I’m mostly forecasting in my comment based on what I’ve seen happen to the current industry. It’s completely centered around nonsense like “engagement”, and because there’s so much money involved it impacts the direction of the industry all the way down to education of school children.

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.

There are a lot of steps in the chain between what we have now and the end state you're afraid of, and none of them are certain. Maybe students don't believe they can make a fat salary working on blockchain technology. Maybe they're not successful convincing schools to offer courses in blockchain tech. Maybe Facebook researchers don't get hired by universities, and maybe academic research into blockchain tech doesn't take off in a big way. Maybe the NSF doesn't see the need to start funding blockchain research.

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.

To be clear, I’m observing these things first hand as a professor. Students are asking about blockchain at info sessions more than any other tech. Many students see CS education as a fast track to blockchain tech, coins, and nfts they’ve been hearing turning people into millionaires overnight. That’s what they are interested in!

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.

Fair enough. I’ve been out of college for almost a decade, so I’m out of the loop with respect to what students want. I do suspect that unless crypto bounces back relatively soon some of that desire will go away.

I’m with you there and I’ve got all my fingered crossed.

Eh, there've been technology fads before; they sometimes make it into universities, but rarely further. When I was in college, XML databases were very much the thing, and there was a whole optional course on them (which I didn't do). You don't hear much about XML databases these days.

(I think a couple of years before this, it would have been CORBA).