> I think they don't acknowledge some merits that web3 actually has. The ability to host open source web services pretty much indefinitely (with or without maintenance) after initial deployment is interesting, especially for hackers.
How is this possible, exactly? Which Web3-specific innovation enables this?
P2P file hosting has been around for decades, but that's not a "web" and it's barely a "service".
> it's not an uncommon phenomenon with dissemination technologies (printing presses were also used to disseminate outrageous propaganda lies)
The promise and value of printing presses was immediately obvious. It automated a manual process that people had previously done painstakingly slowly for hundreds of years.
Web3 does not automate any manual process (or any process at all) that people were previously doing.
> Web3 can shift the pendulum of economic power a little bit (not fully, as maybe claimed by some enthusiasts) in the direction of users again.
Web3 and blockchain have not democratized anything. They've centralized power into secretive whales and project backers. Try to find a major crypto project that doesn't have names like A16z and Saudi Arabia among its backers.
Big banks are in on it, too. I don't know why anyone would expect opposition from existing financial players, rather than an attempt to buy and control these projects.
I'll give a simple example: think of an escrow service. It's clear that it provides some value, it's easy to code up and audit, and it actually needs the blockchain (so that the code is inevitably open source, and you know that that's the code you're interacting with).
It may not be fully trustless, but at least for technically savvy users it can reduce the extent of trust required sufficiently to make it sane to do OTC transactions (it's very unlikely someone would try and succeed in reorganizing the blockchain for a small transaction; the code might have backdoors, but such a simple service isn't too hard to audit - fully open source code is a tough environment for backdoors).
How is this possible, exactly? Which Web3-specific innovation enables this?
P2P file hosting has been around for decades, but that's not a "web" and it's barely a "service".
> it's not an uncommon phenomenon with dissemination technologies (printing presses were also used to disseminate outrageous propaganda lies)
The promise and value of printing presses was immediately obvious. It automated a manual process that people had previously done painstakingly slowly for hundreds of years.
Web3 does not automate any manual process (or any process at all) that people were previously doing.
> Web3 can shift the pendulum of economic power a little bit (not fully, as maybe claimed by some enthusiasts) in the direction of users again.
Web3 and blockchain have not democratized anything. They've centralized power into secretive whales and project backers. Try to find a major crypto project that doesn't have names like A16z and Saudi Arabia among its backers.
Big banks are in on it, too. I don't know why anyone would expect opposition from existing financial players, rather than an attempt to buy and control these projects.