原文链接：https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgmyzk/the-pivot-to-web3-is-going-to-get-people-hurt

作者：Maxwell Strachan

译者：iguana （0xA2EaE2a749103C5631D5525D136EC7B956Dd7c85）

翻译机构：dao2 

It can feel as if the entire world is bolting on crypto tokens and NFTs. Many in the industry worry the gold rush is akin to a “collective Theranos” that is warping the economy to the benefit of professional investors.

似乎可以感觉到，整个世界都在为加密货币和NFT欢欣鼓舞。然而许多业内人士担心，这种淘金热类似于 "集体Theranos"（译者注：Theranos公司是美国历史上最大的生物医学欺诈案，创始人 Elizabeth Holmes被判犯有投资者欺诈罪），正在扭曲经济，使专业投资者受益。

It can feel at times as if the entire world is pivoting into Web3, and the question is why. There are, suddenly, Web3 media companies, Web3 advertising firms, Web3 studios, Web3 marketing tactics, and Web3 publishing networks. LimeWire and MoviePass have risen from the dead, newly “powered”—as one of their CEOs put it—“by Web3 technology.” Web3 apparently is not only “transforming gaming” and “re-engineering real estate,” but also the future of the internet, and maybe the entire global economy as well. 

有时会形成一种错觉，觉得好像整个世界都在转向Web3，而问题是，为什么会这样？突然间，出现了Web3媒体公司、Web3广告公司、Web3工作室、Web3营销策略和Web3出版网络公司。LimeWire和MoviePass已经起死回生，正如他们的一位首席执行官所说，“新的动力来自Web3技术"。显然，Web3不仅 "改变了游戏规则 "和 "重新设计了房地产行业"，而且还改变了互联网的未来，也许还会改变了整个全球经济。

 Never mind that very few people can agree on exactly what Web3 is (and isn’t). What matters to investors is that Web3 is the hot new thing and the entrepreneurs are piling in. One venture capitalist, Hadley Harris, told me that roughly half the Web3 pitches he’d recently looked over came from founders who weren’t even in the space half a year ago. That’s a claim backed up by Alchemy, a company that considers itself the Web3 infrastructural equivalent of Amazon Web Services; it said in February that “hundreds of established Web2 companies” are pivoting into Web3 using its platform. Even new pharmaceutical companies are now taking a Web3 “crypto-first approach,” with one raising the possibility of issuing a “cryptocurrency token to participants in its clinical trials.”

不要紧，很少有人给别人讲清楚Web3到底是什么（或不是什么）。对投资者来说，重要的是Web3是热门的新事物，而企业家们正在扎堆涌入。一位风险投资家Hadley Harris告诉我，他最近看过的大约一半的Web3投资项目，都来自于半年前还没有进入这个领域的创办人。Alchemy公司也支持这一说法，该公司认为自己是Web3基础设施方面相当于亚马逊网络服务的公司。它在2月份说，"数百家成熟的Web2公司 "正在利用其平台转入Web3。甚至新的制药公司现在也在采取Web3 "加密货币优先的方法"，其中一家公司提出了向其临床试验参与者发行 "加密货币代币 "的可能性。

 “A lot of people are trying to get in on it, and a lot of people are more afraid of not getting in.”

"这就像个围城，城外很多人都想冲进来，很多人更害怕错过它。"

The pace of the pivots can feel almost frenetic. One Ottawa-based entrepreneur, worried the world was passing him by, surprised his employees on a company Zoom call by saying he was pivoting the entire company into Web3. “I said, ‘Guys, this is the future and this is where everything is going,’” he said. “‘If we miss this boat, I don't think we can ever get back on.’” (The company, which had been a print-on-demand platform, now helps creators build 3D NFTs to sell to fans in the metaverse.)

向Web3转型的速度几乎可以让人感到疯狂。一位渥太华的企业家担心整个世界会从他身边溜走，他在公司 Zoom 电话会议上说，他正在将整个公司转向 Web3，让他的员工大吃一惊。 我说，'伙计们，这就是未来，这就是一切的发展方向，'他说。"'如果我们错过了这艘船，我想我们永远也无法回到船上了。(该公司曾是一个按需打印的平台，现在帮助创作者建立3D NFTs，以出售给元宇宙中的粉丝）。 

Like a lot of his fellow entrepreneurs, Nick Gerard, the CEO and co- founder of Norby, a startup focused on the creator economy,  started to notice last year that one by one, his competitors were also diving headfirst into the world of crypto and Web3. Gerard said potential investors in Norby were pushing him to take the Web3 leap as well. But Gerard couldn’t help but feel confused by the whole thing. His customers, the people he thought mattered most, rarely showed much interest in Web3 technologies at all. “I can count on one hand the number of times I have actually heard ‘NFTs’ come out of one of these people's mouths,” he told me. Even still, he and the rest of his team mulled over whether to make the switch, fearful that they were missing something everyone else could see. “Nobody wants to be Paul Krugman,” Gerard said, referring to an infamous 1998 quote in which the Nobel Prize–winning economist predicted that the internet would ultimately become no more consequential than the fax machine. (He's also famously anti-Bitcoin and crypto.)

与他的许多企业家同行一样，Norby（一家专注于创客经济的创业公司）的首席执行官和联合创始人Nick Gerard去年就注意到，他的竞争对手相继一头扎进了加密货币和Web3的世界。Gerard 表示，Norby的潜在投资者也在推动他向Web3迈进。但Gerard 不禁对整个事情感到困惑，他的客户，也就是他认为最重要的人，很少有人会对 Web3 技术表现出太大的兴趣。"他告诉我："我真正听到'NFT'从这些人的嘴里说出来的次数，一只手都数得过来。即使如此，他和团队其他成员仍在考虑是否要进行转换，担心他们会错过众所周知的机会。"没有人想成为Paul Krugman，"杰拉德说，他指的是1998年的一句臭名昭著的名言，在这句话中，这位诺贝尔经济学奖得主预言，互联网最终将不会比传真机更有影响力。(他也是著名的反比特币和加密货币主义者）。 

Have you worked or invested in Web3? We want to hear from you. From a non-work device, contact our reporter at maxwell.strachan@vice.com or via Signal at 310-614-3752 for extra security.

您是否在Web3工作或有过投资？我们想听听你的意见。通过非工作设备，请与我们的记者联系：maxwell.strachan@vice.com，或通过*Signal 联系：310-614-3752，获得额外的安全保障。*

The Web3 hysteria has continued this year even as the tech industry more broadly has struggled with rising interest rates and plummeting share prices. “In the last six months, it's gotten fairly ridiculous,” said one partner at a crypto-focused investment firm. In the first three months of the year, the top 15 venture firms poured more money into Web3 and DeFi early- and seed-stage deals than any other area, the third straight quarter they have done so, according to the research firm Pitchbook. In total, the early- and seed-stage Web3 world nabbed $2 billion from top firms last quarter, more than double what the next-highest sector, biotechnology, received, and triple what traditional fintech got. Those figures understate the total level of interest—and money—in the space. Blockchain companies have raised at least $9.5 billion after receiving $18 billion in funding in 2021, according to numbers the research firm CrunchBase provided to Motherboard. And more firepower is on the way. In late May, amid plunging crypto prices, one of Web3’s biggest institutional backers, the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, announced it had raised a monstrous $4.5 billion crypto fund following a series of high-profile investments into Web3 projects like play-to-earn game Axie Infinity and the parent company of the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

今年，Web3的歇斯底里仍在继续，即使更广泛的科技行业，一直在努力应对利率上升和股价暴跌。"在过去六个月里，它变得相当荒谬，"一家专注于加密货币的投资公司的合伙人说。根据研究公司Pitchbook的数据，在今年的前三个月，前15家风险投资公司在Web3和DeFi早期和种子轮投入的资金比其他任何领域都多，这已经是他们连续第三个季度这样做了。上个季度，早期和种子阶段的Web3领域从顶级公司那里获得了20亿美元融资，是排名第二的生物技术领域的两倍多，是传统金融科技的三倍。这些数字低估了对这一领域的兴趣和资金的总体水平。根据研究公司CrunchBase提供给Motherboard的数字，区块链公司在2021年获得180亿美元的资金后，今年已经筹集了至少95亿美元，而且更多的火力正在路上。5月下旬，在加密货币价格暴跌的情况下，Web3最大的机构支持者之一，风险投资公司A16Z（Andreessen Horowitz）宣布，在对Web3项目进行了一系列高调的投资后，它已经筹集了45亿美元的加密货币基金，如P2E游戏Axie Infinity和无聊猿游艇俱乐部（BAYC）的母公司。 

