According to reports, if Web3 is really the next gold mine of the Internet, why haven’t I heard that developers are developing more practical applications? Why aren’t more developers rushing in to grab their fortunes?
The rapid growth of crypto-assets and the many problems with Web3 is really disconcerting. Many people believe that Web3 will create a large number of new applications, and cryptocurrency is the “lubricant” between new applications.
Since last November, $1 trillion has flowed out of the “cryptocurrency bubble,” but the market as a whole has $2 trillion left. Scary scale, but what is the end-use of digital assets?
Those who are optimistic about Web3 believe that the blockchain technology platform will become the cornerstone of new applications. In the untrusted network world, digital tokens will become a medium for various interactions.
In the future, “digital gatekeepers” will no longer be required to formulate rules, they will not be able to share a large number of profits, and the ultimate controller is the user.
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Sounds great, but so far I don’t see any significant use for this technology. NFT and decentralized finance can be said to be the most popular applications at the moment, but they are mainly based on financial speculation and regulatory arbitrage. What happens when speculators influence the market and regulators decide to plug the loopholes?
There used to be a saying in Silicon Valley that meant something along the lines of If you want to know where the next big idea is coming from, look where the capital and the brightest developers are going. Going back to Web3, there is no shortage of capital, but very few developers tie their fortunes to new trends.
Moreover, Electric Capital stated in a recent report that there were approximately 18,000 developers active in the crypto world as of the end of last year. Does that sound like a lot? But Redpoint venture capitalist Tomasz Tunguz says it’s not much, given that there are 16.4 million JavaScript developers alone. The reality is even worse, with less than 5,000 people who spend at least 10 days a month developing Web3.
Why is this happening? There is an explanation for reference: developing a decentralized application requires mastering a new language, and very few developers master it. Tanguzi believes that this has limited Web3 companies to rapid growth, although this situation may improve in the future as more tools are introduced and developers’ jobs will become easier.
It takes more than that to make Web3 technology more practical. Ethereum can process up to about 30 transactions per second, and transaction fees are inflated due to bottlenecks. In recent months, a lot of investment into the crypto market has been pouring into infrastructure, and better infrastructure is needed to develop and run blockchain apps.
It’s no use worrying, the “revolution” will take years to come, and don’t forget that Ethereum was born about 7 years ago. The first Web3 developers broke into the crypto market in 2018, when Bitcoin first took off. Today, only about one-fifth of those people are still active in the market. During the latest wave, there were rough twice as many developers breaking in, but when winter hits, how many of those developers will stick around?
If Web3’s future is clearer, it doesn’t matter that it’s slower. Just look at the Internet, when it emerged in the mid-1990s, everyone saw the possibilities at a glance and dreamed of moving all kinds of activities online, like shopping, and watching movies. But even so, no one thought that search and social networking would become such a huge gold mine.
For Web3 technology, the “what” may not matter, but the “how”. Decentralization is fascinating, and it could revolutionize Internet activity. If a large number of online users fail to see results and only see rampant financial speculation and meme creation, idealists may not be able to persist for long and leave.
As for cryptocurrency, its original intention is to make the distribution of wealth more equitable, but the status quo is worrying, and cryptocurrency wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few people.
In retrospect, the financial environment that fueled the boom in the crypto industry is now starting to ebb, as inflation is terrifying and interest rates are rising. A similar situation led to the bursting of the Internet bubble that year. Although a group of companies with real breakthroughs such as Amazon, Yahoo, and eBay survived, countless startups became victims. Who will survive the Web3 wave? Can’t see clearly now.
Furthermore, Web3.0 is just a concept word created by people in the industry. The most common explanation is that the information on the website can directly interact with the relevant information of other websites, and the information of multiple websites can be integrated and used at the same time through the third-party information platform.
Users have their own data on the Internet and can use it on different websites; completely based on the web, the system functions that can only be achieved by complex system programs can be realized with a browser; after the user data is audited, it is synchronized with the network data.
