> There are no real uses of blockchain technology today that aren’t a variation on financial speculation (aka gambling) and illicit activity.
This gets repeated a lot, and it's simply not true. It's a telltale sign that there's simply too much emotion in the arguments around blockchain - any post about tor and bittorrent doesn't receive nearly as many (if any) "but it's only for criminals" comments.
Being able to own and trade a digital asset in much the same way a physical asset is traded is potentially a huge use for blockchains. Large players aren't about to model ownership of the digital goods they sell as items on a blockchain, but it's a big opportunity for smaller players.
One of the worst facets of the whole web3 movement is the "thought leaders" and community talking very confidently about how blockchain will replace very well established ways of doing business (FTA "airlines selling tickets"). The author takes a very dim view of the whole blockchain space, and uses the worst possible interpretation of parts of it to make their case, but I don't disagree on this point.
Whether web3 becomes a mainstream "thing" is anyone's guess, but if it makes any headway, it won't be large enterprises leading the charge. Exactly like the author states; "Do airlines have any problem selling [tickets] to you? Of course not; this process is already efficient and optimal." Where it potentially could be used is by smaller entities that don't have well established processes, and don't necessarily have the means to build out some of the required systems.
If I want to build any kind of digital asset (an item in a game*, access to a forum, etc) and I want to allow it to be traded, I have to build that trading platform. If I want it to be traded outside of my platform, then I have to deal with endless integrations. If I'm a multi-billion dollar enterprise that's fine, I can do that. If I'm a small company, that may not be feasible. If I use a blockchain to store that asset (or at least to track who owns it) then I only need to integrate to that blockchain, that is, check that a user owns the asset before I allow them to use it in my system. I'm not saying this is simple, or even currently desirable for most people or companies, but what I am saying is that it is something that is feasible and potentially of value to an end user.
Where this will struggle in the short-term is in the end-user experience. Wallets are awful, most people don't want self-custody, and honestly, the space is filled with slimy individuals that don't exactly inspire trust. I could write for hours about all the things that I view as wrong with with web3 (some of them are technical, the majority are about the people), but to outright dismiss it as a scam/only for criminals/the worst thing on Earth is blindly emotive and is (almost) as bad as the fanatics that are just as emotional about promoting it.
* I'm only referring to tracking ownership, not interoperability across different games. That can go in the "unrealistic things web3 people say" basket.
> but to outright dismiss it as a scam/only for criminals/the worst thing on Earth is blindly emotive
I mean but you came up with one maybe kinda plausible use case just to better than I could dismiss why it would be a piece of shit anyway - and that most importantly it doesn’t solve the hard problems.
It’s not emotive - I just want an existence proof of something useful that isn’t purchases or transactions I want off the grid.
I don’t think money laundering or concealing transactions is necessarily criminal - but the only real use of crypto assets for transactions is to do stuff someone powerful doesn’t think you should be doing.
You raise a good point. As a sceptic of this space, I would counter the UX issue you mention - which is a huge hurdle for any larger scale adoption of blockchain - will realistically only be solved by billion-dollar enterprise involvement, which will inevitably mean centralization, which in turn means we might as well drop the blockchain part.
I tend to agree with that. If I were to predict how blockchain and web3 will play out I'd say it ends in mostly centralization. The majority of people don't care about the decentralized and "trustless" parts of blockchain, but they care about usability, and I just don't see how a fully decentralized system beats a centralized one in terms of usability (or cost, or scalability). Just look at the internet; it started out as something that was (for some definition) decentralized, and in the end centralization won.
Somebody else could build a centralized trading platform, and if you use that, it will be cheaper for all parties.
Whether web3 becomes a thing is not anybody's guess. Anybody who thinks about it clearly can easily conclude that it will never be a thing except among scammers and their marks.
> Somebody else could build a centralized trading platform, and if you use that, it will be cheaper for all parties.
Oh absolutely, a centralized digital assets trading platform for general digital goods would be better in almost every (at least technical) way compared to a blockchain/decentralized platform. The challenge isn't technical, it's getting parties to trust you and your platform, and to use it. That's maybe the one (if not the only) upshot to using a blockchain; I don't necessarily have to trust the platform.
That said, Visa and Mastercard basically have a duopoly on digital payments, so it's not unrealistic to think someone could do the same but with trading/tracking ownership of digital assets.
Game developers already trust services companies with leaderboards and other game services. It's not much harder for them to trust someone who provides a transferable digital asset service.
No one doubts that platforms can be powerful. At least I fully agree with that. But what is the benefit of a decentralized platform powered by blockchain? Spotify is a very successful platform for artists. No blockchain involved.
Spotify is a terrible platform for actually paying artists. Look around[1][2]. Ironically they are now testing NFT and blockchain technology, which might drive some more sales toward artists, but still through Spotify's high rent extraction.[3]
Why use a decentralized platform? Because users are able to escape the walled garden, and have more power over the protocols that distribute and generate sales on their content.
This gets repeated a lot, and it's simply not true. It's a telltale sign that there's simply too much emotion in the arguments around blockchain - any post about tor and bittorrent doesn't receive nearly as many (if any) "but it's only for criminals" comments.
Being able to own and trade a digital asset in much the same way a physical asset is traded is potentially a huge use for blockchains. Large players aren't about to model ownership of the digital goods they sell as items on a blockchain, but it's a big opportunity for smaller players.