Hi everyone!
I'm sure I'm not alone in seeing a lot of companies getting very interested in the Web3.0 and the Metaverse. We're all aware of Facebook's change to Meta, Walmart's terrible plans for the Metaverse, Under Armour and Adidas selling out their NFTs, etc.
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Obviously all the companies who want to join the Metaverse and/or Web3.0 want to increase their marketshare and the value they create for their shareholders. We shouldn't expect anything more from them... ideally Meta wants to create the Metaverse that it controls. Control is marketshare after all.
The answer to this potential corporate control of the internet is the Web3.0. My understanding is that the Web3.0 is a community-focused internet where the members of that community all have ownership of their own network... but how does that work exactly, and is that is what is being built.
Blockchain technology is a great way to help facilitate that ownership... but it's also incredibly inefficient. Regardless of the potential of Bitcoin to help encourage renewable investment, as I discussed here, Bitcoin miners are always going to go for the cheapest and most immediately available energy they can find - they're not going to care if it's dirty coal or a cool volcano.
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Ethereum has so much potential to be a world computer... but it's so centralized. Let's not forget about The DAO that forced ETH to erase a $50M theft. Vitalik went with ETH (~ $3000 per ETH) while the unchanged fork ETC has not done so well (~ $47 per ETC). It's hard to claim we're in a decentralized world where everyone follows Vitalik... or when it's still possible that Satoshi Nakamoto could sell their 5% of all Bitcoins tomorrow... or CZ could cash out or Coinbase could get hacked.
I often tell people that Hive is an incredible example of Web3.0. It is censorship-resistant and has numerous dApps and front-ends to access the blockchain. I love the Hive Developer Fund and that all the witnesses need to be voted in, usually based on how they are contributing to the entire ecosystem.
Let's be completely transparent though, a delegated proof of stake means that the rich will always call the shots. You vote based on the amount of Hive Power you have, which absolutely encourages people to invest and stake into the network but the people at the top of the pyramid that hold so much power. We saw how the exchanges worked against the community during The Great Battle for Steem and I know I'm not the first person to wonder how fair Hive is for everyone... or if it's smart to add all our thoughts and transactions onto an immutable public blockchain.
If the top, let's say, 11 Hive Witnesses all decide on a code change that only benefits them... would the other 16,000 daily Hive users actually be able to stop them?
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I've wondered for a long time if the people fighting for Web3.0 so hard don't want to change the world for the better... they just want to change the world so that they are at the top. Are we working hard to make Peter Thiel more rich, giving more power to his authoritarian political wishes? Or providing more data for his company Palantir to influence us with or send us to jail?
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When you look at all the NFT scams around, the huge amount of washing-trading and money-laundering, 80% of OpenSea NFTs were plagarised, only people with huge audiences are making money from NFTs and how hard it is for retail investors who aren't in the initial cool secret group behind NFTs or CryptoCoins to actually make money from their investments.
Will blockchain technology actually improve the lives of us all, or will crypto just crash and make everyone angry? Angry people tend not to make great decisions, especially at the voting booth.
We have to be careful that in the Web3.0 world we are creating actual value that actually improves real people's lives... and doesn't just rely on new money to come in to bail out the old money.
I've been following Gala Games relatively closely and they seem to be consistently damaging their own tokenomics with non-stop NFT sales. The Townstar game's token, TownCoin doesn't look like it can possibly rally anytime soon... and one thing I can't quite seem to work out is what the Gala Nodes actually do? What are they powering? Gala doesn't have a blockchain running yet.
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Axie Infinity seems to be a straight up dead ponzi scheme at this point...
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There are some things that I think, and hope, make it through the current Web3.0 trash fire.
I definitely appreciate that there are so many makeup tutorials on Hive that seem to be providing those creators with real life-changing value and options. I really love the current curation model, but I'm not super sure that it's spreading the power of the network out or not. I think there is a strong use case here for brands to buy up Hive Power to reward creators for creating content with their products.... but that's obviously not going to happen while all eyeballs are on Tik Tok.
I do think that the Koinos model of Blockchain Frameworks could potentially be the next innovation in the blockchain space that could allow more equitable use cases with their fee-less Proof of Burn model. I think we'll just have to see who is building what on using their blockchain technology and the overall network affect, but I can absolutely guarantee that the initial mining process was completely fair.
I'm encouraged by the Interledger Protocol and their mission to fix a number of issues with the internet. I'm personally working on a project to hopefully build a Web3.0 solution to the absolutely insane control that large tech firms have over social media that I'll hopefully unleash later this year.
Finally, my old friend Splinterlands seems to constantly be making decisions to show that it's not just a 'first in wins' scenario. The much, much, much cheaper cards from the latest Chaos Legion edition seem to be stacking up incredibly well against the older, more expensive, cards. Secondly, the development team seem to be putting the community first with a lot of their decisions and don't seem to just be trying to get rich while NFTs are in hype mode. The new functionality their building (Land expansion in particular) should add a lot of extra fun and strategy into the game. Lastly, even if the tokens, SPS and DEC completely went to zero... I think I'd still play. I love the strategy of it... and as long as I feel like I'm still "progressing" towards getting new cards to add to the strategy I find it super enjoyable.
Splinterlands may always require new money to come into it to keep people playing, and eventually they will run out of new money... but as long as it feels fun and challenging to play I think I'll still be there.
The future of Web3.0 looks pretty cloudy honestly... there's a lot that can go wrong which could wipe out the finances and hopes of millions of people while the rich who enticed everyone in would probably be completely fine.... however, there are a couple of stars shining through the clouds that I'm excited about.
I think it's really important for everyone to look at their own motivation and the motivation of the builders of Web3.0 apps to figure out... is what is being built for the good of humanity, or just to enrich a selected few?
Thanks so much for reading, I'd love to see what you think if you'd care to comment below.
Posted from my blog with Exxp : https://lifebe.com.au/opinion/will-web3-0-create-a-libertarian-dystopian/