Poking at Web3

Like everyone, I’ve been trying to understand the ideas of Web3. Not the mechanics so much as the value proposition, I suppose. Enough people I respect see something worthwhile there to pique my curiosity, and the ‘lol right-click’ critique is tiresome. So I’m poking at the edges.

Honestly, it’s heavy going. The community’s energy is weird and cultish, and the ingroup syntax – both technical and social – is arcane to the point of impenetrability: whatever else Web3 needs, it’s crying out for competent designers and writers.

Most of the art is not to my taste, shall we say. Some of it’s outright dreadful. That’s forgivable. The bigger problem, though, is the centrality of the wallet, the token, and so on. I’m avowedly hostile to crypto’s ecological impact and its inegalitarian, ancappish positioning. Crypto folks have promised change is right around the corner for a long time now – call me when it finally happens.

So… grave reservations. But that aside, there is something conceptually appealing there, right? Mutual flourishing, squads, communities weaving support networks that heal system blindspots. I feel those urges too. Perhaps I’m just a dreamy leftist / ageing Millennial-X cusper, though, but my current solution to this is simple: give people cash. (More on that later, but as an aside, if you’re lucky enough to have money, consider throwing some at people who are trying to carve out fairer, less exploitative tech too. It’s not a lucrative corner of the industry.)

Anyway, I’m still a Web3 sceptic, but the intentions… yeah, they’re pretty cool. If the community can become more accessible and phase out the ugly stuff (most obviously proof-of-work blockchains, but also this notion that transactions are the true cornerstone of mutuality), I’ll be officially curious.