I guess what I’m saying is web3 being terrible, scammy, and useless don’t strike me as reasons why it won’t supplant the web as it exists today. It could just win through attrition, as everyone interested in keeping the current web going retires and dies, as there’s no money in maintaining old systems; while those making fortunes off web3 scams are massively incentivized to keep the scam money flowing.
Very few engineers are working on web3 nonsense.
> and at a country-level scale the corporations interested in web3 employ a lot of engineers
They're really not. Like, if you're defining "interested in web3" as "they have occasionally said the word 'blockchain' in an attempt to get some press", yeah, sure. But not that many large companies are actually putting significant resources into this. Of the really big tech companies... maybe Facebook is putting substantial resources into it, or has in the past? Though surely not a significant part of their total resources. The others, not at all, really.
We have students today who have no idea what a blockchain is, but they know they can make a fat salary working on it, and that’s enough for them to devote their career to the idea. They come to school demanding courses in blockchain, and so blockchain 101 is born. Then you need professors to teach it so you hire the blockchain researchers funded by Facebook, because they’re the experts. Next you have blockchain publications and conferences (it’s already started). Pretty soon the nsf starts funding blockchain research at the government level and your tax dollars are hard at work doing Facebook’s research for them.
Before you know, at a country-level you have devoted countless man hours and research dollars toward something no one except Facebook really wanted in the first place. That’s the way I see it going.
I can't tell the future, but given the current trajectory (like the recent big crash) I see at least a decent probability that web3 goes absolutely nowhere.
Parents want to know what blockchain classes we offer. And in fact we do have blockchain 101 and a single faculty member in the space, but there is a lot of pressure from market forces (influenced heavily by FAANG) to hire more.
(I think a couple of years before this, it would have been CORBA).
This authoritarian approach justified "for the good of humanity" is dangerous. It actually makes me sad this comment is on "Hacker News". We should value tinkering and hacking on what we enjoy.
However, I don't think most of the work that goes into internet companies at the moment necessarily makes the world a better place, either.
In this sense, Web3 is a tremendous success of libertarian thought. No rules, no laws, and an absolute honeypot for hustlers, thieves, and fraudsters. Anonymous founders running off with the money, repeat fraudsters pulling off bigger and bigger heists, and money being poured into the dumbest schemes which, inevitably, end poorly.
I can't think of a better condemnation of libertarianism.
Pretty much everyone I know working in industry is working on imaginary things like increasing engagement and aggregating data. They are doing this because FAANG want them to, not because this is critical work that needs to be done for society.
I suspect the current correction will put an end to that though, which I must say seems like a good thing.
The reason everyone is doing speculative bullshit in Web3 is exactly why it isn't a threat to the internet. There is nothing useful that it has created. There is no reason for anyone who isn't trying to fleece bigger fools to buy into it. There is nothing that ecosystem does that's at all better than what we have today.
Web3 isn't going to replace the internet - all it has replaced is the penny stock scam.
[1] it's a bad thing for the participants in these schemes.