“It’s a gold rush for sure,” said Dayton Mills, the co-founder and CEO of Branch. Mills’ company had been a struggling remote-work startup before he transformed it into a Web3 gaming platform. The moment he started talking about his Web3 vision, investor interest skyrocketed. “It was a tremendous difference,” he said.  “There were people who I didn't even meet with who were just committing over email without ever even talking to me.” He had planned to raise $2 million, only to receive $20 million in commitments in two weeks. “We stopped because it just was incredibly overwhelming.”**“**Something big is happening,” Mills added. “A lot of people are trying to get in on it, and a lot of people are more afraid of not getting in.” What exactly they are getting in on is harder to pin down. The term “Web3” is sometimes attributed to Gavin Wood, one of the co-founders of the Ethereum blockchain, who, in 2014, described an idealized version of the web in which the system placed no trust in organizations but near-complete trust in blockchain technology. But it didn’t enter the mainstream cultural vernacular until last year, when it started to serve as a catchall (and, coincidentally, a venture-led rebranding) for the collection of controversial  financial-technology products that include cryptocurrencies, blockchains, non-fungible tokens, decentralized autonomous organizations (or “DAOs”), the metaverse, and decentralized financial (or DeFi) products.  

“这无疑是一场淘金热，”Branch 的联合创始人兼首席执行官Dayton Mills说。Mills的公司在转型成为 Web3 游戏平台之前，一直是一家苦苦挣扎的远程工作初创公司。当他开始谈论他的 Web3 愿景时，投资者的兴趣骤然上升。 “这是一个巨大的差异，”他说。 "有些人我甚至没有见过，他们只是通过电子邮件承诺，甚至没有与我交谈。"他原本计划筹集 200 万美元，却在两周内收到 2000 万美元的承诺。 “我们停了下来，因为它简直令人难以置信。” “一些大事情正在发生，"Mills补充说。"很多人都想参与其中，而很多人更害怕无法参与。" 他们到底在参与什么，”Mills补充道，"这就像个围城，城外很多人都想冲进来，很多人更害怕错过它。" 他们到底在参与什么，也很难说清楚。 “Web3”一词有时被认为是以太坊区块链的联合创始人之一Gavin Wood，他在 2014 年描述了一个理想化的网络版本，其中系统不用信任组织，而是几乎完全信任区块链技术。但直到去年，它才进入主流文化语境，当时它开始作为一个总称（巧合的是，由风险企业主导的品牌重塑），用于概括有争议的金融技术产品，包括加密货币、区块链、NFT、去中心化自治组织（或 "DAO"）、元宇宙和去中心化金融（或DeFi）产品。 

“It’s like a collective Theranos. A wildly unproven product with nobody at the helm,” one venture capitalist said.

一位风险资本家说："这就像一个集体的Theranos，一个未经证实的产品，无人掌舵”。

To some, like Andreessen Horowitz, what ties these innovations together is that they collectively offer a theoretical vision where people have “the ability to own a piece of the internet”—for example, through the use of NFTs, which are essentially tradable proof-of-ownership receipts. In such a world, people could use and even monetize their NFTs on multiple platforms, rather than just on, say, Instagram. Such a system, boosters believe—or, at least, claim to believe—will lead to a fairer, more communal version of the web, one that will wrest control back from technological giants that have profited off people’s data and creativity, creating a world where community comes before all else. Much of the ideological rhetoric hence involves talk of using Web3 “to truly empower financial inclusion” (again, Andreessen Horowitz’s words) by bringing people into the fold who have been marginalized by the traditional financial structure. Such arguments are inarguably alluring. Very few people feel the financial and internet structures that underpin society could not be vastly improved. But they also belie the fact that professional investors do not push their money into the middle of the craps table solely in order to better the world. As Hilary J. Allen, a law professor at American University, succinctly put it: “The reason why venture capitalists are pushing all of this is to make money.”  

在一些机构看来，比如A16Z，将这些创新联系在一起的原因是，它们共同提供了一个理论愿景，即人们 "有能力拥有互联网的一部分"--比如，通过使用NFT，本质上是可交易的证明——所有权收据。在这样一个世界里，人们可以在多个平台上使用他们的 NFT，甚至将其货币化，而不仅仅是在Instagram上。这样一个系统，推动者相信--或者至少是声称相信--将造就一个更公平、更公共的网络版本，一个将从从人们的数据和创造力中获利的技术巨头手中夺回控制权，创造一个社区高于一切的世界。因此，许多意识形态的言论都涉及到使用Web3，通过将被传统金融结构边缘化的人带入其中， "真正赋予金融包容性"（同样是A16Z的原话）。这样的论点无疑是诱人的。很少有人觉得，支撑社会的金融和互联网结构无法得到极大改善。但它们也掩盖了这样一个事实，即专业投资者将他们的钱推到牌桌中间，并不只是为了改善世界。正如美国大学的法学教授Hilary J. Allen简明扼要地指出，"风险资本家推动这一切的原因就是为了赚钱"。 

And in Web3, the venture class and other professional investors have found a uniquely appealing set of circumstances they believe will allow them to make a giant pile of money that does not rely on vast leaps in virtual reality or haptics technology—sometimes by pulling off an impressive degree of regulatory arbitrage, other times by taking advantage of a wholly new kind of internet marketplace. “If there is any innovation in crypto assets, it’s not in software engineering but in financial engineering,” the London-based software engineer and crypto critic Stephen Diehl has written. Allen, who studies financial regulation, sees the rhetoric around empowerment and inclusion as little more than a  “cynical” ploy. She and others believe it masks the aspects of the Web3 apparatus that have made it appetizing to venture capitalists, billionaires, and other institutional players—so much so that they have moved aggressively to plant a foothold in spite of the industry’s unmistakable propensity for scams, fraud, and regulatory scrutiny. Here we have a largely unregulated marketplace ripe for exploitation and stuffed full of unclear valuation metrics, arguable unregistered securities, peculiar financial products, ways to cash out, and a public-facing ideological mission statement.Of particular fascination has been the critical role in the Web3 ecosystem of the token, a new type of financial product that regulators are still struggling to get a handle on but that venture capitalists have realized allows them to cash out quickly and handsomely even if the company never goes public (and twice over if they do).  

而在Web3世界中，风险投资阶层和其他专业投资者发现了一套独特的吸引人的环境，他们认为能够赚到一大笔钱，而无需依赖于虚拟现实或触觉技术的巨大飞跃--有时是通过完成令人印象深刻的监管套利，有时是利用全新的互联网市场。"总部设在伦敦的软件工程师和加密货币评论家Stephen Diehl写道："如果加密资产有任何创新，那也不是在软件工程方面，而是金融工程”。研究金融监管的Allen认为，围绕授权和包容的言辞，不过是一种 "愤世嫉俗 "的伎俩。她和其他人认为，这掩盖了Web3体系的某些特征，使其吸引了风险投资家、亿万富翁和其他机构参与者--尽管该行业明显有欺诈倾向，但他们仍积极行动，在欺诈和监管审查的倾向下站稳脚跟。在这里，我们有一个基本上不受监管的市场，它已经成熟，充满了不明确的估值指标、有争议的未注册证券、特殊的金融产品、套现方式以及面向公众的意识形态使命宣言。特别吸引人的是，代币在Web3生态系统中的起到关键作用，这是一种新型的金融产品，监管机构仍在努力掌握，但风险资本家已经意识到，即使公司从未上市，他们也能快速而丰厚地兑现（如果他们上市，则会加倍）。  

