We are at a stage where everyone is overestimating what can be accomplished in a year and underestimating what can be accomplished in ten years.
The entirety of Web3 is based on the fundamental belief that decentralization will provide freedom and equality for all . In fact, Web3 is driving the largest consolidation of power in recent memory so far .
What is Web3? This is an all-encompassing term used to describe an internet powered by blockchain . The basic principle is that platforms and applications can be built and owned by users . Transferring power to the internet community is a crusade.
In contrast, Web2 is dominated by a handful of big players like Google, Apple, and Facebook . These centralized companies often reap billions of dollars in profits simply because they are “ middlemen . ”
There’s a lot of reverence for “ hitting Big Tech ” and the things they’ve built their trillions of wealth on can now be automated through code in the form of smart contracts .
Just ask, who doesn't want to remove the " middleman " in our daily life ? This can effectively increase speed , improve security and reduce costs .
But the question remains, is Web3 really that good?
The Reality of Web3
While blockchain was supposed to herald the advent of decentralization of power and wealth, we're seeing it do just the opposite.
According to Statista , the top 9% of accounts - hold 80% of the total market capitalization (~$41 billion) of NFTs (on the Ethereum blockchain) .
To put that in perspective, the richest 10% of Americans own nearly 80% of the country's total wealth . This wealth gap is seen as a major topic of political debate.
If Bitcoin is represented as a country: it will have the most unequal distribution of wealth among all countries on earth.
And, with tech giants like MicroStrategy and Tesla amassing billions of dollars' worth of cryptocurrency at a time, this centralization will only increase.
Furthermore, as long as Bitcoin remains a proof-of-work cryptocurrency , current players will simply continue to reinvest profits and increase their output, which is also disastrous for the natural environment .
Another problematic trend is that new crypto projects dramatically increase their internal ownership at the outset .
Prominent cryptocurrencies like BNB, AVAX, and SOL all maintain over 40% internal ownership at launch , making them less decentralized in nature .
Finally, when we talk about Web3, we cannot fail to mention the huge amount of money that VCs (venture capital institutions) have invested in startups.
Prominent crypto investment funds such as Pantera and a16z are rapidly establishing a monopoly in the space.
They have investments in most of the high-profile Web3 companies , receiving dual-class shares with 20 times the voting power of common stock .
This means they reserve the right to have a huge influence on any major decisions the company makes in the future .
(Blockchain project invested by Pantera)
It can be seen from the above that in the current state, Web3 is premised on the existence of a middleman .
Not only that, but most decentralized applications, or "dapps," rely on centralized infrastructure and services .
Companies such as Infura and Quicknode provide the necessary node-as-a-service infrastructure . Additionally, platforms like Alchemy and Moralis help build and scale dapps 10x faster .
Developers do not and cannot run their own servers , which is extremely time-consuming and capital-intensive. They also don't want to rewrite every line of code, basically having to reinvent the wheel every time they build a new dapp.
This inherent need for centralized products/services will not disappear in the foreseeable future .
Web3 isn't that bad either
Despite all of the above issues, there are undoubtedly game-changing technologies in Web3 .
DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) have the potential to revolutionize how communities and companies are governed. NFT technology offers extremely diverse possibilities, including revenue sharing, GameFi, staking, and more. DeFi enables everyday investors to access new asset classes, lower fees, increase APY, and generally take greater control of their financial future.
In addition, among the various existing decentralized facilities, the most decisive one is IPFS/Filecoin .
First of all, IPFS solves the problems of storage centralization and data ownership . Allowing decentralized projects to run in a decentralized network , data producers can fully control the ownership of data .
Filecoin , which itself is operated by DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) , opens the door for small and medium storage providers to enter the storage market, so that developers do not need to rely on centralized servers . While saving costs, truly realize the decentralization of the storage market .
The launch of FVM (Filecoin Virtual Machine) will also promote the development of the open source community based on IPFS programming . This will greatly reduce developers' dependence on centralized programming services .
However, it will take a long time for projects like Filecoin to dominate the market, and its technology needs to be overcome by the team to truly replace the current centralized storage.
say at the end
We are at a stage where everyone is overestimating what can be accomplished in a year and underestimating what can be accomplished in ten years.
Regarding the concept of metaverse , which is so big and boundless, we should not expect it to be realized within a year. For an ecologically based project like Filecoin , we should not think that its current start can represent its achievements in 10 years.
Don’t simply accept the hype generated by macroeconomic cycles, but teach yourself long-term sustainable use cases for blockchain technology. In this way, we will not blindly become leeks in the current market, but truly become the builders of the future Internet ecology.