whatisweb3

Why does Uniswap need to replace all of our exchanges within a two year timespan in order to be seen as useful, novel, and interesting tech? When was the last time you applied this standard to the rest of our technology? HN can admit that Tor, Scuttlebutt, 3D printing, text-to-image GANs is interesting and useful tech, despite it not taking over average users daily lives.

The basic premises of crypto are to be decentralized and permissionless systems that support peer-to-peer forms of exchange and ownership, and they largely succeed in their defined goals. The goal of these protocols is to provide new tools, not to replace every corner of fiat and financial systems.

There is plenty of NFT art that does take advantage of on chain royalties. Art Basel is happening now and features a lot of NFTs.

NFT royalties often relate to resale, not media access. But in some web3 platforms, sales and revenue could be directed automatically to creators through smart contract functionality.

Blockchain solves the double spend problem here, without reliance on a central clearing house.

The basic premise of web3 is decentralization of value transfer and digital ownership. Examples of value transfer: payments, swapping assets, escrow, auctions, crowdfunds. Examples of digital ownership: limited-edition art ownership, domain names, collectibles, game assets, shares, access tokens, user accounts, private keys, and maybe eventually other assets.

Real-world use cases could replace parts of PayPal, Patreon, Bandcamp or Kickstarter with a crypto-native solution to decentralize some parts of payments, user accounts, and ownership. Where is the killer Web3 app? It's only been a ~year or so since Web3 has entered mainstream consciousness, and the few-years-old tech is still far from a usable state. Crypto has a long way yet to go: Proof of Stake, rollups, zk privacy preservation, light clients, and a host of other solutions need to be first solved for it to be widely usable. In the meantime, most current Web3 apps are best to view as high-risk "beta" experiments.

> The Web was about making information accessible to all, Web 3 is trying to provide value to a few, where everything is done for the benefit of the few rather than benefit of all.

This is a gross misunderstanding of web3. Take a look at NFT art world, almost all the media and information is freely accessible, to the point that it is regularly ridiculed with "Right Click Save" by the out-crowd. This is distinctly different than Patreon and Bandcamp models, where artists might put digital media behind a paywall, making the information only accessible to a limited few. See more here[1]

[1] https://mirror.xyz/herndondryhurst.eth/S-W2ZXRbrcy8bVGrKwMXS...