Is Web3 bullshit?

Molly White, software engineer and creator of satirical website Web3 is Going Just Great, claims the Web3 industry is, at best, built on buzzwords – and at worst on “outright scams”.

The question must be asked. What is Web3?

“There’s definitely going to be a blockchain involved, but the rest is pretty fuzzy,” said Molly White, a software engineer, writer and Wikipedia editor best known for the website Web3 is Going Just Great.

Over the past number of months, the shine has come off cryptocurrencies, NFTs and blockchain in a big way. Indeed, many prominent crypto founders are now under investigation, awaiting trial or behind bars. Events have called into question the entire Web3 concept – at least as it’s currently presented by its more vocal advocates.

“The thing about a term like Web3 is you don’t necessarily know what it is until it has happened. You don’t know what that fundamental shift is going to be that brings about a sea change in the web; that deserves the name Web3,” said Molly.

Different but better, or different but worse?

“We’re stuck guessing at what Web3 might be, unless we’re a venture capitalist or a startup, in which case we have to speak decisively in the hopes of acquiring funding – even if we turn out to be wrong,” Molly continued.

While many would agree that the social media-dominated, data-harvesting era of the web ought to come to an end, it’s unclear whether the change Web3 offers is any good. “You can’t assume that because something is different, it’s better. It’s possible for something to be different and also worse,” said Molly.

Outright scams and grifts

According to Molly, this new industry mostly relies on a series of buzzwords.

“Common buzzwords included ‘democratisation’, ‘decentralisation’, ‘censorship resistance’. The goals all sounded compelling … but when it came time to realise how crypto and blockchain technologies would actually deliver this future web, it was mostly unclear. And unclear was often the best scenario,” said the writer.

And the worst case scenario? “Outright scams and grifts.”

Molly offered a warning, too: “When an entire industry emerges and begins to sell this idea to the general public that a better web is only possible through a technology that shows little indication of being up to the task … and convinces average people that their only way to financial stability is to bet their savings on technologies they don’t understand, ‘because this is the future’, then it’s worth paying attention.”

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Main image of Molly White at Web Summit 2022: Sam Barnes/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)