Ask HN: Will Web3 ever become mainstream?

2 points by anandnair ↗ HN

13 comments

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As per the current circumstances, no! If the circumstances change in the future, maybe.
Depends what you mean by mainstream, I guess. The sheer volume of scams, ponzis and bad actors sets it back every time it gains popularity.
I doubt it. The average person doesn’t understand why web3 technologies would be helpful, and the average person would have to be made to care in order to adopt web3. The other side of that is that web3 could be successful if someone made the killer app for it and if that app were likewise simple enough for the average person to use without being told how.
No. People don’t see the value in ‘decentralization’, their motto is something like ‘give me convenience or give me death’. This commercial, for the first personal computer that didn’t come with any programming tools, reveals the true attitude of the masses:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R706isyDrqI

(Note the guy talking in the screen is a blockhead as I see it.)

I'd put it slightly differently: nobody has found an important enough problem that decentralization solves. (Edit: and at the same time there are lots of benefits to central authorities, meaning decentralization has an even bigger hill to climb in many cases)

It also feels to me like most implementations of anything decentralized just end up creating a different de-facto central authority as part of the process.

Web3 isn’t decentralized the way most people use it. Most NfTs are just URLs. Like most things in crypto it’s just a scam.

The most successful current decentralized systems are probably BitTorrent and Mastodon. BitTorrent arose due to heavy handed copyright enforcement and Mastodon got popular in response to the Musk takeover of Twitter. In both cases these are examples of problems decentralization solves.

If the political situation continues to deteriorate I could see decentralization becoming more popular.

I don't think so. There have been billions of dollars flowing to this industry and till now nothing came out that is close to being useful for the mainstream
I’ve never seen something nobody really wants pushed this hard with this much money. It’s truly amazing.
To answer that you'll first have to define "Web3".
The bad drives away the good. Also known as the bad neighborhood effect.

This is the problem with the whole crypto ecosystem. There are so many scams and dubious get rich quick schemes that the entire ecosystem develops a reputation for being a scam. Crypto is a bad neighborhood, and nobody wants to live in a bad neighborhood.

This drives away all the people who would otherwise make it a better neighborhood. It’s a death spiral.

At this point everything web3 is associated in most peoples minds with stupid things like bored apes, scams, and fools who lost their life’s savings on such things.

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