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simonw

"Nobody is forcing anyone to partake in this new technology"

Plenty of its advocates very clearly WANT to force people to partake though. Anything to keep that number going up.

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Actually the people of El Salvador are being forced to partake as their country is buying BTC reserves.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-21/el-salvad...

BTC is not web3. It has no role to play beyond being a slightly upscale dog coin for day traders to lose money on. in fact, it can't play a role as it is technically not possible and its core constituency refuses to make any changes.

Not sure why people downvote this comment. Web3 is essentially a bunch of tech related to decentralized apps and bitcoin is not a protocol to do that, at that point it’s just sometimes an intermediary step to move your capital into the systems that support it (like eth and others).

I have no skin in the game, I don’t hold much crypto and wasn’t building related stuff in years. So it saddens me to see people here who are generally very smart, being ruled by their prejudices,

I just did a catch-up research after missing out for 3 years and there’s literally a ton of super exciting stuff happening. DAOs blowing up, social products starting to pop up, blockchains themselves becoming much more scalable.

It saddens me to see my fellow folks here having such a biased and outdated perspective and aggressively evangelizing it.

Not just advocates. Investors! a16z is practically building up a media agency around crypto because they've sunk such a heavy amount of capital into the space.

This is like crying about online only games. No they aren't forcing you to take part, don't use their products or services if you don't like it.

Except most of the large properties moved to online-only, loot-box infested monetization scheme. So yes, you aren't being "forced", but comparable alternatives don't really exist anymore.

> Plenty of its advocates very clearly WANT to force people to partake though

Advocates evangelize heavily, sure, but will you provide some examples of this? I keep track of the headlines in this space, but I'm not familiar with / haven't experienced what you're describing.

I mean, it's in the name itself - web3 makes it sound like it's the next evolution of the web that we'll all be using in a few years.

I think that's part of why there's so much backlash from the tech community -- it feels like a small group of people (who largely haven't built much on the web besides React apps) have decided that they get to call what they're working on the new web, even though it's currently mostly vaporware and bad art.

There’s a pretty big difference between “this project is named poorly and isn’t ready for prime time” and “advocates want to force people to use it”.

Don’t get me wrong - I share plenty of the same concerns others have shared throughout this thread, and tend to think “web3” is not a good thing to call this, but don’t see the “by force” claim as valid at this point.

Plenty of apps/projects brand themselves as the next coming/generation/evolution/whatever. Only adoption will tell us if they’re right.

Fair, but I think the name is reflective of a greater attitude. I've never been told I'm NGMI (“not going to make it”) for not adopting Serverless, or that I should “have fun staying poor” if I ignore Kubernetes.

Multiple web3 people have told me to "have fun staying poor" for being skeptical about what they're offering, which kinda gives away the whole game.

Kind of. A lot of video game studios are looking to shoehorn NFTs into their games.

No they don't want to force anyone and there's no evidence of this. Just because there are a lot of evangelists doesn't mean anyone is forced to do anything

There's plenty of evidence of this; there are proposals to move house deeds, drivers' licenses, elections, etc. onto the blockchain. These wouldn't be "oh, you can just not participate" sorts of scenarios.

A blockchain is not web3 or crypto.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

The Venn diagram of web3, cryptocurrency, and blockchain proponents is substantially similar to a circle.

No it really is not, but nice try and great meme!

Can you give an example of web3 tech that doesn't involve a blockchain in any way?

Do you understand how a venn diagram works? I can give you plenty of examples of blockchains that are unrelated to cryptocurrency, any corporate run block chain. And examples of blockchains unrelated to web3, bitcoin is a well known example of this.

I'm not asking about that. I'm asking about the converse. If corporations want to waste their money on an internal blockchain, that's fine; it doesn't affect me. But we're talking about people evangelizing this technology to precipitate large-scale societal change, which is focused on the intersection of cryptocurrencies, blockchain and "web3".

No we are talking about how web3, blockchain, and cryptocurrencies are all separate yet related ideas. You are saying they are equivalent.

web3 is explicitly, 100% blockchain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web3

I said a blockchain is not web3. Not web3 is not a blockchain. Bitcoin is a blockchain, bitcoin is not web3.

Well, until there's a better way to have some kind of token or currency, blockchains will be part of web3. Lack of incentives is why the first wave of open protocol design fizzled out, which is why they're so important this time around.

The way it's shaping up, improper or overzealous incentives will be the undoing of the second wave, but that movie has yet to play out.

"no evidence of this" is too strong of a claim. The folks who argue that fiat currency is dead, or should be dead, are implying they want a world where fiat currency disappears and then cryptocurrency emerges as the replacement. In that scenario, it is correct to say that some people are trying to force crypto on the rest of the world.

That's like saying people who said that the telegraph is dead, and will be replaced by the telephone, were trying to force telephones on people.

Crypto people aren't neutral observers simply predicting it will replace fiat, though. They are actively working to make that true. This is not an inevitable future for our society; if it happens, it will be because of activism from powerful people who stand to benefit.

Your comment only makes sense if the telegram was run by a government monopoly, since fiat currency is a government monopoly, and then if people were advocating for the government to close its telegram monopoly, then yes, those people could be said to be forcing telephones on people.

El Salvador tried to force its residents to participate. The country's bitcoin law stipulates that "[e]very economic agent must accept bitcoin as payment": https://mobile.twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/14024468904662...

Predictably, this element of the law was not well received and is not being enforced after large scale protests

Force is a spectrum. Even a gun to the head isn't a force: you could just accept the bullet, after all.

I've come across more people --- certainly on this site anyway --- that want to force people not to partake, using state power if need be.

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