cdixonCollected web3 twitter threads
Why web3 matters Chris Dixon @cdixon There’s a lot of talk lately about the possibility of a prolonged financial downturn, reminiscent of 2008. 2008 was a difficult time for many people. 2,951 9:39 AM • Jun 27, 2022 Composability is to software as compounding interest is to financeBlockchains are the new app storesTokens are a new digital primitive, analogous to the websiteGoing from Web 2 to Web 3 - “Your take rate is my opportunity”The web3 playbook: using token incentives to bootstrap new ...
cdixonToys, Secrets, and Cycles: Lessons from the 2000s
I started my internet career in the early 2000s during the dot-com bust. It's hard to picture this now, but the internet was a thing that people used only intermittently, to check email or plan travel or do some research. The average internet user spent about 30 minutes a day online, compared to about 7 hours today. To use the internet, you had to sit down in front of a desktop PC and "log on" (most people still had dial-up), nothing like the always-on, high-speed mobile internet we use ...
cdixonWhy web3 matters
Why Web 3 matters 🧵 Web 1 (roughly 1990-2005) was about open protocols that were decentralized and community-governed. Most of the value accrued to the edges of the network — users and builders. Web 2 (roughly 2005-2020) was about siloed, centralized services run by corporations. Most of the value accrued to a handful of companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. We are now at the beginning of the Web 3 era, which combines the decentralized, community-governed ethos of Web 1 with th...
cdixon.org
cdixonCollected web3 twitter threads
Why web3 matters Chris Dixon @cdixon There’s a lot of talk lately about the possibility of a prolonged financial downturn, reminiscent of 2008. 2008 was a difficult time for many people. 2,951 9:39 AM • Jun 27, 2022 Composability is to software as compounding interest is to financeBlockchains are the new app storesTokens are a new digital primitive, analogous to the websiteGoing from Web 2 to Web 3 - “Your take rate is my opportunity”The web3 playbook: using token incentives to bootstrap new ...
cdixonToys, Secrets, and Cycles: Lessons from the 2000s
I started my internet career in the early 2000s during the dot-com bust. It's hard to picture this now, but the internet was a thing that people used only intermittently, to check email or plan travel or do some research. The average internet user spent about 30 minutes a day online, compared to about 7 hours today. To use the internet, you had to sit down in front of a desktop PC and "log on" (most people still had dial-up), nothing like the always-on, high-speed mobile internet we use ...
cdixonWhy web3 matters
Why Web 3 matters 🧵 Web 1 (roughly 1990-2005) was about open protocols that were decentralized and community-governed. Most of the value accrued to the edges of the network — users and builders. Web 2 (roughly 2005-2020) was about siloed, centralized services run by corporations. Most of the value accrued to a handful of companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. We are now at the beginning of the Web 3 era, which combines the decentralized, community-governed ethos of Web 1 with th...
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Blockchains are computers that can make commitments.
You pay some performance overhead for this property.
If someone says something like “blockchains are slower than traditional computers” — yes that is true.
It’s a trade off between performance and making long term commitments to users and developers.
The performance delta between computers that can make commitments (=blockchains) and computers that can’t (=Google/AWS servers) will shrink over time.
An awesome feature of blockchains is that anyone can join permissionlessly and become part of the network as miners/validators.
But we also need some system for screening participants to avoid spam/ attacks.
Hence proof-of-work and proof-of-stake.
If someone wants to debate the trade offs here of this design— great :)
Notice, in practice, all the counter arguments are ad hominem and don’t answer the core argument.
That’s because their arguments aren’t sound and they need to try to make personal insults to try to win.
I’ve seen many arguments against web3 (and me and my friends) over the last few months, from people ranging from Google execs to Berkeley professors to Facebook/web2 security execs.
All the attacks I’ve seen have been ad hominem.
We’d be very happy to engage on the issues.
An interesting question: how do you create a computing network that is open to anyone and openly democratic but not easily spamable/DDOS-able?
This is what is known as Sybil resistance.
Proof-of-work and proof-of-stake are the best known methods for doing this democratically.
The other method is the web2 way— you need to be an exclusively named access person.
Is it surprising that senior Google/FB execs wouldn’t understand the value of computing networks that are not run by Google/FB execs?
===
Originally published on December 17, 2021
Blockchains are computers that can make commitments.
You pay some performance overhead for this property.
If someone says something like “blockchains are slower than traditional computers” — yes that is true.
It’s a trade off between performance and making long term commitments to users and developers.
The performance delta between computers that can make commitments (=blockchains) and computers that can’t (=Google/AWS servers) will shrink over time.
An awesome feature of blockchains is that anyone can join permissionlessly and become part of the network as miners/validators.
But we also need some system for screening participants to avoid spam/ attacks.
Hence proof-of-work and proof-of-stake.
If someone wants to debate the trade offs here of this design— great :)
Notice, in practice, all the counter arguments are ad hominem and don’t answer the core argument.
That’s because their arguments aren’t sound and they need to try to make personal insults to try to win.
I’ve seen many arguments against web3 (and me and my friends) over the last few months, from people ranging from Google execs to Berkeley professors to Facebook/web2 security execs.
All the attacks I’ve seen have been ad hominem.
We’d be very happy to engage on the issues.
An interesting question: how do you create a computing network that is open to anyone and openly democratic but not easily spamable/DDOS-able?
This is what is known as Sybil resistance.
Proof-of-work and proof-of-stake are the best known methods for doing this democratically.
The other method is the web2 way— you need to be an exclusively named access person.
Is it surprising that senior Google/FB execs wouldn’t understand the value of computing networks that are not run by Google/FB execs?
===
Originally published on December 17, 2021
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