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Ask HN: What are your thoughts on Web 3.0?
10 points by kypro on Nov 12, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 10 comments
I've heard the term thrown around a lot recently and I was curious what this community thinks about the term and the trend?

It seems like the term "web 3.0" has been used for a while now and has been applied to different things from an AI-focused web to the more recent iteration where it's being used to describe the trend towards user-own decentralised services and blockchain applications.

While we've seen a few decentralised technologies emerge in recent years (mastodon, blockchain, etc) I'm quite sceptical of how far this decentralised movement will go. Aside from digital currencies, useful applications of Blockchain seem relatively niche and a significant push towards decentralisation more generally seem unlikely given the lack of economic incentives for the established players (MS, FB, Google, Apple) to allow users to own their own data and services.

I generally tend to be quite sceptical of tech trends though so I'm curious if there's anything I'm missing here or if there's something I should be looking into?



> anything I'm missing here or if there's something I should be looking into?

No, its bullshit.


As a term, it does seem to be popping up more, but it feels less like an accepted part of our vernacular, and more like a small group of people trying to coin it for themselves. I'm generally dismissive of anything I'm seeing lately that embraces that term.

As far as the actual blockchain tech goes, it is interesting and has its place. But people who just are stuck at "blockchain = currency" and are trying to get rich off it are probably holding it back because few are truly looking at it as a tool and finding good uses cases for it.


Web 3 is an idealist utopian version of the web where the web is owned by the proletariat and not the evil rent seeking monopolies.

I have compiled my thoughts on my blog https://yash.info/blog/what-is-web3/

The main ideas of web 3.0 are - decentralization, privacy, trustless networks and community ownership. These ideas look good in theory but don't work in real world.


web3[0] the library (to filter out the philosophical BS) is just a way to talk to an Ethereum node.

It is technically interesting, but most definitively over-hyped for a straightforward JSON-RPC client.

Personal Note: Tech aside, I don't like this vision of the web where everything is a transaction with a cost attached to it.

[0] https://github.com/ChainSafe/web3.js


"I don't like this vision of the web where everything is a transaction with a cost attached to it"

I like the way you put it. And the cost will only increase as more and more users join. Unlike economies of scale, this works in reverse.


"Web 3.0", back when I was growing up, referred to the Semantic Web[1], not blockchains and decentralization. This Web, sadly, seems to be disappearing thanks to anti-bot measures.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web


How do anti bot measures lead to the decline?


Making use of "machine-readable data" and blocking machines from accessing said data are somewhat at odds. (That said, I don't think that's the main reason for decline of those ideas)


Interesting different points of view from over 10 experts on this topic: https://experty.io/web-3-0-vs-metaverse-similarities-and-dif...

you may find it useful


This is an example of a Web 3.0 website.

http://evilmaid.crypto




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