In fact most of the devs I know that started pre-2017 deeply care about these things. Many were around in the OWS groups back in the day, they transformed via bitcoin and now mostly work on eth projects. The cool thing is most of those people who were in it for political reason (rather than the newer investors looking to make quick money, and new devs looking for decent paid job) have made enough money to spend the rest of their lives working on this stuff regardless of it making them any richer.
I think we can outwork and outlast the cynics and keep building the things we think are cool. they hype will come and go, the fraudsters will sweep in during mania and con people regardless of our warnings, the authoritarians will try get the state to make it illegal, the google employees will keep complaining that its not innovative. we'll keep on working towards what we think is right.
It's been 13 years and 0 use cases better solved by crypto than any classical system.
But by all means, I'm sure OP will deliver - let's just wait.
What were you involved in? And you missed a giant price run.
Thank you Captain Hindsight.
Sure it is probably not even 1% of projects by number and there are plenty of frauds/scams (which are oviously illegal without any new laws) and even more just really terrible ideas (whatever happened to caveat emptor?), but there absolutely is a sizeable core of projects, founders, devs, and researchers that cares deeply about privacy, freedom from coprorate/government surveillance and control, open source and open protocols, and building a very different online, digital future than the one we are currently headed for.
I think that's worth the effort. Even if that might fail, and even with the collateral damage from scams and fraud (which, again, are already illegal). We accepted cars despite the deaths and injuries and pollution (which we also deal with legally and try to minimise without destroying the benefits of having cars), and they reshaped our society. I expect crypto and privacy tech. to do the same in time. It may even take as long.
The builders do
If you’re in the tech field and aren’t worried about privacy, the. I don’t even know what to tell you.
The problem is that as you said, when the rubber meets the road, the customers don't value privacy - and at the end of the day they're the ones paying.
All the major platforms were built without ownership and without privacy, and this didn't hurt them in the slightest from being some of the most valuable companies in human history. I'm not saying I like it either, btw.
Honestly nobody cares about these things. This is just a narrative that was grafted onto Web3 after the fact.