It's not hyperbole, it's pretty grounded, with the conclusion "Web3 doesn’t really exist yet." Which is absolutely true.
"I think open, transparent and permissionless systems replacing trusted central authorities is good for the world and can rebalance and decentralize power.
I’m hopeful that the financial exuberance in crypto markets can attract brilliant minds away from selling people ads to instead build a more equitable and cooperative future.
But I ain’t gonna be surprised if crypto founders are too rich to care anymore and the new web gets built by late-stage capitalism greedcorps that make you buy a fractionalised micropayment NFT on Cardano to operate your electric toothbrush."
Does this not just shift the power to people who can manipulate the zeitgeist? I imagine a Tucker Carlson demagogue but with the ability to materially affect machinery with economic and social consequences. Imagine things like publicly shaming and doxing everyone who owns the wrong kind of NFT, or is a stakeholder in the wrong kind of enterprise.
> I’m hopeful that the financial exuberance in crypto markets can attract brilliant minds away from selling people ads to instead build a more equitable and cooperative future.
1) The people I know who are genuinely fighting for equity are not attracted by the promise of riches. The financial exuberance actively attracts the wrong crowd.
2)I'm also interested in addressing inequity, but if one were to seriously try to build systems with equity and cooperation as goals, why would blockchain technology be a good choice knowing what we know in 2022?
If you mean those who can read and write well, then yes.
You've never seen a viral video of a poor child in a school being harassed for wearing a pair of shoes that weren't adequately cool?
This is something that doesn't really translate well between the online world and real life, because the mob mentality is the default on the web. That's not the case for real life thankfully - at least not where I live.
Where would they do this public shaming at? On Twitter or Facebook? Presumably Web3 social networks will be much more fragmented than the megalithic social networks of today.
It's also non-trivial to de-anonymize an Ethereum wallet that hasn't made an effort to be public (by registering an ENS and listing it in public, for example). I personally have dozens of wallets. They're not traceable to each other in any way and I fund them independently from each other.
1) I think what he means is that some of our brightest minds are currently making $250K or more working for FAANG companies or similar. It's all well and good for people not to have money be someone's primary driver, but if you're making $250K a year at big tech co. it's gonna be hard to leave for a risky Web3 endeavor if the upside doesn't make up for the stability of the current role.
2) I think ENS is a great example. Here is a domain registration entity that considers itself a public good: https://ens.domains/. A few weeks ago, they airdropped governance tokens to anyone who had registered a .eth domain in the past several years that they have existed. When you claim your tokens, you delegate your votes to a representative who represents you on the ENS board.
Those delegates make various proposals and vote on changes to the protocol: https://docs.ens.domains/v/governance/governance-proposals/e...
If a delegate starts acting a way you don't like, you can switch your votes to a different delegate in the next round.
The token itself has monetary value (the marketcap for ENS has ranged near $1B) but it also has intangible value. Hundreds of thousands of users were airdropped equity in a protocol that will have a significant part to play in the transition to Web3. They can participate in governance forum discussions and influence outcomes, such as which workgroups to prioritize or how to spend the treasury, or just passively hold the token and enjoy a return on its growth as a protocol.
ENS was not funded by VCs. They created a product and then transitioned ownership of that product to the community. That's pretty remarkable.
I think DAO governance and token-based incentivizes are still in early days. But I'm already quite impressed by what I see. There's a vast array of experimentation, but this sort of structure can be created for anything, from charity to SaaS to gaming to creative collectives.
I'm sure some are, but the money that's pouring into web3 development isn't all coming from traditional VC firms. 1 Bitcoin goes a lot further these days, and getting USD for it has never been easier.
He just has a healthy dose of skepticism about much of what is happening in the Web3/not-Web3 space.
*to crypto enthusiasts.