Web3

Teams need leaders, visions require visionaries. However, the central organization creates the context in which leaders get the best from their teams and remain accountable for outcomes. This is difficult to replicate with software.

What is web3? It’s a hazy/vague term describing a crypto-powered internet, and a font of yogababble. Its promoters would say something akin to: Web3 is a decentralized version of the internet where platforms and apps are built and owned by users. Unlike web2 (the current web), which is dominated by centralized platforms such as Google, Apple, and F... See more

OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, is eerily similar to any other exchange platform: In return for making transactions easier and (modestly) safer, the company takes a 2.5% cut of every transaction. The largest crypto company, Coinbase, operates the same way — it has industry-high fees (based on an opaque fee structure) and a CEO who’s g... See more

Every member of Forbes’s 2021 cryptobillionaires list is a man. A third of them attended Stanford or Harvard. Out of the 12 listed, only one isn’t white. The web3 narrative feels like a Ted-X talk given to a survivalist group.

The advertised decentralization of power out of the hands of a few has, in fact, been a re-centralization of power into the hands of fewer. The top 9% of accounts hold 80% of the $41B market value of NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. The practice of “whitelisting” keeps the bulk of NFT profits within a tight circle of insiders. Bitcoin is even more ... See more

The truth is, people don’t want to run their own servers, and they don’t want to have to write code every time they buy a loaf of bread, so “centralized” services will inevitably arise to make web3 actually work for regular people.

None of this is the technology’s fault.

Representative democracy already exists in the corporate space — it’s called a public company. For now, token-based organizations are operating in a pseudo-unregulated space, where their securities tokens are immediately liquid and purport to be immune from disclosure requirements. It’s likely, and overdue, that the SEC and the courts will soon bri... See more

The Wild West was decentralized. And we soon discovered that towns need sheriffs and central protocols (i.e., laws). Theft runs rampant on web3. Losses from crypto scams and thefts totaled $14 billion in 2021. Decentralization promised to replace the middleman (the bank) with blockchain technology, but instead it’s created a Coachella for fraud, wh... See more

The DAO movement claims to be democratizing corporate governance: With a DAO, all investors can vote on the organization’s decisions. But there’s a reason entities of any size, from school districts to shoe companies, adopt a representative model instead of attempting pure democracy. Leadership, expertise, and accountability improve outcomes, vs. s... See more