This is Part 2 of the āVenturing Deeper into the Crypto Idea Mazeā series. Read Part 1: Sound Money and Open Finance and Part 3: Open Law.
In Jon Choiās āEnter the Crypto Mazeā post, he identified three primary roadmaps for crypto: Sound Money, Web3, and Open Money. In Part 1, I shared my thoughts on Sound Money and Open Finance. Now letās explore Web3, which focuses on technological decentralization rather than economic decentralization.
Instead of focusing on āeconomic decentralizationā like the other two narratives, the Web3 narrative focuses on ātechnological decentralizationā especially with regards to the internet itself. This can take effect from the bare bones hardware layer with things like mesh networks all the way up to the data layer.
This can be extremely important for things like data privacy, free speech, and fighting censorship from governments.
First use of this generation of decentralized tech actively helping fight authoritarian regimes? #IPFS #catalonia https://t.co/aU7wQCsf7Z
ā Sunny Aggarwal (@sunnya97) October 1, 2017
I think thereās a number of really cool projects in the Web3 space:
But to be completely honest, while all of these initiatives are extremely important, I always felt that they seem to be a bit of an odd fit for blockchains.
For example, in my opinion, most of the above products donāt really need a blockchain on their own. Maybe if they need to accept payments, they can accept crypto, or better yet use Interledger, but I wouldnāt call that a ācrypto appā.
The one use case I can see as actually needing a blockchain is DNS and other name services. Although, while it is the most obvious and easiest use case, Iām not really sure itās the most valuable or important. As Iāve mentioned before to Handshake folks: is ICANN really the biggest centralized threat on the web that we could be focusing on?
(Btw, another actually useful good use case for blockchains in Web3 would be a decentralized alternative to Github.)
I tend to think of the decentralized web movement as a somewhat independent movement that has been running in parallel to the crypto movement (with a lot of cross-pollination of people and ideas between the two). And while a lot of the DWeb projects chose to add a blockchain component, usually to piggyback on the momentum of the movement, Iām not sure itās really the future of crypto itself.
That being said, once again, I am really excited to see all the stuff coming out of it. The decentralized web is incredibly important for maintaining an open internet, even if blockchains might not be the primary tool for achieving it.
This is Part 2 of a 3-part series exploring the crypto idea maze. Continue reading: