Web3 Skepticism

After 18 days of diving deep into crypto, I didn't come out of it a decentralization maxi. There's space for both types of software, community, and utility. In many ways decentralized software really needs centralization: spam, fraud, content rights, powerful programs, etc.

Hollow Abstraction: An abstraction that sounds coherent, but lacks a specific referent Most people are easy targets for HAs, because they draw conclusions from abstractions without checking if they're hollow. Hollow Abstraction is the mental model that best explains web3, IMO.

Out of curiosity I dug into how NFT's actually reference the media you're "buying" and my eyebrows are now orbiting the moon

More generally, I posit the two keys to understanding Web3 are: 1) Beware of easy money schemes 2) Beware of #HollowAbstractions When proponents like @cdixon promise riches to come via abstract "mental models", we can gently guide them to focus on money flows and use cases.

@ummjackson: After years of studying it, I believe that cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially enforced scarcity.

It’s funny how much the concept of compose#ability & portability of web3 sounds a little bit more like the web before Google or FB than a better way to build them. Yes, your content becomes atoms you can take with you, but you can’t take the network with you.

Circling around that whole web3 ‘ownership’ story. I have 170k email subscribers. I own the list, entirely. There is no algorithm. But 60% of my subs are on Gmail. If Gmail flags me as promotional, half my subs won’t see it. And no ownership or composability changes that

The issue is web3 discourse under-sells the power of the web, oversimplifies the benefits of a new architecture, and skips over meaningful hurdles (UX, security, trust, long-term economics). I think we confuse theories with actual user value props and sustainable business models.

For products to work at scale they need sustainable business models and networks. Would love to see more discourse in web3 about the complex financial incentives conflicts that we’re going to see if the movement goes beyond DeFi/trading-related use cases. A few examples👇