During the day, we’d go to the beach. At night, we’d turn on the projector and watch Feynman. I was mesmerized. I’ve always been a science geek, but he made physics fun and accessible in a way I’d never seen before. He explained complex subjects like the law of gravitation using simple language that everyone understands, and he kept his students engaged with compelling stories.

- Bill Gates on Richard Feynman, from Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman!

“You Can Give People What They Want. Or You Can Give Them Web3.”, wrote Max Chafkin of Bloomberg in June. Upon reading his excellent article, this is the first thought that struck me:

“Crypto could really use a Richard Feynman!”

I’ll get to why later, but for now, please spare five minutes to read Max’s article here. In it, Max cites the below conversation between economist Tyler Cowen and VC-giant Marc Andreesen.

Tyler: “So what is the concrete advantage of Web3.0 for podcasts?”

Marc: “Look, it’s injecting economics… It’s injecting, at a very fundamental level, internet-native money, internet-native economics, and incentives into a system that simply hasn’t had that.”

What do you understand from Marc’s answer? Personally, I have my guesses, but I’m not sure. On his end, Max is brutally honest: he has no clue! This forms the crux of Max’s article: what’s Web3 even trying to improve?

The fact that the answer to such a fundamental question is absent in the minds of so many is enough reason for great skepticism and cynicism!

Think from the angle of the curious yet uninformed bystander. Web3 likely seems like a Ponzi scheme attempting to shove financialization down every one of our throats! Tokens here, tokens there… wait, the entire crypto market just collapsed?! As Max aptly puts it: who wants to care about a “complicated financial transaction” or “nuanced risk/reward calculus” when playing a game? The fella just got back from work!

And of course, the classic Bitcoiner argument against broader crypto: decentralization matters in some things, but not in others. Want to decentralize money because we’re living in a plutocracy? Sure! You want to decentralize gaming because… because…? Not so sure.

Ultimately, it’s a spectrum. For example, decentralization is vital for money, useful for content sharing, and maybe redundant for gaming. But Web3 often talks about the decentralization of everything, and that leap is understandably hard to accept for most.

Richard Feynman was a genius in part because he broke down the convoluted and uncertain into the simple and exciting. Enough with the injecting economics, universal ledgers, and consensus mechanisms! Where’s competition, ownership, and unbridled creativity?

Why do I use those terms? Let me explain by trying to answer a variation of Tyler’s question to Marc.

What is the concrete advantage of Web3 for video-sharing?

(To visualize Web3 video-sharing: think Youtube but run by thousands of independent computers all around the world. No single, top-down corporation. Could this Web3 Youtube solve any of current Web2 Youtube’s problems?)

One problem that consumers face is long ads. This has gotten quite painful in the past few years, and it’s partly because Youtube doesn’t face any real competition.

One problem that creators face is inflexible monetization models. Youtube, the middle-man between the creator and consumer, takes almost half of the advertising revenue. Ideally, there should be other competing video-sharing platforms making ads shorter and creator flexibility better. But this isn’t the case because, again, Youtube doesn’t face any real competition.

A Web3 Youtube, on the other hand, could EXPLODE competition. Here’s how:

Something about Web3 that many folks miss is that decentralized protocols (or even centralized ones claiming to be decentralized) necessitate open-source code. I couldn’t get Web2 Youtube’s code and create a replica named RamTube. But someone could take Web3 Youtube’s code, create a Web3 RamTube, and change the code to shorten the ads. Or change the code to give creators a bigger slice of revenue.

Fierce competition would emerge. Consumers and creators would consistently get better deals in many forms (UI/X, ads, flexibility, content ownership, etc.).

Web3 could be a competition stirrer. Web3 could be a monopoly-killer. Web3 could explode creativity at every level.

And so with Web3,

You could see more children starting to blog because it’s profitable during summer breaks! You could see more engineers becoming Lex Fridmans because talking about ideas is more fun than being jobless (shoutout to Indian engineers, half of whom are unemployed). And yes, you’d most definitely have shorter Youtube ads!

So when I wonder how Richard Feynman would’ve framed Web3, I think that he would’ve talked more about stuff like creativity and creator-to-consumer relationships, as opposed to injecting economics. Yet today, when someone hears Web3, what comes to mind is a lot like this two-minute Rockwell Retro Encabulator ad.

Allow me to cite one last rudimentary example where Web3 is facing a massive framing problem:

Max excellently points out that “Web3” is the “new label for services built around a blockchain”.

But *blockchain *shouldn’t be the bumper sticker that we place on Web3! The correct sticker should be something like decentralization. Blockchains, after all, don’t necessarily translate to decentralization; they’re just the means.

I believe that the brilliant Marc Andreesen was trying to convey the wonders of the free market and the implosion of competition when he talked about *internet-native *economics. Had he framed his point a little differently, I do believe that Max’s article might’ve been very different.

Because people want Web3. Most just don’t know that what they want, is what Web3 can deliver!