Blockchain-based systems are not what they say they are

This interpretation stands in contrast to the claims that web3 advocates make. They claim that web2 is a centralized mess dominated by technology megacorporations and web3 is now about content ownership. In order to achieve these goals, they must create an entirely new operating model for the web, one built on the blockchain. Blockchain is in effec... See more

Some claim web3 is about ownership, but it is more appropriate to say that web3 is about wealth. Very little in the web3 advocacy space addresses how it will match Web 1.0 and 2.0’s successes in terms of discoverability and sharing. It offers little by way of guarantee that it will protect its users' digital rights, in some cases making them much w... See more

While the blockchain offers promise in addressing some of the challenges present in Web 2.0, the blockchain alone does not comprise the entirety of the web3 experience. In fact, the complexity of working on the blockchain means that the barrier for entering this space is somewhat higher, and as a result there are few companies building the required... See more

The technology behind OpenSea is not quite “OpenSea keeps a list, in Excel, of who owns which NFTs.” The underlying list is kept on the blockchain; it’s just that OpenSea can modify its version of the list however it wants, and its modifications are in practice pretty binding. And in fact there are regular rounds of stories in which (1) some gullib... See more

Decentralized Bottlenecks:  The vision for web3 is admirable. But Moxie set out to understand how the decentralized sausage is made in practice. He was not impressed. Moxie's first concern was that Web3 is not as decentralized as it claims. In this case, access to the basic infrastructure of web3 (the Ethereum blockchain) ends up being routed ... See more

Put another way, we have to resist this skeuomorphic temptation to think that everything is better on the blockchain. Some things, when put on blockchains, just become the same as they were before, but on a blockchain