Web3 - good or bad?

[MartynJC (UK)]

I notice a conference next month in Lisbon hosting BAYE (Bored Ape Yacht Club) all about NFTs, cybercurrency, drumming up what seemed to be nothing out of something. And to be honest I didn't have a clue what it was saying - so full of three (or now four letter) acronyms it reminded me of my old work design definition documents. So I did a bit of digging on Web2 and found these articles by Harvard Business Review:

https://hbr.org/2022/05/what-is-web3

Seems we are in for a revolution but at a cost - the cost being the "gas fees" that run to 1000's or 10,000's dollars per one megabyte of transaction data. Have a read and draw your own conclusions. Thoughts?

(If I could unplug I really would - but sadly it is impossible to operate bank accounts and without MFA and even submitting readings for electric bills here is done online and every corporation seems to require an App.)

[dice]

Blockchain tech is genuinely impressive and has some real practical applications for worlds where assets exist digitally at rest/exclusively digitally, ie currency (banking even at your local brick and mortar is a digital asset, gold standard is long gone).

Conversely, its useless for most implemented applications today where assets are physically tangible at rest, ie anti-counterfeiting for sneakers. Unfortunately I'm dead serious. You would simply just counterfeit the mechanism that maps the physically tangible asset in the real world to the blockchain, thats always going to be the weakest link.

As far as I can see the blockchain can only truly account for what exists solely on the blockchain - data.

And unfortunately, in a desperate drive to a) con money, and b) prove how viable the blockchain is, industries have popped up for the sake of existing - ie NFTs, DAOs. They're only benefitting from the blockchain for as long as the functions are on the blockchain. Once interaction is required outside of the blockchain, ie the executor of the DAO's decision to invest in a certain equity, its once again corruptible by the historic weak link - people.

In short its a fantastic technology with real promise for limited applications, that is being discredited by elaborate sham artists.