After recently founding the Web3 Greece meetup, I keep having folks ask me this, so I thought I’d summarise my answers in a place that I can point folks to.
It starts with Bitcoin. But please don’t let that put you off the rest of this post. It’s short anyway. ; )
I was one of the people who were really, really(!!) excited early on at the potential bitcoin could have for our societies. I quickly lost all interest, however.
You see, I was hoping that bitcoin would offer a new channel for online, direct, peer-to-peer transactions. A way for people and companies to receive payments for goods and services offered - especially so for digital services. Instead, bitcoin became something you invest and hold on to. It became the “digital gold”. And gold creates more problems than it solves in society today, so… thanks very much, I’ll show myself out. That’s the tl;dr version, anyway.
In the meantime, together with Bitcoin, “blockchain” also became the latest hot trend hype in tech. All the more reason
to stop listening to anything coming out from that camp.
Fast forward a few years down the line - and a few months back, from the time of writing this - when a friend managed to convince me to take another look at the space.
“It’s not all hype” — yorgos’s friend. not an actual quote, but the gist of what they said.
…and so I took a look…
…and I was mind blown 🤯:
- you could now run code on the blockchain (Ethereum Smart Contracts) - opening up entirely new areas (e.g. Decentralized Finance),
- there were true, p2p, decentralized storage solutions (e.g. IPFS, Sia, Storj and others),
- there was a decentralized DNS (Ethereum Name Service),
- there were Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs),
- there is - finally - a “decentralized GitHub” in the works (Radicle.xyz) !!!
- and this is just the start…
Stuff I had been dreaming / wishing about only in philosophy-flavoured discussions over beverages with friends.
Heck, we were basically running DevStaff.gr as a DAO! (DevStaff is an open, volunteer-driven, developers community here in Heraklion, Crete, Greece, which I co-founded and helped run for a number of years)
If DAOs existed back in 2015, DevStaff would no doubt have evolved into one !!
More importantly, there are people finally discussing and working towards decentralisation !
- Are we there yet?
- No.
- Is there still a lot of hype?
- OH YOU BET. Definitely more than I would have liked.
- Are there tons of scams ?
- YES!! (and please be careful out there).
…but after all is said and done, it turns out people actually care about decentralization.
- Anyone who promises to offer it, gets clicks.
- Anyone who promises to debunk it, gets clicks.
There’s a long way to go. We’re only just beginning.
And not every service SHOULD become decentralized.
But isn’t it GREAT that decentralization is back on the main scene? (even if it’s called “web3”? )
Please feel free to join the Web3 Greece meetups (all in English) or our Zulip chat room to discuss this and much more!