Everyone in Web3 chants the same gospel: "Decentralization. Liberation. No banks. No middlemen." It sounds heroic. Almost revolutionary.

But pause for a second. Are we truly free? Or did we simply swap one prison guard for another—shiny, trendy, and wrapped in blockchain code?

The Old Prison: A Familiar Warden

In the old world of Web2, the guards were obvious, and they were the people we knew and hated. It was a clear hierarchy ruled by a handful of tech giants. Facebook controlled our social connections, dictating what news we saw and what opinions went viral. Amazon became the master of commerce, holding the keys to what products reached the market. Google decided what information was accessible, shaping our understanding of reality.

We raged against this system. We hated the data harvesting, the opaque algorithms, the way our lives were monetized. We wanted out. So we ran. We fled into the digital wilderness of Web3.

The New Prison: The Same Shackles, Different Names

But who holds the keys here? The guards are still present, but they're disguised.

They are the developers who write the code, embedding their biases and power into the very rules of the network. They decide what a "decentralized" future looks like and what features are prioritized.

They are the whales—early adopters or institutional players who hold massive amounts of tokens. Their votes in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) aren’t suggestions; they’re final orders. When one person holds 10% of a governance token, their single "vote" can drown out thousands of smaller voices, effectively centralizing power.

They are the validators who process and approve transactions. While we believe we’re submitting a transaction to "the network," it's these powerful entities—often large corporations or server farms—that determine if our transactions go through and how quickly. They are the new gatekeepers.

Do they look friendlier than Silicon Valley CEOs? Maybe. Do they wield less power? Not at all.

And here’s the brutal truth: Most of us don’t read the code behind the smart contracts we worship. We don’t audit the security. We just trust. Blindly. We blindly mint an NFT, blindly stake a token, and blindly follow a leader on X.

We didn’t kill the hierarchy. We replaced it. We didn’t break the prison. We just painted the walls with cooler colors and added some crypto art.

What Freedom Really Means

Philosophy whispers a hard truth: freedom isn’t about who rules you. It’s about whether you rule yourself.

Web3 gives us tools, yes. It provides the blueprints for a different kind of system. But if our mindset hasn’t changed, if we still crave rulers, leaders, and systems to lean on, then nothing’s different.

The Web3 space has its own new gods—the influencers who promote questionable projects and the founders who hold a disproportionate share of a token supply. They become the new opinion leaders, their tweets the new decrees. We're still addicted to the spectacle, to the promise of quick gains, to being told what to do.

We're still slaves. Slaves to whales. Slaves to code. Slaves to the same old human hunger for control—only disguised as innovation.

So here’s the final question:

Are you really free in Web3? Or did you just trade your warden for one who speaks the language of decentralization?

Best Siallagan