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Sloan the DEV Moderator for The DEV Team

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#DEVDiscuss: What Happened to Web3?

Hey Devs, happy Friday πŸ¦₯πŸ’š

As always, it's been an eventful week in the tech industry. We've got a lot to talk about! And today I want to discuss...what happened to Web3?

Today's discussion question comes from this anonymous message in my inbox:

What happened to Web3? People seem to be talking about it less, but at the same time, more decentralized apps are appearing. Is that the same thing?

I know the community is gonna have thoughts on this one! So let's talk about itβ€”share your answer in the comments πŸ‘€


Want to submit a question for discussion, or even ask for advice? Visit Sloan's Inbox! You can choose to remain anonymous.

Top comments (10)

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

The value of Web3 as a blockchain technology was very speculative. If we all agree to use this one token, the early adopters of that ecosystem are richly rewarded.

There is a lot of incentive to pump the technology, and plenty of reason to dump if you feel like enthusiasm is waning.

Pump and dump (P&D) is a form of securities fraud that involves artificially inflating the price of an owned stock through false and misleading positive statements, in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price. Once the operators of the scheme "dump" (sell) their overvalued shares, the price falls and investors lose their money. This is most common with small-cap cryptocurrencies and very small corporations/companies, i.e. "microcaps".

Decentralization is here to stay. It was gaining ground before "web3" was branded, and momentum continues.

Timing-wise, the financial boom of web3 coincided with low interest rates, and it is an easy place to divest from if money is more expensive. And then, as others have mentioned, a new hype cycle kicks offβ€” AI. And while there is still plenty of undue hype over any particular AI technology today, it has a lot more teeth as an inevitably impactful technology that really overshadows the hype of Web3.

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard • Edited

It was a marketing stunt.
"Web3" has as much to do with the web than JavaScript had to do with Java.
Also it gave the impression that they were able to predict the future (after the web comes web3) which always sounds super impressive

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tfantina profile image
Travis Fantina

For me Web3 has sort of a dirty connotation as being associated blockchain technologies. If that's the case I'm sure it cooled with all things that happened last year. However, if you're using Web3 more broadly to discuss decentralized platforms like BlueSky or Mastodon... Well I think the answer is the same, the platforms that are getting big are actively eschewing the Web3 label due to it's association with the blockchain.

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ervin_szilagyi profile image
Ervin Szilagyi

AI come and everybody forgot about it.

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rolandixor profile image
Roland Taylor

The decentralized web is real and so is it's value and requisite impact, but the reason we're hearing less about it is that the value of the grift has dissipated.

Cryto/Blockchain scams are losing their appeal while the truly useful decentralized web and associated technologies takes root.

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brense profile image
Rense Bakker

Decentralized web hasn't reached maturity yet I think.. I don't find it to be a requirement often for enterprise clients and it's still too big a hurdle to just randomly make all projects decentralized. It needs more time and more clear advantages (for enterprises) over the centralized web.

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thomasbnt profile image
Thomas Bnt β˜•

Web3? What is...

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mangor1no profile image
Mangor1no

The hype is ended. People were FOMO. That's all. Now all Web3 enthusiast is changing their Twitter name to AI expert :D

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ingosteinke profile image
Ingo Steinke, web developer • Edited

The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0 (not to be confused with Web3), is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards[1] set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web

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