The Web3 Fraud
As per usual, someone loosely understands one part of blockchain and - using the craziness that is &quot;Web 3&quot; at the moment - attacks the entire technology.<p>&gt; The cryptocurrency web3 starts with all our existing infrastructure.  So I still need a DNS name, I still need a server, I still need storage, and I still have a distributed computation occurring between the browser and the server.<p>No, you could work off of static IP addresses or indeed decentralized naming services like ENS, use smart contracts, use IPFS, but I agree you do still need to use the internet.<p>&gt; When a user wants to use my service they will pay some amount of cryptocurrency to perform the cryptocurrency-side computation, with any remaining transferred to me as a fee for my service.<p>This is one case for one business model yes, but none of these are required.<p>&gt; Put bluntly, the Ethereum “world computer” has roughly 1&#x2F;5,000 of the compute power of a Raspberry Pi 4!<p>Yes, if we completely ignore recent developments in Layer 2 technologies and chains.<p>&gt; What about the storage?  The entire Ethereum blockchain is just 1 terabyte of data and adds a total of a few hundred kilobytes a minute.  Storing the Ethereum blockchain using a robust commercial service like Amazon S3 costs just $20 a month.<p>Yes, if we completely ignore recent developments in off-chain storage or Layer 2 technologies and chains. Also, different use cases - I don&#x27;t think anyone sold Ethereum as a replacement to storage.<p>&gt; I know some cryptocurrency enthusiasts will protest that their favorite blockchain is cheaper than Ethereum.  And it’s true, underutilized cryptocurrencies may be one or two orders of magnitude less expensive to use in the “web 3” vision when compared with Ethereum.<p>Nope, this difference in fees is down to other factors like PoW vs PoS, a topic the author didn&#x27;t mention once (and might not actually know about).<p>&gt; So why this hype?  Because the cryptocurrency space, at heart, is simply a giant ponzi scheme where the only way early participants make money is if there are further suckers entering the space.  The only “utility” for a cryptocurrency (outside criminal transactions and financial frauds) is what someone else will pay for it and anything to pretend a possible real-word utility exists to help find new suckers.<p>No, this is true for some of the public cases you see mentioned 50 times a day and I understand why people think this but it isn&#x27;t true. One obvious area where it isn&#x27;t some Ponzi scheme is the developments in inter-bank trading, such as <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Central_bank_digital_currency" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Central_bank_digital_currency</a>. Goldman Sachs has been trading Digital Treasury Bonds with JP Morgan on JPM&#x27;s Onyx blockchain, Visa is working on an international payment system using a blockchain, Swift is building projects on blockchains <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.swift.com&#x2F;your-needs&#x2F;data-and-technology&#x2F;distributed-ledger-technology-dlt" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.swift.com&#x2F;your-needs&#x2F;data-and-technology&#x2F;distrib...</a>, etc...<p>&gt; After all, a programmer doing the most basic test of a web3 prototype is going to need to get the cryptocurrency, spend the cryptocurrency, and any application will require all users to get the cryptocurrency as well.<p>A programmer would need testnet currency to test it and then a couple dollars to deploy it on mainnet. Some apps don&#x27;t require users to use cryptocurrency. FIDE has an official online chess app built on Algorand that you wouldn&#x27;t realize was a blockchain unless you know who Algorand are.<p>&gt; If this gets abandoned quickly due to the inevitable technical failure “web3” still accomplished its goal of getting more suckers in and extracting their money.<p>&quot;Web 3&quot; is a term used more by media and people complaining than the people building products but, as someone who&#x27;s been in the blockchain space for years, can promise has never once had to work with someone like this. I&#x27;m sure they exist - you see crap projects every day that are scams and yes it&#x27;s a murky space because of this - but labelling everyone with this brush is unfair to the rest of us. If you want to put a moral hat on, maybe start looking at the damage being done in all the other areas of tech too, such as addictive applications, social medias impact on democracy and mental health, etc...<p>&gt; So in the end web3 is a con job, a technological edifice that is beyond useless as anyone who attempts to deploy a real application will quickly discover.<p>Real projects in the wild doing real things mentioned above - sadly interbank trading of digital treasury bonds is just pretty boring so aren&#x27;t as publicized as a 1000x JPG someone laundered. Just please stop assuming that covers everyone and everything in the blockchain space.