It is, at least for now, close to a perfect playing field for the professional money-making class, one that is leading to pressures to pivot or die, whatever the utility.  One entrepreneur described with great frustration that he had recently spoken to a founder at a VC mixer who was building a “decentralized” dinner reservation system. When he asked why a reservation system needed to be on the blockchain, the founder simply said: “It’s the future.” It’s at least possible that Web3 could bring about a better, more fulfilling version of the internet. It’s just as likely, though, to prove to be what its harshest critics fear: a “hyper-capitalistic” reframing of the web that “contains the seeds of a dystopian nightmare.” “It’s like a collective Theranos,” one venture capitalist said. “A wildly unproven product with nobody at the helm.”Agreat many Web3 entrepreneurs and investors appear sincerely passionate about their mission of creating a better version of the internet. To many of these people, Web3 is not an idyllic possibility but an all-out inevitability, spoken about with an almost religious fervor. “It really feels ideological to me, and it's weird, because VCs tend not to invest in ideologies,” said Phil Libin, the former co-founder and CEO of Evernote. Indeed, soon after a recent string of crypto controversies, including the precipitous May crash of the Luna cryptocurrency and its sister “stablecoin” UST, Andreessen Horowitz said Web3 was just now entering its “golden era.” The same week, it announced an investment in former WeWork CEO’s Adam Neumann’s Web3 climate venture selling “Goddess Nature Tokens.”

至少就目前而言，对于专业的赚钱阶层来说，这是一个接近完美的竞争环境，无论其效用如何，都会导致转型或死亡的压力。一位企业家非常沮丧地描述说，他最近在一个风险投资组合会议上，与一位正在建立一个 "去中心化 "晚餐预订系统的创始人交谈。当他问为什么需要在区块链上建立预订系统时，创始人简单地说：“这是未来。”至少，Web3 有可能带来更好、更充实的互联网版本。然而，它同样可能被证明是最严厉的批评者所担心的：对网络的“超资本主义”重构，“包含反乌托邦噩梦的种子”。 “这就像一个集体 Theranos，”一位风险投资家说，“一个未经证实的产品，无人掌舵。”许多Web3的企业家和投资者似乎对他们创造一个更好的互联网的使命抱有真诚的热情。对于这其中的许多人来说，Web3 不是一种田园诗般的可能性，而是一种全力以赴的必然性，以一种近乎宗教般的热情谈论。 Evernote 前联合创始人兼首席执行官 Phil Libin 说：“对我来说，这真的是一种意识形态，这很奇怪，因为风险投资公司往往不会投资于意识形态。”事实上，在最近一系列加密争议之后不久，包括 $Luna 及其姊妹“稳定币”$UST 在5 月的急剧崩盘，A16Z仍然表示 Web3 刚刚进入其“黄金时代”。同一周，它宣布投资前 WeWork 首席执行官Adam Neumann的 Web3 气候风险投资公司，出售“Goddess Nature Tokens”。 

Another such believer, Benjamin Cohen, who recently started a Web3-focused investment fund, told a crypto site in March that it was “inevitable that blockchain technology and smart contract technology will become implemented in every single facet of our life.” That is not an isolated opinion. “Every single company that exists is going to exist in some form of Web3,” Alexander Taub, the Miami-based co-founder of the DAO-creation tool Upstream, told Motherboard in a Zoom interview. (Taub, who wore a “Just DAO It” hat, added that “the potential market size for DAOs is, like, trillions.”)A lot of the believer class come across as “zealots” who are dismissive of those who question them, according to Jason Henrichs, the CEO of Alloy Labs Alliance, who has spoken to Web3 projects about potential investment (and moved forward with some). The technology writer and researcher Evgeny Morozov has gone so far as to compare them to “annoying vulgar Marxists who, for all the evidence to the contrary, kept [and keep] insisting that the objective developments within capitalism favor the inevitable transition to socialism.” On its face, their level of confidence does indeed appear odd, or at least premature.  One January survey by the strategy firm National Research Group found that only 13 percent of surveyed American adults knew what Web3 meant, and that more than half have never heard the term. A separate poll from around the same time said less than two in five members of Generation Z believed “the metaverse is the next big thing and will become part of our lives in the next decade.” 

另一位这样的信徒Benjamin Cohen最近创办了一个专注于Web3的投资基金，他在3月份告诉一家加密货币网站，"区块链技术和智能合约技术将不可避免地应用于我们生活的方方面面。”这并不是一个孤立的观点。"位于迈阿密的DAO创建工具Upstream的联合创始人Alexander Taub，在一次Zoom采访中告诉Motherboard，"每一家现存的公司，未来都将以某种形式存在于Web3。(戴着 "Just DAO It "帽子的Taub补充说，"DAO的潜在市场规模有几万亿。"）Alloy Labs Alliance的首席执行官Jason Henrichs表示，很多信徒阶层都是 "狂热分子"，并对质疑他们的人不屑一顾。技术专栏作家和研究员Evgeny Morozov甚至把他们比作 "恼人的庸俗的马克思主义者“，认为他们不顾所有相反的证据，一直（并继续）坚持认为资本主义内部的客观发展有利于不可避免地过渡到社会主义。从表面上看，他们的信心水平确实显得有些奇怪，或者至少为时过早。 战略公司National Research Group今年一月份的一项调查发现，只有13%的受访美国成年人知道Web3是什么意思，而且超过一半的人从未听说过这个词。大约在同一时间进行的另一项调查说，Z世代的成员中只有不到五分之二的人认为 "元空间是下一件大事，将在未来十年成为我们生活的一部分"。 

Andreessen Horowitz claims there are 22,400 Web3 creators, and only 18,000 developers were working in crypto or Web3 by the end of 2021, according to one recent survey by Electric Capita, nothing compared to the more than 27 million developers in the world. Some wonder if the Web3 hype is justified at all. Libin had been initially drawn to the “beautiful” and “elegant” concepts of Web3, he said. The CEO of the startup studio All Turtles and the virtual camera application mmhmm, as well as a former VC at General Catalyst, Libin has made a career out of searching out companies that solve real problems with clear business models. But as he started hearing from more and more Web3 companies, he found himself unable to understand what benefit came from developing certain projects on the blockchain as opposed to, for example, using an internal database. When he started to challenge some of the pitches he received, he didn’t like the answers he got. Using such technologies often seemed needlessly expensive and prone to exploitation by hackers and scammers.

根据 Electric Capita 最近的一项调查，A16Z 声称，到 2021 年底，有 22,400 名 Web3 创建者，只有 18,000 名开发人员从事加密或 Web3 工作，与全球超过 2700 万开发人员相比，这简直是微不足道。有些人怀疑 Web3 的炒作是否合理。 Libin 最初被 Web3 的“美丽”和“优雅”概念所吸引，他说。作为创业工作室 All Turtles 和虚拟相机应用程序 mmhmm 的首席执行官，以及 General Catalyst 的前风险投资人，Libin 的职业生涯是寻找能够以清晰的商业模式，解决实际问题的公司。但当他开始听到越来越多的 Web3 公司的消息时，他发现自己无法理解，在区块链上开发某些项目会带来什么好处，为什么不是使用内部数据库。当他开始质疑他收到的一些投资提案时，他不喜欢得到的答案。使用这样的技术往往显得昂贵得毫无必要，而且容易被黑客和骗子利用。 

“Web3 proponents are trying to solve real problems that need solving. I just don't think that Web3 is the solution,” he said. “It doesn't make sense to me as a programmer.” The common pro-Web3 counterargument—often repeated by VCs—is that proponents are simply early, like with the internet of the 1990s. Such unbridled optimism is not novel to Web3, but instead core to the venture and technology industries’ model, according to Martin Kenney, a professor at the University of California, Davis who studies the industry. The investors’ goal is always to sell the company, and they have an incentive to target hot sectors and then aid in raising interest in them. 

