Is web3 well-defined?

Web3 does not have any universally agreed upon definition.

Web3 has been criticised as being an intentionally ambiguous buzzword.

Web3 has also been accused of becoming an intellectual nexus for many internet "thought leaders" to pontificate about grand visions of technical and financial reconfiguration largely detached from any concrete plans or implementations of these ideas. This may give rise to a bubble in the sale of security tokens detached from any progress on building real companies or technologies and may even disincentivize productivity in favour of pure speculation on ficticious commodites.

Web3 has also been described as a means of doing regulatory arbitrage on securites offerings to enrich venture capital firms using the broader public as exit liquidity.

References

  1. Morozov, Evgeny. 2022. ‘Web3: A Map in Search of Territory’. The Crypto Syllabus. 13 January 2022. https://the-crypto-syllabus.com/web3-a-map-in-search-of-territory/.
  2. O’Reilly, Tim. 2021. ‘Why It’s Too Early to Get Excited About Web3’. O’Reilly Media. 13 December 2021. https://www.oreilly.com/radar/why-its-too-early-to-get-excited-about-web3/.
  3. Patterson, Dan. 2022. ‘Internet Guru Tim O’Reilly on Web3: “Get Ready for the Crash”’. CBS News. 10 February 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/web3-cryptocurrency-nft-tim-oreilly/.
  4. Weaver, Nicholas. 2021. ‘The Web3 Fraud’. USENIX. 16 December 2021. https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/web3-fraud.
  5. Walch, Angela. 2017. ‘Blockchain’s Treacherous Vocabulary: One More Challenge for Regulators’. Journal of Internet Law 21 (2).
  6. Tante. 2021. ‘The Third Web’. Nodes in a Social Network (blog). 17 December 2021. https://tante.cc/2021/12/17/the-third-web/.
  7. Marlinspike, Moxie. 2022. ‘My First Impressions of Web3’. Moxie Marlinspike. 7 January 2022. https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html.
  8. Levine, Matt. 2022. ‘Web3 Takes Trust Too’. 10 January 2022. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-10/web3-takes-trust-too.
  9. Marx, Paris. n.d. ‘Why Web3, the Blockchain and Crypto Internet, Is Doomed to Fail’. Accessed 29 March 2022. https://www.businessinsider.com/web3-blockchain-crypto-internet-doomed-fail-doesnt-live-up-hype-2022-3?r=US&IR=T.
  10. Soatok. 2021. ‘Against Web3 and Faux-Decentralization’. Dhole Moments. 19 October 2021. https://soatok.blog/2021/10/19/against-web3-and-faux-decentralization/.
  11. Tonelli, Emily. 2022. ‘Internet Guru Tim O’Reilly: Crypto and NFTs Are “Pretty Serious Speculative Bubble”’. Decrypt. 10 February 2022. https://decrypt.co/92676/internet-guru-tim-oreilly-crypto-nfts-serious-speculative-bubble.
  12. Yaffe-Bellany, David. 2022. ‘Millions for Crypto Start-Ups, No Real Names Necessary’. The New York Times, 2 March 2022, sec. Technology. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/technology/cryptocurrency-anonymity-alarm.html.
  13. Zitron, Ed. 2022. ‘Solutions That Create Problems’. Substack newsletter. Ed Zitron’s Where’s Your Ed At (blog). 23 February 2022. https://ez.substack.com/p/solutions-that-create-problems.
  14. White, Molly. 2022. ‘It’s Not Still the Early Days’. Molly White. 14 January 2022. https://blog.mollywhite.net/its-not-still-the-early-days/.
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