Decentralization in Web3 vs Anti-capitalism

Web3 is a modern trend on the internet based on the concept of Blockchain since the invention of Bitcoin in 2009, and later on Ethereum in 2016. Just like the vision of blockchain projects, they focus a lot on decentralization. However, since they utilize currencies, the effects of capitalism still persist in these projects, and so the promised utopia of equality for all is difficult to be achieved in this way.

Even if it presents the theoretical possibility, economic value has to be generated to distribute any wealth, and if Web3 projects don't do that very well globally, it will be no different from the previous state of the world, and this is why many people call Web3 a scam although I feel that many Web3 developers had good intentions.

The problem is that Web3 doesn't give an incentive to generate value, aside from promising a profit for being miners. But that incentive simply continues the problems of capitalism, as I'll explain in this article. So many developers tried to create artificial value using projects like NFTs, etc. Again, the problem with capitalism is exactly that it creates artificial value and wastes efforts that would otherwise go to developing the society - at least Web3 visionaries did not have the greed part.

This is a classic case of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".

Web3

The effects of capitalism even in decentralization

• Web3 uses cryptocurrencies
• By means of DAOs, Web3 can let everyone hold power to an organization with capital
• Network services can run on the blockchain without paying a company, much like the "free and open source" software movement aims to do
• But still network fees is being paid to the miners (or validators)
• Although anyone can mine (or stake), the ability of a person to mine depends on how much money they have. Miners need equipment, and the more equipment they have at first, the easier it becomes for them to mine, making it easier for them to buy further more equipment. In the case of staking, it's simply about investing the profits back.
• So the rich gets richer.

• If a government was to distribute these fairly, then we wouldn't really need capital in the first place.

• There is also the concern about duplication - see Sharing Resources.

Anti-capitalism

• The goals of libre technology is closely aimed with building a world free from the effects of capitalism
• As of now, we choose to self-host programs instead of using some else's cloud services
• And also for social media, we choose federation, so that the user can choose which server to host on
• This is in line with trust, however, it also seems to divide people in a sense. I understand that it is about encouraging diversity - but at the same time, it takes away from the sense of oneness, by having to choose a server identity.

• It is also a bit messy for many people, like email, but see how all of us have converged to GMail. This is only partly corporate monopoly, but partly also because people got tired of complex IDs, or the inability to find a cool server name, etc. So they chose to place their cool usernames in their username.

• So it also deals with the problem about Sharing Resources.