Chris Dixon Thinks Web3 Is the Future of the Internet — Is It? - The Verge

The internet is a giant meme propagation machine. You can try to fight it, but it turns out that is not the best strategy. Let it do its thing and monetize the status layer. This is why video games have become the center of culture and are a $150 billion a year business; $60 billion of that is virtual goods, whereas the entire music industry is aro... See more

I am not denying that you will have centralized service providers in the mix to create a better experience. The key is, “Do they get such dominant network effects that users can’t switch?” Then they can abuse their position, and change the economics and the way the algorithms work. You have those centralized intermediaries in there, like an email c... See more

With Web1, I am not claiming people are going to directly interact with protocols. You did not directly go and interact with SMTP. You were mediated by client software, like Gmail — back then it was Hotmail — or Outlook. The key difference when you have a protocol there is that the user can switch. If I am hosting with Rackspace, or using email thr... See more

I own cdixon.org, and I own it because I host it at Netlify. If Netlify becomes evil, I will just switch it over to another place because I control the DNS record. An NFT is architecturally very different from other things on the internet.

ou are always going to have centralized services in the mix, because it is just a fact that centralized companies make better user experiences than protocols do. I agree with that. I think the question is, do the network effects accrue to the company, or do they accrue to the protocol? In Web1, they accrue to the protocol, in Web2, they accrue to t... See more

The way I look at a social network is that there is a two-sided market. You can do distribution, you can do monetization. With YouTube or Spotify, it is both acquiring an audience and it is monetizing those users. In Web2 those two things are bundled. I think that there is a really interesting opportunity right now to unbundle those two things.

Then once they stored it, they ended up having monopolistic network effects. One way to look at a blockchain is as a community-owned database. DNS and a blockchain are the only examples in the history of the internet where you had databases that a community owned, not a company. The other exception might be Wikipedia, as it is a nonprofit. I think ... See more

I view the internet today as millions of subcommunities. I think NFTs are a way for subcommunities to have cultural artifacts and create little economies within them. It is a big world, so some of the popular existing ones will go awry, but my bet is that there will be many positive communities.

I do not think it is hyperbole to say the internet is the most important invention of the last 100 years, and very likely might be the most important invention of the next 100 years. It is currently about to be controlled by five companies, and they make all the money and have all the power. I believe we need countervailing technologies that allow ... See more