Blockchain: Why Now?

I first became aware of the concept of blockchain sometime in the early 2010s. I followed the major newspoints during the decade, mostly around BitcoinSilk Road, the Winklevii investments, Etherium, the late-decade forks, and the 2017 value hockeystick.

To me, the concepts of decentralized ledgers seemed simple enough, yet potentially revolutionary. To be honest, it wasn’t until 2018 or so that I started to understand and accept the possibility of crypto as a store of value—although with a likely future of repeated crashes.

I became aware of NFTs in late 2020 with everyone else, although I had understood the blockchain value proposition of non-fungibility from the beginning. And that’s when the madness really started: Beeple, JPEG Summer, LeBron and Snoop, and countless other topics.

It’s this maddening acceleration that has primarily fueled my interest. Despite being early on awareness and understanding, I’m as late to the game of belief and investment as most of the general public. I’m fascinated by the potential of the technologies, but perplexed by what I see as unresolved risks and concerns.

Branding the Revolution

One of the most exciting aspects of blockchain and its related and derivative technologies, and an indicator that there will be many diverse applications, is the range of names that have been proposed to characterize and brand the tech.

Web3

Web3 (or Web 3.0) has been floated as a term to describe, specifically, the decentralized internet paradigm that may arise due to blockchains. Because the previous “version” names for characterizing Wold Wide Web (WWW) epochs achieved widespread connotation with the leading technologies of the time, blockchain technophiles hope to tie their darling to the third era of the internet.

Web 1.0
A retronymn describing the internet from its leap to public awareness in the 1990s to the launch of worldwide social networks; The era of static HTML webpages; The decentralized, read-only web where content was the product
Web 2.0
The period from the rise of Facebook in about 2004 to about 2020; The era of web platforms, social networking, and dynamic, database-driven web and mobile apps; The centralized, read-write participatory web where users were the product
Web3
Began with the explosion of interest in crypto during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020; The era powered by decentralized databases; The decentralized web without intermediaries

Potential Blockchain Benefits and Risks

There is so much to learn and understand about this collection of emerging technologies. I am hopeful that smarter people have addressed or will resolve the potential risks, and that these benefits can make use of the crazy velocity around these technologies for the greater good.

Log

  1. 20220121 – Dan Olson publishes The Problem With NFTs, enumerating numerous challenging aspects of blockchain
  2. 20220107 – Moxie Marlinspike (security scientist Matthew Rosenfeld) published a scathing critique of Web3 just before leaving messaging and payments app Signal, “I don’t think it’s on a trajectory to deliver us from centralized platforms, I don’t think it will fundamentally change our relationship to technology, and I think the privacy story is already below par for the internet”
  3. 20211228 – M.G. Seigler says, on Web3 hype, “Many people want Web3 to win because it means a quick buck … eventually people are going to lose some of those dollars, digital or not. And, sadly, it’s likely to be the people who can least afford to do so.”
  4. 20211213 – Tim O’Reilly, who coined “Web 2.0”: Why it’s too early to get excited about Web3
  5. 20211129 – Gavin Wood talks with Wired, saying, “Less trust, more truth.” He thinks that trust=faith in the good intentions of others, and that blockchain represents an absolute, transparent, and irrevocabile truth
  6. 20211123 – Platformer journalist Casey Newton says, “ConstitutionDAO participants largely lost their intended refunds to network fees is worth noting, too – promising though it might be, Ethereum is so slow and expensive that I have come to think of it as the world’s worst computer.”
  7. 20211115 – Anil Dash (made the first on-blockchain attempt to verify digital artworks as unique in 2014 with Kevin McCoy) discusses the difficulty of characterizing new tech, and why it’s challenging to be a creator and commentator: “There’s a not-insignificant personal toll to participating in any criticism about systems that are favored by the most powerful and wealthy people in an industry.” I appreciate his “empathy for people who participate in NFT spaces in good faith.”
  8. 20211109 – Tim Cook owns crypto and it is something that Apple is, “looking into.”
  9. 20211104 – Andreessen Horowitz invested in Mythical Games, a developer of a platform that enables world-builders to integrate blockchain-based play-to-earn economies into their games, allowing players to become stakeholders
  10. 20120812 – Coinbase Y Combinator Demo Day pitch deck

Additional Blockchain Terms and Definitions

Stablecoin
A cryptocurrency that holds value alongside a reference currency (like USD) or commodity price
Apeing
Getting involved (usually via a crypto purchase) at the launch of a new coin or project due to fear of missing out, usually only to move on to the next greatest thing; “they ape from project to project”
Decentralized Autonomous Orgainzation (DAO)
Raze the requirement for a management teams because every team member is a stakeholder