buying crypto and transacting with NFTs.
And because the very concept of Web3 rejects centralized
control or management — right now, there’s very little in the way of consumer
protection.
“Web 3 fans argue that you don’t need government agencies or
megaplatforms protecting you and your assets because their system of linked
computers creates a ‘trustless’ economy,” says Kafka. “Since every transaction
is recorded in public and verified by the blockchain, you’re not supposed to
need the oversight of Big Government or Big Companies. In reality, Web3 has
plenty of ineptitude, costly bugs, and outright scams, like intriguing
projects that disappear as soon as the organizers collect your money.”
In the charming crypto lingo, situations like this mean
you’ve been “rugged” — you’ve had the rug pulled out from under you.
Kafka wisely suggests that Web3’s current appeal is because
it is so new and vague — the possibilities are endless, to be shaped, and
mostly theoretical.
The utopian outcome of a metaverse which can be shaped to be
noticeable different to the societal ills of the real world also get short
shrift. Won’t we simply port the toxicity of human relationships wherever we
go?
“Many Web3 folks are completely anonymous — its early user
base and supporters certainly seem to skew as male as traditional tech does
today,” he observes.
Meanwhile, what’s so good about owning your digital assets
on the internet anyway?
“I don’t want to have to engage in a transaction every time
I do something on the internet. And I don’t necessarily want to own the
platforms and services I use on the internet. In the Web3 world, the power of
the platforms to de-platform is something to fear. In my world, it’s the
difference between trusting your security at a club to a bouncer versus a mosh
pit.”
Kafka ends, “I’m convinced that a lot of people who are
piling into NFTs and lots of other get-rich-quick pitches are going to get
burned because that’s what happens to most people who go for get-rich-quick
pitches.”
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