What Is Web3?

web3 (as well as bitcoin) IS a scam.

By that definition, Ajax is also a scam as a computer's creature.

It's a scam on multiple levels, just as homeopathy is a scam on multiple levels. So, for example, we can with complete total 100% confidence say that homeopathy is a scam because it has been demonstrated to be a scam on all three levels:

Level 1: it was just invented, from scratch, by a man called Samuel Hahnemann in 1796. It's not ancient, or traditional, or anything. He just made it up.

Level 2: the mechanism is fake, and has been shown to be fake. It doesn't work. All angles of it have been tested and shown to be false.

- It can be, and has been, proved that diluting things doesn't make them stronger.

- It has been proved that water does not store any properties of what is dissolved in it.

- It has been proved that a dilution such that there are no molecules of a substance left does not have any properties of that substance.

Level 3: Even if the mechanisms are known to be fake, maybe it could work by some unknown mechanism? No. It's been tested.

It has been proved not to work in cell culture and it has been proved not to work in people and in animals.

We know the origin is bogus; we know the mechanisms are bogus; we know the application is bogus.

All three levels: fake, false, doesn't stack up, does not work.

So, Web3.

The concept is fake:

Web 1: static HTML, server from files on disk.

Web 2: web applications, written in Javascript, running inside the browser.

Web 3: er, um, there are smart contracts, enforced by, er, digital, um, encryption, which, er, lets you decentralise the web by, um, um, er, well, you can set up a business which deals with other businesses by, um, well, er, exchanging, er, cryptocurrencies, which, er, um, IT'S THE FUTURE!

Cryptocurrencies are bogus. They aren't money: there is no store of value. They can't store value: they're too volatile. They're not currencies: you can't exchange them for goods in a generally applicable way. They aren't a payment method: they are too slow and don't scale and can't scale. There's no way to do refunds, an essential requirement.

NFTs are bogus: they're just bookmark-shorteners with added encryption. They don't store anything useful, they don't prove ownership, they have no legality, and they do not prevent content from being copied.

Web3 proponents say things like:

- it's decentralised. That is fake. The web is already decentralised.

- it permits secure commerce. No it doesn't; there's no secure backing, there's no legal framework, there's no guarantees. It's mostly illegal shadow-economy commerce of buying fake "property" (NFTs) in pretend internet money.

And anyway, secure internet commerce already exists and is a huge business and a strong member of the real-world economy. It is there: it doesn't need to be re-invented.

- it allows distributed business. No it doesn't; that already exists too.

No, it doesn't allow people who don't trust each other to work together. That is called honour among thieves, and it doesn't function. It's only for criminals to work with other criminals.

No, it doesn't allow new types of business, because it doesn't do anything existing tools don't do better.

The only people who think web3 is something new or important are:

[a] people who do not understand how the real web works already. I.e. people who've been scammed.

[b] scammers who prey on group A. For instance, suckers who bought into cryptocurrencies.