Blockchain Guy struggles to explain a simple practical use for Web3

According to its evangelists, Web3 will revolutionize by decentralizing it using blockchain technology.

But there is one big problem: no one seems to know what concrete benefits it would have – especially in concrete terms that apply to the real world as it exists today.

In the course of one recent chat with author, podcast host and Bloomberg columnist Tyler Cowen, billionaire investor and Web3 lawyer Marc Andreessen struggled to explain a practical use of technology in the real world.

When Cowen pressured Andreessen to explain in a concrete way how a podcast network would benefit from Web3, Andreessen spoke in vague terms about new “revenue generation methods”, including the creation of “unique digital property”, such as NFTs.

“It’s injecting at a very basic level, internet – based money and … financial incentives into a system that simply has not had it,” said Andreessen, a rather evasive response that clearly did not satisfy Cowen.

“But is the key difference simpler micropayments, to be able to sell collectives more easily, for example with the NFT model, instead of signed T-shirts?” he asked. “They do not sound very big to me.”

Instead of addressing the issue directly, Andreessen appeared in a seemingly unrelated tangent to the size of the media market as a whole.

Supporters of Web3 have often argued that the average Internet user will be able to benefit from a decentralized system that will not depend on companies enabling transactions.

But the reality already looks quite different. Considering where the cryptocurrency and NFT markets are heading, for example, that kind of argument falls pretty flat.

Just like web 2.0, new institutions have gained power, and become key decision makers with the power to decide who benefits from the system and who does not.

When it comes to cryptocurrency exchanges, companies like Binance and Coinbase have already benefited greatly from scale and marketing budgets.

In short, increasingly centralized business actors are moving away from the kind of idealistic, decentralized landscape of self-sustaining societies that Web3 promises to have.

And then there is the fact that all of this operates in a regulatory black hole, with scams and abuses going on constantly.

Will any of it actually give creators and innovators, especially in the media, any tools to earn a living that web 2.0 does not?

Given the fact that we have not yet heard of a concrete example of this happening, it does not seem so likely.

Critics, meanwhile, argue that we should never take promises from people like Andreessen at face value.

“Never let people tell you that you simply do not get Web3,” Vice journalist Edward Ongweso Jr twitret in response to a video of Cowen and Andreesen’s chat.

“It’s self-referential and non-existent, which is why Web3 advocates speak in abstract circles like this and struggle to define, explain or separate it,” he added.

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