"Web3的支持者正试图解决需要解决的实际问题，我只是不认为Web3会是解决方案，"他说。"作为一个程序员，这对我来说没有任何意义。" 常见的支持Web3的反对论点，往往是由风险投资公司重复陈述的，他们认为支持者只是超前了一步，就像1990年代的互联网一样。加州大学戴维斯分校研究该行业的教授马丁-肯尼（Martin Kenney）认为，这种野生的乐观主义对Web3来说并不新鲜，本身就是风险和技术行业模式的核心。而投资者的目标始终是出售公司，他们有动力瞄准热门行业，然后帮助提高对这些行业的兴趣。 

“Whatever the new thing is, it’s absolutely in the VC’s interest to hype it. You’d be a fool not to,” said Kenney. “So you feed it to the press. You tell everyone it's going to change the world, that it is the best thing since sliced bread, whatever it is that will convince the investors that they need to have it.”It can be convincing, and was famously so in the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, during which time companies that added a “.com” to their name experienced a “dramatic” and “permanent” rise in valuation immediately after the rebrand, “regardless of the firm's level of involvement with the Internet,” according to a study on the so-called “dotcom” effect. The researchers determined this so-called “dotcom” effect was attributable to a desire to be “associated with the Internet at all costs” even if the companies were “at best, only loosely, if at all, connected” to it. Eventually, the boom turned to a bust, but not before many venture capitalists cashed out.

肯尼说，无论新事物是什么，炒作它绝对符合VC的利益，如果你不这样做，那你就是傻瓜。所以你要把它提供给媒体，你要告诉大家它将改变世界，它是自切片面包以来最好的东西，不管它是什么，都能说服投资者，他们需要拥有它。"这可能是令人信服的，在20世纪90年代末的互联网热潮中就是如此，根据一项关于所谓“网络泡沫”效应的研究，在此期间，在其名称中添加".com "的公司，在重塑品牌后立即经历了 "戏剧性 "和 "永久性 "的估值上升，"无论公司对互联网的参与程度如何"。研究人员认为，这种所谓的 "网络 "效应是由于人们希望 "不惜一切代价与互联网联系起来"，即使这些公司 "即使有关联，充其量只是与互联网有松散的联系"。最终，繁荣变成了萧条，但那也是在许多风险资本家兑现之后的事了。 

“Web3 proponents are trying to solve real problems that need solving. I just don't think that Web3 is the solution.”

"Web3的支持者正试图解决需要解决的实际问题，我只是不认为Web3会是解决方案"。

Inarguably, the hype cycle is back in full force. Kyle Samani, a managing partner at a crypto-focused investment firm, told me that although most of his limited partners don’t always fully understand the technologies behind Web3, they want exposure to “all of it.” A research report out of Citi estimated that one component of Web3, “the metaverse,” alone could have a total addressable market of $13 trillion within eight years and as many as 5 billion users. (For comparison, the entire California housing stock is currently worth $9.2 trillion; Citi is essentially claiming to believe that the metaverse will, or could, be bigger than all but three or four entire U.S. industries by the time current middle-schoolers graduate college.)

毋庸置疑，炒作周期又开始了。Kyle Samani是一家专注于加密的投资公司的管理合伙人，他告诉我，虽然他的大多数有限合伙人并不总是完全理解Web3背后的技术，但他们希望接触到 "所有的技术"。花旗银行的一份研究报告估计，仅Web3的一个组成部分 "元宇宙 "，就可以在八年内拥有13万亿美元的总潜在市场和多达50亿用户。(相比之下，目前整个加州的住房价值为9.2万亿美元；花旗基本上声称相信，到现在的中学生大学毕业时，元宇宙的市场规模或将超过除三或四个行业外的所有美国行业。） 

Slava Rubin, an early-stage investor who founded Indiegogo and an alternative asset investing search engine, said the enthusiasm reminded him of the e-commerce boom of the 1990s. “Whenever there's change, there's opportunity to displace the legacy players and potentially make a lot of money on investments,” he said. This time, however, the world’s most well-known brands are diving in too, in order to avoid falling behind. Starbucks, ESPN, Spotify, and GameStop are developing NFT plans; Fidelity Investment, the nation’s largest 401(k) provider, is allowing people to shove their retirement savings into Bitcoin. Goldman Sachs is offering crypto-backed loans. JPMorgan Chase, Gucci, and Miller Lite are hunkering down in the metaverse. Google has a dedicated Web3 team. Facebook is Meta. 

创立 Indiegogo 和另类资产投资搜索引擎的早期投资者 Slava Rubin 表示，这种热情让他想起了 1990 年代的电子商务繁荣。 他说："每当有变化的时候，就有机会取代传统的参与者，并有可能在投资上赚大钱。” 然而，这一次，世界上最知名的品牌也纷纷涌入，以避免落伍。 星巴克、ESPN、Spotify 和 GameStop 正在制定 NFT 计划； 美国最大的 401(k) 提供商富达投资正在允许人们将退休储蓄投入比特币； 高盛正在提供加密货币支持的贷款； 摩根大通、Gucci 和 Miller Lite 正埋头于虚拟世界； Google 有一个专门的 Web3 团队，Facebook变成Meta。 

Over the last century, venture capitalists have backed industries that have changed the world and created millions of jobs, most famously during those early years of the internet. Less talked about is the fact that the venture class has gotten it wrong as well, said Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner, who also studies the venture industry. As an example, Lerner cited the VC-funded cleantech boom and bust at the end of the 2000s as a recent example. “It turned out that not only was the technology a lot harder than they thought, but many of the businesses were just extremely poorly run, and some of the best firms in the business were just blinded by their enthusiasm into burning huge amounts of investor money,” Lerner said. 

在过去的一个世纪里，风险资本家支持的行业改变了世界，并创造了数百万个就业机会，其中最著名的是在互联网早期。哈佛商学院教授乔什-勒纳（Josh Lerner）也研究了风险投资行业，他说，很少有人谈论的是，风险投资阶层也有过犯错误的经历。Lerner引用了2000年代末风险投资的清洁技术的繁荣和萧条作为最近的例子，Lerner说：“事实证明，不仅技术比他们想象的要难得多，而且许多企业的经营状况极差，一些最好的企业也被他们的热情所蒙蔽，烧掉了大量投资者资金。” 

Tomasz Tunguz didn't become interested in Web3 because of its ideological underpinnings. Like a lot of investors, he saw a chance to make a lot of money because of the economic particularities of the Web3 ecosystem.  Tunguz, a venture capitalist at Redpoint Ventures who writes a popular blog about the industry, became active in the Web3 market in the first half of last year after he noticed the businesses were both capital efficient and could scale to enormous size. In August, Tomasz like many others watched in amazement as the price of the blockchain platform Solana’s token rose from $40 to $190 by mid-September, briefly reaching a market cap of almost $80 billion by November.“That really opened up a lot of people's eyes to the size of these companies,” Tunguz said. “The scale compels you to figure out what's going on.”The closer he looked, the greater the investment opportunity seemed. For one thing, the businesses did not have clear metrics by which they could be valued. Over the last 20 years, investors and entrepreneurs have together developed fairly reliable, standardized financial models that allow them to confidently place values on traditional software businesses after comparing them to similar older ones. “Most software businesses are really well understood. A startup walks in, and the venture capitalist just as much as the private market investors know exactly what it ought to be worth,” said Tunguz.  

Tomasz Tunguz并不是因为Web3的意识形态基础而对其感兴趣。像很多投资者一样，由于 Web3 生态系统的经济特殊性，他看到了赚大钱的机会。 Tunguz是Redpoint Ventures的风险投资家，他写了一个关于该行业的热门博客，去年上半年，在他注意到 Web3 市场既具有资本效率又可以扩大到巨大规模后，他开始活跃在Web3市场Tomasz和其他许多人一样，惊讶地看着区块链平台Solana的代币价格从8月份的40美元上涨到9月中旬的190美元，到11月短暂达到近800亿美元的市值。"这真的让很多人看到了这些公司的规模潜力，"Tunguz说，"规模迫使你去弄清楚发生了什么。"他看得越仔细，投资机会似乎越大。首先，这些企业没有明确的衡量标准，无法对其进行估值。在过去的20年里，投资者和企业家们共同开发了相当可靠的、标准化的财务模型，使他们能够在将传统的软件企业与类似的较早业务进行比较后，自信地对其进行估值。Tunguz说："大多数软件企业真的很好理解，一家初创企业走进来，风险资本家和私人市场投资者一样，都清楚地知道它应该值多少钱。

原文链接：https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgmyzk/the-pivot-to-web3-is-going-to-get-people-hurt

作者：Maxwell Strachan

译者：iguana （0xA2EaE2a749103C5631D5525D136EC7B956Dd7c85）

翻译机构：dao2 

It can feel as if the entire world is bolting on crypto tokens and NFTs. Many in the industry worry the gold rush is akin to a “collective Theranos” that is warping the economy to the benefit of professional investors.

