this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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I remember a few years ago getting all these webdev articles about web3.0 decentralised apps, and all I could think during and after reading was how fucking inefficient it all was. How insanely slow, inefficient and wasteful.
Are there any examples of web3.0 apps that actually do anything? It's all a fucking scam, isn't it...
flat fuckin zero
most of this shit doesn't exist
NFTs exist
lol
just a whole bunch of cranes trying to lift themselves
listen, 99% of projects trying to make a self-lifting crane fail. but can you imagine the money you could make if you invested in the 1% that succeeded in spite of physics and common sense? send your investment to the following monero address (SEC enforcement agents do not have my permission to view this post!)
Fortune favours the brave!
(I might be paraphrasing Folding Ideas here, I'm not sure)
The developers of these apps didn't use blockchain or crypto because they were the best way to build the app. They used blockchain and crypto because they love them and think everyone should be using them. In fact, the only reason these apps exist is to encourage people to use cryptocurrency.
So no, there are no examples.
You can extend this thinking to see how so many projects are just blockchain enthusiasts struggling with the “nothing is born on the blockchain” problem. That’s why they embrace the metaverse and also, imo, a big part of why they are open to transhumanist ideas.
Blockchain is a solution desperately in search of a problem.
It solves very real imaginary problems
The haveno decentralized exchange looks interesting. I don't even know if that counts as Web 3.
https://haveno.exchange/
But even those crazy guys aren't expecting you to attach your wallet to a web browser.
I think there are some valid options for micropayment distributed systems around social networking, message passing, especially with lots of spam in the environment. Like I'm willing to pay a fraction of money to send a message and support the network I use.. like Lemmy
Like imagine if every post on Lemmy cost a fraction of the penny, and the money went to support the The hosting instance. That could be interesting.
But the vast majority of things that claim to be web3 distributed applications aren't. They're centralized, they just use crypto as a way to centralize the money.
PoolTogether a no loss lottery.
Essentially a savings account that enters you in daily and weekly draws to win. Prize draw is funded by the pools "interest" made in that week.
Need your savings again, pull it out and spend it.. .
I don't think most people would consider it web3 but there's stuff based on IPFS and related/similar projects that for example let you chat with people without need for any sort of server (technically, you need some "server" to bootstrap yourself into the network but it's very much a small detail and you can just store a list of peers you've seen and hope that they'll be enough to bootstrap you.)
The whole "web3.0" and blockchain thing is such a damned shame because it has tainted projects like IPFS by association, and IPFS (really mostly libp2p which ipfs is built on) mostly actually lives up to the hype around decentralization, at least for networking nerds.
I think my favourite example of how libp2p/ipfs can revolutionize things so far is https://hyprspace.io, one guy was able to put together a VPN that is so much nicer to use than stuff like wireguard, you just run it on every device, configure the IP you want the devices to have, and so long as they can discover each other over some connection (switching between connections is still janky sadly) It Just Works. Yeah the average person is probably bored to tears but to me that's.. magic, that's how networking should have been for the last 20 years!