Where is Web3?

A couple years ago, a friend told me he came about $3,000 and was asking which crypto he should invest in. We were at the tail end of the Web3 hype, and from the beginning, my answer has always been the same: Don't!

Now, it's true that a lot of people have made money off of crypto. A quick glance at headlines will tell you that. But for every winner, there are thousands of people who lost, or more accurately, transferred their hard-earned funds to the lucky few. You are, statistically speaking, far more likely to lose than be the fortunate winner in this high-stakes gamble.

If you have $3,000 and the luxury of time, you could instead invest in yourself. That's years worth of online classes to teach you valuable skills, improving your career prospects, or even laying the groundwork to start your own business. That's a tangible return on investment.

An argument I often heard during the Web3 craze was people saying they didn't care much for "Web3" itself, but they truly believed that blockchain was a promising technology. I've heard it so many times. Often, it was said by someone who isn't technical at all. They aren't developers, let alone skilled in database management or distributed systems. It's not too different from when Deepak Chopra sells quantum transformation events.

As for me, someone who looks at how technology solves real problems, I haven't seen a single practical application for blockchain. Everything use case that props up the blockchain, can done just as effectively, if not more so, with a standard relational database like MySQL

Let's look at some of the "innovative" blockchain applications that were touted as the future:

There were a few big selling points for Web 3. One was decentralized social media. Here the promise was that you could control your data. You were in charge, not Big Tech. But think about it: social media is inherently public. Even in a private group, the point is to share.

The notion of blockchain somehow granting you privacy or control in a truly meaningful way, beyond what existing privacy settings offer, never made much sense. Are you really going to switch from Instagram or Twitter to a platform where every like, every comment, might be a transaction on a blockchain, leading to slow performance, complex user experiences, and potentially even fees for basic interactions? All problems traditional databases handle with ease.

There was supply chain tracking for enterprises. The idea was to track goods from their origin to the consumer on an immutable ledger for ultimate transparency. The flaw? Getting accurate data into the blockchain at the source still relies entirely on human input, which is just as prone to error, manipulation, and outright fraud as any data entry into a centralized system.

A well-designed, centralized database with proper auditing and access controls can achieve the exact same level of tracking, often far more efficiently and cost-effectively. Shipping companies track millions of shipping containers daily using traditional database systems, demonstrating a level of reliability and speed that blockchain solutions have yet to match at scale.

And then there were NFTs, or digital ownership of assets. They were very popular for some reason. The promise was using NFT to represent immutable ownership of real-world assets. For example, imagine your house deed or car title as an NFT. But in reality, the legal frameworks and the vast, complex infrastructure required to link a digital token to a physical asset, and then legally enforce that ownership, is beyond anything blockchain alone can provide.

A traditional land registry or vehicle title system, backed by the full weight of government authority, is still more robust, trusted, and practical.

The core features of blockchain, immutability and decentralization, were often either significant overkill or detrimental for applications where speed, privacy, and cost-efficiency are paramount. For the vast majority of business and consumer needs, a database offers better performance and is more reliable. The problems blockchain purported to solve were often either non-existent or already had perfectly good, existing solutions.

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The similarities between Web3 and AI ends at the hype. With AI, even amid the hype, we can immediately grasp its practical applications and see tangible results. We see AI drafting emails, generating images, analyzing data, and powering customer service chatbots. The benefits, even if imperfect, are immediate and understandable. We can interact with it, observe its output, and often understand its underlying logic.

With Web3, the supposed benefits were never tangible for the average person. It offered solutions to problems most people didn't have, or offered overly complex solutions to problems that were already solved. The grand vision of a decentralized internet, powered by blockchain, has largely fizzled out of mainstream conversation. We're not seeing widespread adoption of decentralized applications that genuinely improve our daily lives in ways traditional software cannot.

So, while cryptocurrency markets still fluctuate and attract speculative investment (and yes, still plenty of scams), the utopian vision of Web3 as a revolutionary shift in how we interact with the internet is, for all practical purposes, gone. But along the way, it siphoned the money of countless people with promises of decentralization and a new, fairer internet.

In the end, we don't have a decentralized system that fundamentally better caters to people. Instead, we're left with a lingering wave of fraudsters, often leveraging the latest AI tools, to extract the little money people have left.

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