Comment by onebot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by onebot | Hacker News Reader

The problem I have with articles like these is that my definition of Web3 is quite a bit different. I tend to lump "crypto" more with NFTs, wild speculation, scams, heavily VC backed "decentralized" tokens, etc. But on the other hand, I want social networks not owned by businesses, I want other major utilities also not owned by major companies (I think gmail is used for 8bn addresses). I think the fediverse is nice start, but still not decentralized enough (a single mastadon server admin can kill it anytime they want or change the rules). In my opinion the definition of web3 is:

"Web3 represents a fundamental evolution of the internet built upon blockchain architectures. Moving from centralized control and capitalization to a decentralized network where the capital is distributed between the operators and consumers."

I feel like the definition of Web3 is hijacked by pundits. Probably because it has become yet another buzzword and being so tightly associated with Crypto maybe has it tainted forever?

What you're describing sounds like the (now unfashionably old and un-hyped as a category) `dWeb` ecosystem. As far as I've seen, 'web3' has meant "websites that use crypto wallets for login and store data in a blockchain and/or IPFS."

The difference between the two isn't necessarily technical; rather it's the requirement that you "join the crypto economy" and start buying up whatever shitcoin -- or CDS-style derivative of multiple coins -- is being used for that one website...and somehow that means "SSO is easy now!" and "anyone can make micropayments anywhere!" etc., etc.

The latter only makes sense in a world of free money from VCs that lets people spend tens of millions of dollars building a *login form* that they charge other websites to use. Their business model seemingly ignores the fact that no serious enterprise[^1] is going to run their internal authN/Z and IdM on a global blockchain.

[^1]: actually, I'm sure several companies have/will tried this, and equally certain the net result was a flaky service that was effectively just querying a Postgres table that cached the on-chain identity for a user and checking their presented token against that. I.e., yet another Postgres instance masquerading as "web3 infrastructure".

Web3 is an attempt to paint scammy technologies (crypto assets) as something useful (decentralized tech).

The truth is: you don't need crypto stuff to have a decentralized internet, as ActivityPub is handsomely showing and, let's be real here, the web itself is showing for the last decades.

I'm still to see a Web3 business that doesn't smell, looks, and behaves like it's a grift.

I never understood the need for "web3" because as far as care "dapps" seems to cover anything non-financial/payment in "crypto".

Blockstacks was initially release with "decentralized" storage that allows me to interact with dapps that would use that storage to hold my data. To me that was and still is the pattern of what I consider "web3".

"Web3" conveniently allows proponents to say "hey the web took a while to catch on" and use that as an argument for the inevitable success of these systems. The connection in naming is essential.

I really, really hope that we can "reclaim" that definition of web3 (which, from what I can tell, was the original one, hijacked by cryptocurrency proponents as the scams mounted and the value of Bitcoin rose in the last few years) as the cryptocurrency sphere collapses in on itself, because I'm right there with you on the desperate need for genuine decentralized internet and societal infrastructure. (I'm deeply, deeply skeptical that blockchain is going to be any meaningful help in this, but the basic problem and the general outline of the solution, I agree with.)

It's extremely useful to have a term like "Web3" to use as a unifying force within such an effort, as well as a way to describe it to people outside, and I don't see a better one for such a decentralization right now.

The original Web 3 was the Semantic Web.

and TBL is still sort of working on this with Solid. https://solidproject.org/

FWIW I keep hearing "decentralized web" and "fediverse".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com