The Web3 Debate

This is, admittedly, a very powerful idea. The challenges of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 around ownership, censorship, and digital rights are highly nontrivial ones. For web3 enthusiasts, these issues are existential threats to the web, threats that web3 will eradicate simply by eliminating the question. There can be no debate on the power or responsibilit... See more

But though I think these critiques are both mostly true, the recent realization I had is that doesn’t necessarily mean web3 is doomed. In fact, many new technologies that have been hugely impactful and successful in the past have faced similar critiques—and overcome them. Turns out, web3 fits the pattern of a very specific type of innovation fairly... See more

While Web3 has the potential to reimagine how we use the internet, it also raises thorny issues around privacy, user experience, and how much control users truly want. 

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

But what web3 gets wrong is that Web 2.0 was about centralization. This is not the case. A brief glance at the edit history of the Wikipedia page for Web 2.0 shows that Web 2.0 was itself all about decentralization.