似乎可以感觉到，整个世界都在为加密货币和NFT欢欣鼓舞。然而许多业内人士担心，这种淘金热类似于 "集体Theranos"（译者注：Theranos公司是美国历史上最大的生物医学欺诈案，创始人 Elizabeth Holmes被判犯有投资者欺诈罪），正在扭曲经济，使专业投资者受益。

It can feel at times as if the entire world is pivoting into Web3, and the question is why. There are, suddenly, Web3 media companies, Web3 advertising firms, Web3 studios, Web3 marketing tactics, and Web3 publishing networks. LimeWire and MoviePass have risen from the dead, newly “powered”—as one of their CEOs put it—“by Web3 technology.” Web3 apparently is not only “transforming gaming” and “re-engineering real estate,” but also the future of the internet, and maybe the entire global economy as well. 

有时会形成一种错觉，觉得好像整个世界都在转向Web3，而问题是，为什么会这样？突然间，出现了Web3媒体公司、Web3广告公司、Web3工作室、Web3营销策略和Web3出版网络公司。LimeWire和MoviePass已经起死回生，正如他们的一位首席执行官所说，“新的动力来自Web3技术"。显然，Web3不仅 "改变了游戏规则 "和 "重新设计了房地产行业"，而且还改变了互联网的未来，也许还会改变了整个全球经济。

 Never mind that very few people can agree on exactly what Web3 is (and isn’t). What matters to investors is that Web3 is the hot new thing and the entrepreneurs are piling in. One venture capitalist, Hadley Harris, told me that roughly half the Web3 pitches he’d recently looked over came from founders who weren’t even in the space half a year ago. That’s a claim backed up by Alchemy, a company that considers itself the Web3 infrastructural equivalent of Amazon Web Services; it said in February that “hundreds of established Web2 companies” are pivoting into Web3 using its platform. Even new pharmaceutical companies are now taking a Web3 “crypto-first approach,” with one raising the possibility of issuing a “cryptocurrency token to participants in its clinical trials.”

不要紧，很少有人给别人讲清楚Web3到底是什么（或不是什么）。对投资者来说，重要的是Web3是热门的新事物，而企业家们正在扎堆涌入。一位风险投资家Hadley Harris告诉我，他最近看过的大约一半的Web3投资项目，都来自于半年前还没有进入这个领域的创办人。Alchemy公司也支持这一说法，该公司认为自己是Web3基础设施方面相当于亚马逊网络服务的公司。它在2月份说，"数百家成熟的Web2公司 "正在利用其平台转入Web3。甚至新的制药公司现在也在采取Web3 "加密货币优先的方法"，其中一家公司提出了向其临床试验参与者发行 "加密货币代币 "的可能性。

 “A lot of people are trying to get in on it, and a lot of people are more afraid of not getting in.”

"这就像个围城，城外很多人都想冲进来，很多人更害怕错过它。"

The pace of the pivots can feel almost frenetic. One Ottawa-based entrepreneur, worried the world was passing him by, surprised his employees on a company Zoom call by saying he was pivoting the entire company into Web3. “I said, ‘Guys, this is the future and this is where everything is going,’” he said. “‘If we miss this boat, I don't think we can ever get back on.’” (The company, which had been a print-on-demand platform, now helps creators build 3D NFTs to sell to fans in the metaverse.)

向Web3转型的速度几乎可以让人感到疯狂。一位渥太华的企业家担心整个世界会从他身边溜走，他在公司 Zoom 电话会议上说，他正在将整个公司转向 Web3，让他的员工大吃一惊。 我说，'伙计们，这就是未来，这就是一切的发展方向，'他说。"'如果我们错过了这艘船，我想我们永远也无法回到船上了。(该公司曾是一个按需打印的平台，现在帮助创作者建立3D NFTs，以出售给元宇宙中的粉丝）。 

Like a lot of his fellow entrepreneurs, Nick Gerard, the CEO and co- founder of Norby, a startup focused on the creator economy,  started to notice last year that one by one, his competitors were also diving headfirst into the world of crypto and Web3. Gerard said potential investors in Norby were pushing him to take the Web3 leap as well. But Gerard couldn’t help but feel confused by the whole thing. His customers, the people he thought mattered most, rarely showed much interest in Web3 technologies at all. “I can count on one hand the number of times I have actually heard ‘NFTs’ come out of one of these people's mouths,” he told me. Even still, he and the rest of his team mulled over whether to make the switch, fearful that they were missing something everyone else could see. “Nobody wants to be Paul Krugman,” Gerard said, referring to an infamous 1998 quote in which the Nobel Prize–winning economist predicted that the internet would ultimately become no more consequential than the fax machine. (He's also famously anti-Bitcoin and crypto.)

与他的许多企业家同行一样，Norby（一家专注于创客经济的创业公司）的首席执行官和联合创始人Nick Gerard去年就注意到，他的竞争对手相继一头扎进了加密货币和Web3的世界。Gerard 表示，Norby的潜在投资者也在推动他向Web3迈进。但Gerard 不禁对整个事情感到困惑，他的客户，也就是他认为最重要的人，很少有人会对 Web3 技术表现出太大的兴趣。"他告诉我："我真正听到'NFT'从这些人的嘴里说出来的次数，一只手都数得过来。即使如此，他和团队其他成员仍在考虑是否要进行转换，担心他们会错过众所周知的机会。"没有人想成为Paul Krugman，"杰拉德说，他指的是1998年的一句臭名昭著的名言，在这句话中，这位诺贝尔经济学奖得主预言，互联网最终将不会比传真机更有影响力。(他也是著名的反比特币和加密货币主义者）。 

Have you worked or invested in Web3? We want to hear from you. From a non-work device, contact our reporter at maxwell.strachan@vice.com or via Signal at 310-614-3752 for extra security.

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The Web3 hysteria has continued this year even as the tech industry more broadly has struggled with rising interest rates and plummeting share prices. “In the last six months, it's gotten fairly ridiculous,” said one partner at a crypto-focused investment firm. In the first three months of the year, the top 15 venture firms poured more money into Web3 and DeFi early- and seed-stage deals than any other area, the third straight quarter they have done so, according to the research firm Pitchbook. In total, the early- and seed-stage Web3 world nabbed $2 billion from top firms last quarter, more than double what the next-highest sector, biotechnology, received, and triple what traditional fintech got. Those figures understate the total level of interest—and money—in the space. Blockchain companies have raised at least $9.5 billion after receiving $18 billion in funding in 2021, according to numbers the research firm CrunchBase provided to Motherboard. And more firepower is on the way. In late May, amid plunging crypto prices, one of Web3’s biggest institutional backers, the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, announced it had raised a monstrous $4.5 billion crypto fund following a series of high-profile investments into Web3 projects like play-to-earn game Axie Infinity and the parent company of the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

今年，Web3的歇斯底里仍在继续，即使更广泛的科技行业，一直在努力应对利率上升和股价暴跌。"在过去六个月里，它变得相当荒谬，"一家专注于加密货币的投资公司的合伙人说。根据研究公司Pitchbook的数据，在今年的前三个月，前15家风险投资公司在Web3和DeFi早期和种子轮投入的资金比其他任何领域都多，这已经是他们连续第三个季度这样做了。上个季度，早期和种子阶段的Web3领域从顶级公司那里获得了20亿美元融资，是排名第二的生物技术领域的两倍多，是传统金融科技的三倍。这些数字低估了对这一领域的兴趣和资金的总体水平。根据研究公司CrunchBase提供给Motherboard的数字，区块链公司在2021年获得180亿美元的资金后，今年已经筹集了至少95亿美元，而且更多的火力正在路上。5月下旬，在加密货币价格暴跌的情况下，Web3最大的机构支持者之一，风险投资公司A16Z（Andreessen Horowitz）宣布，在对Web3项目进行了一系列高调的投资后，它已经筹集了45亿美元的加密货币基金，如P2E游戏Axie Infinity和无聊猿游艇俱乐部（BAYC）的母公司。 

