Hasnain says:

One of the best analyses I’ve seen on crypto/web3. So well sourced and thought out. And this was thrown together quickly! I wonder what the author would do with more time to prepare.

“I'm a big believer in Bill Joy's Law of Startups, "success is inversely proportional to the amount of money you have". For $2.5M we got Nvidia to working silicon that was revolutionary in two different respects. Right now, there is way too much money. If a system is to be decentralized, it has to have a low barrier to entry. If it has a low barrier to entry, competition will ensure it has low margins. Low margin businesses don't attract venture capital. VCs are pouring money into cryptocurrency and "web3" companies. This money is not going to build systems with low barriers to entry and thus low margins. Thus the systems that will result from this flood of money will not be decentralized, no matter what the sales pitch says.

Despite all the cleverness and hype, the technology just isn't that good. It is both extraordinarily inefficient, and extraordinarily insecure. Nicholas Weaver points out that the "Ethereum computer" is 1/5000 as powerful as a Raspbery Pi. and that for the cost of 1 second of its use you can buy nearly 60 Raspberry Pis. Moxie Marlinspike points out that an NFT is a link to a file of metadata that links to the image it purports to represent, so neither is guaranteed to exist or be valid. You have only to glance at Molly White's Web3 is going just great timeline wonder why anyone thinks this "wretched hive of scum and villainy" should be the future of the Web.”

Posted on 2022-02-12T08:23:59+0000