Yeah, Bitcoin/Dogecoin and Ethereum aren't viable, but what about the newer/better tech?
http://blockchain.cs.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/UC...
But what about existing and proven technology that has been around for decades? This whole "web3" thing seemingly focuses on problems nobody has, cares for, or can be solved with what already exists in far more efficient ways.
Traditionally, many have solved for this by founding/working for government-registered companies and building proprietary software that's sold for government-issued notes.
Now there's an alternative to that pattern.
Maybe you could revise it to "The problem it solves is making money without the government knowing what you're doing" but that seems like the type of statement that would attract tax cheats, ransomware distributors, and other criminals, and it's also not really true of cryptocurrency anyway; most governments have already made moves to regulate cryptocurrency.
They're alternatives, with trade-offs. The problem with rat poison and most blockchains are the environmental externalities.
Depends on whether one sees the enclosure of social and digital Commons as a problem. Folks like Bruce Schneier [0] and Cory Doctorow [1] have been ringing alarm bells for years on "digital feudalism": despite FOSS and federated alternatives, 99% of us choose to pledge fealty over our digital lives to a small handful of centralized firms.
These aren't always bad trades: tech giants tend to be very good at what they do, and I don't begrudge any consumer their individual choices. But the centralization of power, the "dark patterns" of user manipulation, the social externalities of engagement algorithms, the risk of one's digital identity vanishing for no reason at all: I don't think these are "problems nobody has".
Insert the obvious caveats on techno-utopianism and con-artists: we should have healthy skepticism towards crypto-tokens and the "web3" buzzword-du-jour. But as we look back at the successes and failures of "web1", the notable absence of any form of user-sovereign (a) identity, or (b) value transfer, is a tragically glaring omission (if forgivable: they are non-trivial problems!). This vacuum opened up the space for private capture, from Google SSO to Venmo.
It remains to be seen whether any of the players in "web3" can deliver the goods on actually out-competing Metcalfe monopolies [2]. But I'm glad the effort is being made (and not just as get-rich-quick schemes: there are a surprising number of left-anarchists and mutualists working in the DAO space).
[0] http://en.collaboratory.de/w/Power_in_the_Age_of_the_Feudal_...
[1] https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-...