“It’s a gold rush for sure,” said Dayton Mills, the co-founder and CEO of Branch. Mills’ company had been a struggling remote-work startup before he transformed it into a Web3 gaming platform. The moment he started talking about his Web3 vision, investor interest skyrocketed. “It was a tremendous difference,” he said.  “There were people who I didn't even meet with who were just committing over email without ever even talking to me.” He had planned to raise $2 million, only to receive $20 million in commitments in two weeks. “We stopped because it just was incredibly overwhelming.”**“**Something big is happening,” Mills added. “A lot of people are trying to get in on it, and a lot of people are more afraid of not getting in.” What exactly they are getting in on is harder to pin down. The term “Web3” is sometimes attributed to Gavin Wood, one of the co-founders of the Ethereum blockchain, who, in 2014, described an idealized version of the web in which the system placed no trust in organizations but near-complete trust in blockchain technology. But it didn’t enter the mainstream cultural vernacular until last year, when it started to serve as a catchall (and, coincidentally, a venture-led rebranding) for the collection of controversial  financial-technology products that include cryptocurrencies, blockchains, non-fungible tokens, decentralized autonomous organizations (or “DAOs”), the metaverse, and decentralized financial (or DeFi) products.  

“这无疑是一场淘金热，”Branch 的联合创始人兼首席执行官Dayton Mills说。Mills的公司在转型成为 Web3 游戏平台之前，一直是一家苦苦挣扎的远程工作初创公司。当他开始谈论他的 Web3 愿景时，投资者的兴趣骤然上升。 “这是一个巨大的差异，”他说。 "有些人我甚至没有见过，他们只是通过电子邮件承诺，甚至没有与我交谈。"他原本计划筹集 200 万美元，却在两周内收到 2000 万美元的承诺。 “我们停了下来，因为它简直令人难以置信。” “一些大事情正在发生，"Mills补充说。"很多人都想参与其中，而很多人更害怕无法参与。" 他们到底在参与什么，”Mills补充道，"这就像个围城，城外很多人都想冲进来，很多人更害怕错过它。" 他们到底在参与什么，也很难说清楚。 “Web3”一词有时被认为是以太坊区块链的联合创始人之一Gavin Wood，他在 2014 年描述了一个理想化的网络版本，其中系统不用信任组织，而是几乎完全信任区块链技术。但直到去年，它才进入主流文化语境，当时它开始作为一个总称（巧合的是，由风险企业主导的品牌重塑），用于概括有争议的金融技术产品，包括加密货币、区块链、NFT、去中心化自治组织（或 "DAO"）、元宇宙和去中心化金融（或DeFi）产品。 

“It’s like a collective Theranos. A wildly unproven product with nobody at the helm,” one venture capitalist said.

一位风险资本家说："这就像一个集体的Theranos，一个未经证实的产品，无人掌舵”。

To some, like Andreessen Horowitz, what ties these innovations together is that they collectively offer a theoretical vision where people have “the ability to own a piece of the internet”—for example, through the use of NFTs, which are essentially tradable proof-of-ownership receipts. In such a world, people could use and even monetize their NFTs on multiple platforms, rather than just on, say, Instagram. Such a system, boosters believe—or, at least, claim to believe—will lead to a fairer, more communal version of the web, one that will wrest control back from technological giants that have profited off people’s data and creativity, creating a world where community comes before all else. Much of the ideological rhetoric hence involves talk of using Web3 “to truly empower financial inclusion” (again, Andreessen Horowitz’s words) by bringing people into the fold who have been marginalized by the traditional financial structure. Such arguments are inarguably alluring. Very few people feel the financial and internet structures that underpin society could not be vastly improved. But they also belie the fact that professional investors do not push their money into the middle of the craps table solely in order to better the world. As Hilary J. Allen, a law professor at American University, succinctly put it: “The reason why venture capitalists are pushing all of this is to make money.”  

在一些机构看来，比如A16Z，将这些创新联系在一起的原因是，它们共同提供了一个理论愿景，即人们 "有能力拥有互联网的一部分"--比如，通过使用NFT，本质上是可交易的证明——所有权收据。在这样一个世界里，人们可以在多个平台上使用他们的 NFT，甚至将其货币化，而不仅仅是在Instagram上。这样一个系统，推动者相信--或者至少是声称相信--将造就一个更公平、更公共的网络版本，一个将从从人们的数据和创造力中获利的技术巨头手中夺回控制权，创造一个社区高于一切的世界。因此，许多意识形态的言论都涉及到使用Web3，通过将被传统金融结构边缘化的人带入其中， "真正赋予金融包容性"（同样是A16Z的原话）。这样的论点无疑是诱人的。很少有人觉得，支撑社会的金融和互联网结构无法得到极大改善。但它们也掩盖了这样一个事实，即专业投资者将他们的钱推到牌桌中间，并不只是为了改善世界。正如美国大学的法学教授Hilary J. Allen简明扼要地指出，"风险资本家推动这一切的原因就是为了赚钱"。 

And in Web3, the venture class and other professional investors have found a uniquely appealing set of circumstances they believe will allow them to make a giant pile of money that does not rely on vast leaps in virtual reality or haptics technology—sometimes by pulling off an impressive degree of regulatory arbitrage, other times by taking advantage of a wholly new kind of internet marketplace. “If there is any innovation in crypto assets, it’s not in software engineering but in financial engineering,” the London-based software engineer and crypto critic Stephen Diehl has written. Allen, who studies financial regulation, sees the rhetoric around empowerment and inclusion as little more than a  “cynical” ploy. She and others believe it masks the aspects of the Web3 apparatus that have made it appetizing to venture capitalists, billionaires, and other institutional players—so much so that they have moved aggressively to plant a foothold in spite of the industry’s unmistakable propensity for scams, fraud, and regulatory scrutiny. Here we have a largely unregulated marketplace ripe for exploitation and stuffed full of unclear valuation metrics, arguable unregistered securities, peculiar financial products, ways to cash out, and a public-facing ideological mission statement.Of particular fascination has been the critical role in the Web3 ecosystem of the token, a new type of financial product that regulators are still struggling to get a handle on but that venture capitalists have realized allows them to cash out quickly and handsomely even if the company never goes public (and twice over if they do).  

而在Web3世界中，风险投资阶层和其他专业投资者发现了一套独特的吸引人的环境，他们认为能够赚到一大笔钱，而无需依赖于虚拟现实或触觉技术的巨大飞跃--有时是通过完成令人印象深刻的监管套利，有时是利用全新的互联网市场。"总部设在伦敦的软件工程师和加密货币评论家Stephen Diehl写道："如果加密资产有任何创新，那也不是在软件工程方面，而是金融工程”。研究金融监管的Allen认为，围绕授权和包容的言辞，不过是一种 "愤世嫉俗 "的伎俩。她和其他人认为，这掩盖了Web3体系的某些特征，使其吸引了风险投资家、亿万富翁和其他机构参与者--尽管该行业明显有欺诈倾向，但他们仍积极行动，在欺诈和监管审查的倾向下站稳脚跟。在这里，我们有一个基本上不受监管的市场，它已经成熟，充满了不明确的估值指标、有争议的未注册证券、特殊的金融产品、套现方式以及面向公众的意识形态使命宣言。特别吸引人的是，代币在Web3生态系统中的起到关键作用，这是一种新型的金融产品，监管机构仍在努力掌握，但风险资本家已经意识到，即使公司从未上市，他们也能快速而丰厚地兑现（如果他们上市，则会加倍）。  

It is, at least for now, close to a perfect playing field for the professional money-making class, one that is leading to pressures to pivot or die, whatever the utility.  One entrepreneur described with great frustration that he had recently spoken to a founder at a VC mixer who was building a “decentralized” dinner reservation system. When he asked why a reservation system needed to be on the blockchain, the founder simply said: “It’s the future.” It’s at least possible that Web3 could bring about a better, more fulfilling version of the internet. It’s just as likely, though, to prove to be what its harshest critics fear: a “hyper-capitalistic” reframing of the web that “contains the seeds of a dystopian nightmare.” “It’s like a collective Theranos,” one venture capitalist said. “A wildly unproven product with nobody at the helm.”Agreat many Web3 entrepreneurs and investors appear sincerely passionate about their mission of creating a better version of the internet. To many of these people, Web3 is not an idyllic possibility but an all-out inevitability, spoken about with an almost religious fervor. “It really feels ideological to me, and it's weird, because VCs tend not to invest in ideologies,” said Phil Libin, the former co-founder and CEO of Evernote. Indeed, soon after a recent string of crypto controversies, including the precipitous May crash of the Luna cryptocurrency and its sister “stablecoin” UST, Andreessen Horowitz said Web3 was just now entering its “golden era.” The same week, it announced an investment in former WeWork CEO’s Adam Neumann’s Web3 climate venture selling “Goddess Nature Tokens.”

