Web3 is very likely to fail because a substantial proportion of both the tech and business space think it’s a load of unnecessary nonsense backed by fraudsters or the gullible who think they can get rich fast and want nothing todo with it.
> No other technology platform has been so denigrated and ridiculed
As far as I am concerned it's entirely deserved. Web3, NFTs, etc. are a cancer and should not exist. It's on the same tier as DRM and pop-up ads.
First "blockchain" was the future, it was the next big thing, it was a revolution, it was going to change everything, you'd be a fool not to get involved. Sure, there might not be a lot there yet, but it's like the Internet in 1994 - this is only the beginning!
If they were still saying the same things about "blockchain" then people would notice that these lofty promises have delivered nothing for ten years. But give it a sexy new name like "Web3" and now it feels new again, even though nothing has changed, and they can continue to entice people in with the same old promises. Sure, Web3 doesn't seem to have produced much yet, but this is only the beginning. It's like the Internet in 1994!
The way I see it though is it's a solution looking for a problem.
"Look, we can build a decentralized database."
"Wow, let's try and use this to replace EVERYTHING"... and yet so far it has replaced nothing.
The most basic and obvious use cases – a Venmo replacement, a credit card replacement, and sending money across borders – these are all still done the traditional way, and it doesn't seem like that's about to change.
I'm hoping to be proven wrong, especially for the credit cards use case. Would be nice if everything cost 3% less. But it doesn't appear to be on the horizon.
Eh, the fees on cards are a bit of a myth. Not that they don't exist, but their impact. Particularly in IRL transactions. Sure, a cash transaction doesn't cost the merchant 3% straight off, but it does pile on extra banking costs, extra security costs, extra staff time to handle cash etc.
But sure, it would be nice to have a cheaper way with similar guarantees for online transactions. The alternative is usually bank transfers, but with those, if you get defrauded it's on you, so I quite like CCs for that.
Also in a lot of countries fees are capped way lower than 3%...
After a decade of pure negative results and criminal activity, it’s pretty reasonable for the general public to distrust and dislike crypto shills.