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: 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 boom was people saying they didn't care much for "Web3" itself, but they genuinely believed blockchain was a promising technology. I've heard it countless times. But honestly, as someone who looks at how technology solves real problems, I haven't seen a single practical application for blockchain that couldn't be done just as effectively, if not more so, with a standard relational database like MySQL. Worse, a striking number of people evangelizing blockchain weren't, and aren't, developers themselves. Let alone skilled in database management or distributed systems. It's not too different than when Deepak Chopra sells quantum transformation events.

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

• Decentralized Social Media: The big selling point here was "controlling your data" and escaping the clutches of 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.
• Supply Chain Tracking: This was a darling of the enterprise blockchain narrative. 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 genuinely match at scale.
• Digital Ownership of Assets (beyond JPEGs): While NFTs gained notoriety for digital art, the broader promise was using them to represent immutable ownership of real-world assets – imagine your house deed or car title as an NFT. The reality is, the legal frameworks and the vast, complex infrastructure required to genuinely link a digital token to a physical asset, and then legally enforce that ownership, extend far beyond anything blockchain alone can provide. A traditional land registry or vehicle title system, backed by the full weight of government authority, remains demonstrably more robust, trusted, and practical.

In essence, 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 proven reliability. The "problems" blockchain purported to solve were often either non-existent or already had perfectly good, existing solutions.

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The difference between the hype of Web3 and the current buzz around Artificial Intelligence is stark. 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 truly 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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