至少就目前而言，对于专业的赚钱阶层来说，这是一个接近完美的竞争环境，无论其效用如何，都会导致转型或死亡的压力。一位企业家非常沮丧地描述说，他最近在一个风险投资组合会议上，与一位正在建立一个 "去中心化 "晚餐预订系统的创始人交谈。当他问为什么需要在区块链上建立预订系统时，创始人简单地说：“这是未来。”至少，Web3 有可能带来更好、更充实的互联网版本。然而，它同样可能被证明是最严厉的批评者所担心的：对网络的“超资本主义”重构，“包含反乌托邦噩梦的种子”。 “这就像一个集体 Theranos，”一位风险投资家说，“一个未经证实的产品，无人掌舵。”许多Web3的企业家和投资者似乎对他们创造一个更好的互联网的使命抱有真诚的热情。对于这其中的许多人来说，Web3 不是一种田园诗般的可能性，而是一种全力以赴的必然性，以一种近乎宗教般的热情谈论。 Evernote 前联合创始人兼首席执行官 Phil Libin 说：“对我来说，这真的是一种意识形态，这很奇怪，因为风险投资公司往往不会投资于意识形态。”事实上，在最近一系列加密争议之后不久，包括 $Luna 及其姊妹“稳定币”$UST 在5 月的急剧崩盘，A16Z仍然表示 Web3 刚刚进入其“黄金时代”。同一周，它宣布投资前 WeWork 首席执行官Adam Neumann的 Web3 气候风险投资公司，出售“Goddess Nature Tokens”。 

Another such believer, Benjamin Cohen, who recently started a Web3-focused investment fund, told a crypto site in March that it was “inevitable that blockchain technology and smart contract technology will become implemented in every single facet of our life.” That is not an isolated opinion. “Every single company that exists is going to exist in some form of Web3,” Alexander Taub, the Miami-based co-founder of the DAO-creation tool Upstream, told Motherboard in a Zoom interview. (Taub, who wore a “Just DAO It” hat, added that “the potential market size for DAOs is, like, trillions.”)A lot of the believer class come across as “zealots” who are dismissive of those who question them, according to Jason Henrichs, the CEO of Alloy Labs Alliance, who has spoken to Web3 projects about potential investment (and moved forward with some). The technology writer and researcher Evgeny Morozov has gone so far as to compare them to “annoying vulgar Marxists who, for all the evidence to the contrary, kept [and keep] insisting that the objective developments within capitalism favor the inevitable transition to socialism.” On its face, their level of confidence does indeed appear odd, or at least premature.  One January survey by the strategy firm National Research Group found that only 13 percent of surveyed American adults knew what Web3 meant, and that more than half have never heard the term. A separate poll from around the same time said less than two in five members of Generation Z believed “the metaverse is the next big thing and will become part of our lives in the next decade.” 

另一位这样的信徒Benjamin Cohen最近创办了一个专注于Web3的投资基金，他在3月份告诉一家加密货币网站，"区块链技术和智能合约技术将不可避免地应用于我们生活的方方面面。”这并不是一个孤立的观点。"位于迈阿密的DAO创建工具Upstream的联合创始人Alexander Taub，在一次Zoom采访中告诉Motherboard，"每一家现存的公司，未来都将以某种形式存在于Web3。(戴着 "Just DAO It "帽子的Taub补充说，"DAO的潜在市场规模有几万亿。"）Alloy Labs Alliance的首席执行官Jason Henrichs表示，很多信徒阶层都是 "狂热分子"，并对质疑他们的人不屑一顾。技术专栏作家和研究员Evgeny Morozov甚至把他们比作 "恼人的庸俗的马克思主义者“，认为他们不顾所有相反的证据，一直（并继续）坚持认为资本主义内部的客观发展有利于不可避免地过渡到社会主义。从表面上看，他们的信心水平确实显得有些奇怪，或者至少为时过早。 战略公司National Research Group今年一月份的一项调查发现，只有13%的受访美国成年人知道Web3是什么意思，而且超过一半的人从未听说过这个词。大约在同一时间进行的另一项调查说，Z世代的成员中只有不到五分之二的人认为 "元空间是下一件大事，将在未来十年成为我们生活的一部分"。 

Andreessen Horowitz claims there are 22,400 Web3 creators, and only 18,000 developers were working in crypto or Web3 by the end of 2021, according to one recent survey by Electric Capita, nothing compared to the more than 27 million developers in the world. Some wonder if the Web3 hype is justified at all. Libin had been initially drawn to the “beautiful” and “elegant” concepts of Web3, he said. The CEO of the startup studio All Turtles and the virtual camera application mmhmm, as well as a former VC at General Catalyst, Libin has made a career out of searching out companies that solve real problems with clear business models. But as he started hearing from more and more Web3 companies, he found himself unable to understand what benefit came from developing certain projects on the blockchain as opposed to, for example, using an internal database. When he started to challenge some of the pitches he received, he didn’t like the answers he got. Using such technologies often seemed needlessly expensive and prone to exploitation by hackers and scammers.

根据 Electric Capita 最近的一项调查，A16Z 声称，到 2021 年底，有 22,400 名 Web3 创建者，只有 18,000 名开发人员从事加密或 Web3 工作，与全球超过 2700 万开发人员相比，这简直是微不足道。有些人怀疑 Web3 的炒作是否合理。 Libin 最初被 Web3 的“美丽”和“优雅”概念所吸引，他说。作为创业工作室 All Turtles 和虚拟相机应用程序 mmhmm 的首席执行官，以及 General Catalyst 的前风险投资人，Libin 的职业生涯是寻找能够以清晰的商业模式，解决实际问题的公司。但当他开始听到越来越多的 Web3 公司的消息时，他发现自己无法理解，在区块链上开发某些项目会带来什么好处，为什么不是使用内部数据库。当他开始质疑他收到的一些投资提案时，他不喜欢得到的答案。使用这样的技术往往显得昂贵得毫无必要，而且容易被黑客和骗子利用。 

“Web3 proponents are trying to solve real problems that need solving. I just don't think that Web3 is the solution,” he said. “It doesn't make sense to me as a programmer.” The common pro-Web3 counterargument—often repeated by VCs—is that proponents are simply early, like with the internet of the 1990s. Such unbridled optimism is not novel to Web3, but instead core to the venture and technology industries’ model, according to Martin Kenney, a professor at the University of California, Davis who studies the industry. The investors’ goal is always to sell the company, and they have an incentive to target hot sectors and then aid in raising interest in them. 

"Web3的支持者正试图解决需要解决的实际问题，我只是不认为Web3会是解决方案，"他说。"作为一个程序员，这对我来说没有任何意义。" 常见的支持Web3的反对论点，往往是由风险投资公司重复陈述的，他们认为支持者只是超前了一步，就像1990年代的互联网一样。加州大学戴维斯分校研究该行业的教授马丁-肯尼（Martin Kenney）认为，这种野生的乐观主义对Web3来说并不新鲜，本身就是风险和技术行业模式的核心。而投资者的目标始终是出售公司，他们有动力瞄准热门行业，然后帮助提高对这些行业的兴趣。 

“Whatever the new thing is, it’s absolutely in the VC’s interest to hype it. You’d be a fool not to,” said Kenney. “So you feed it to the press. You tell everyone it's going to change the world, that it is the best thing since sliced bread, whatever it is that will convince the investors that they need to have it.”It can be convincing, and was famously so in the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, during which time companies that added a “.com” to their name experienced a “dramatic” and “permanent” rise in valuation immediately after the rebrand, “regardless of the firm's level of involvement with the Internet,” according to a study on the so-called “dotcom” effect. The researchers determined this so-called “dotcom” effect was attributable to a desire to be “associated with the Internet at all costs” even if the companies were “at best, only loosely, if at all, connected” to it. Eventually, the boom turned to a bust, but not before many venture capitalists cashed out.

肯尼说，无论新事物是什么，炒作它绝对符合VC的利益，如果你不这样做，那你就是傻瓜。所以你要把它提供给媒体，你要告诉大家它将改变世界，它是自切片面包以来最好的东西，不管它是什么，都能说服投资者，他们需要拥有它。"这可能是令人信服的，在20世纪90年代末的互联网热潮中就是如此，根据一项关于所谓“网络泡沫”效应的研究，在此期间，在其名称中添加".com "的公司，在重塑品牌后立即经历了 "戏剧性 "和 "永久性 "的估值上升，"无论公司对互联网的参与程度如何"。研究人员认为，这种所谓的 "网络 "效应是由于人们希望 "不惜一切代价与互联网联系起来"，即使这些公司 "即使有关联，充其量只是与互联网有松散的联系"。最终，繁荣变成了萧条，但那也是在许多风险资本家兑现之后的事了。 

“Web3 proponents are trying to solve real problems that need solving. I just don't think that Web3 is the solution.”

"Web3的支持者正试图解决需要解决的实际问题，我只是不认为Web3会是解决方案"。

Inarguably, the hype cycle is back in full force. Kyle Samani, a managing partner at a crypto-focused investment firm, told me that although most of his limited partners don’t always fully understand the technologies behind Web3, they want exposure to “all of it.” A research report out of Citi estimated that one component of Web3, “the metaverse,” alone could have a total addressable market of $13 trillion within eight years and as many as 5 billion users. (For comparison, the entire California housing stock is currently worth $9.2 trillion; Citi is essentially claiming to believe that the metaverse will, or could, be bigger than all but three or four entire U.S. industries by the time current middle-schoolers graduate college.)

毋庸置疑，炒作周期又开始了。Kyle Samani是一家专注于加密的投资公司的管理合伙人，他告诉我，虽然他的大多数有限合伙人并不总是完全理解Web3背后的技术，但他们希望接触到 "所有的技术"。花旗银行的一份研究报告估计，仅Web3的一个组成部分 "元宇宙 "，就可以在八年内拥有13万亿美元的总潜在市场和多达50亿用户。(相比之下，目前整个加州的住房价值为9.2万亿美元；花旗基本上声称相信，到现在的中学生大学毕业时，元宇宙的市场规模或将超过除三或四个行业外的所有美国行业。） 

Slava Rubin, an early-stage investor who founded Indiegogo and an alternative asset investing search engine, said the enthusiasm reminded him of the e-commerce boom of the 1990s. “Whenever there's change, there's opportunity to displace the legacy players and potentially make a lot of money on investments,” he said. This time, however, the world’s most well-known brands are diving in too, in order to avoid falling behind. Starbucks, ESPN, Spotify, and GameStop are developing NFT plans; Fidelity Investment, the nation’s largest 401(k) provider, is allowing people to shove their retirement savings into Bitcoin. Goldman Sachs is offering crypto-backed loans. JPMorgan Chase, Gucci, and Miller Lite are hunkering down in the metaverse. Google has a dedicated Web3 team. Facebook is Meta. 

创立 Indiegogo 和另类资产投资搜索引擎的早期投资者 Slava Rubin 表示，这种热情让他想起了 1990 年代的电子商务繁荣。 他说："每当有变化的时候，就有机会取代传统的参与者，并有可能在投资上赚大钱。” 然而，这一次，世界上最知名的品牌也纷纷涌入，以避免落伍。 星巴克、ESPN、Spotify 和 GameStop 正在制定 NFT 计划； 美国最大的 401(k) 提供商富达投资正在允许人们将退休储蓄投入比特币； 高盛正在提供加密货币支持的贷款； 摩根大通、Gucci 和 Miller Lite 正埋头于虚拟世界； Google 有一个专门的 Web3 团队，Facebook变成Meta。 

Over the last century, venture capitalists have backed industries that have changed the world and created millions of jobs, most famously during those early years of the internet. Less talked about is the fact that the venture class has gotten it wrong as well, said Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner, who also studies the venture industry. As an example, Lerner cited the VC-funded cleantech boom and bust at the end of the 2000s as a recent example. “It turned out that not only was the technology a lot harder than they thought, but many of the businesses were just extremely poorly run, and some of the best firms in the business were just blinded by their enthusiasm into burning huge amounts of investor money,” Lerner said. 

在过去的一个世纪里，风险资本家支持的行业改变了世界，并创造了数百万个就业机会，其中最著名的是在互联网早期。哈佛商学院教授乔什-勒纳（Josh Lerner）也研究了风险投资行业，他说，很少有人谈论的是，风险投资阶层也有过犯错误的经历。Lerner引用了2000年代末风险投资的清洁技术的繁荣和萧条作为最近的例子，Lerner说：“事实证明，不仅技术比他们想象的要难得多，而且许多企业的经营状况极差，一些最好的企业也被他们的热情所蒙蔽，烧掉了大量投资者资金。” 

Tomasz Tunguz didn't become interested in Web3 because of its ideological underpinnings. Like a lot of investors, he saw a chance to make a lot of money because of the economic particularities of the Web3 ecosystem.  Tunguz, a venture capitalist at Redpoint Ventures who writes a popular blog about the industry, became active in the Web3 market in the first half of last year after he noticed the businesses were both capital efficient and could scale to enormous size. In August, Tomasz like many others watched in amazement as the price of the blockchain platform Solana’s token rose from $40 to $190 by mid-September, briefly reaching a market cap of almost $80 billion by November.“That really opened up a lot of people's eyes to the size of these companies,” Tunguz said. “The scale compels you to figure out what's going on.”The closer he looked, the greater the investment opportunity seemed. For one thing, the businesses did not have clear metrics by which they could be valued. Over the last 20 years, investors and entrepreneurs have together developed fairly reliable, standardized financial models that allow them to confidently place values on traditional software businesses after comparing them to similar older ones. “Most software businesses are really well understood. A startup walks in, and the venture capitalist just as much as the private market investors know exactly what it ought to be worth,” said Tunguz.  

Tomasz Tunguz并不是因为Web3的意识形态基础而对其感兴趣。像很多投资者一样，由于 Web3 生态系统的经济特殊性，他看到了赚大钱的机会。 Tunguz是Redpoint Ventures的风险投资家，他写了一个关于该行业的热门博客，去年上半年，在他注意到 Web3 市场既具有资本效率又可以扩大到巨大规模后，他开始活跃在Web3市场Tomasz和其他许多人一样，惊讶地看着区块链平台Solana的代币价格从8月份的40美元上涨到9月中旬的190美元，到11月短暂达到近800亿美元的市值。"这真的让很多人看到了这些公司的规模潜力，"Tunguz说，"规模迫使你去弄清楚发生了什么。"他看得越仔细，投资机会似乎越大。首先，这些企业没有明确的衡量标准，无法对其进行估值。在过去的20年里，投资者和企业家们共同开发了相当可靠的、标准化的财务模型，使他们能够在将传统的软件企业与类似的较早业务进行比较后，自信地对其进行估值。Tunguz说："大多数软件企业真的很好理解，一家初创企业走进来，风险资本家和私人市场投资者一样，都清楚地知道它应该值多少钱。