Even A16Z's Marc Andreessen, head cheerleader for Web3, doesn't talk about it very much any more.
From IEEE Spectrum:
Molly White’s “Grift Counter” has tallied US $12 billion lost in crypto scams
In mid-2021, the term “Web3” suddenly exploded into the public consciousness. As people scrambled to figure out what it was—cryptocurrencies? blockchain? nonfungible tokens?—venture capital firms were pouring money into new startups, over US $30 billion before the year was out.
Meanwhile, Molly White, a software engineer, started reading up on the tech in case that was the direction her career would be heading in. But she found herself taking a different direction: She launched the website Web3 Is Going Just Great, with the aim of tracking the scams and fraud in the cryptocurrency world. So far, she’s tallied $11.8 billion in money lost on the website’s Grift Counter. White answered five rapid-fire questions on the Web3 phenomenon and why she’s still not impressed.
How did you end up running a site like Web3 Is Going Just Great?
Molly White: When I started researching the topic, I was just seeing a lack of reporting on some of the downsides—you know, the hacks, the scams, the fraud. And so I decided I could do my part to try and fill that void to some extent, because I feel like it’s important that people get the full picture.
A lot of the projects you’re tracking involve cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies. Is that what “Web3” means? Are all of these terms synonymous?
White: It’s primarily a marketing term. And I think the industry benefits from how nebulous it is because it can mean whatever is most useful at that time. But broadly speaking, Web3 refers to blockchains underpinning everything you do online....
....MUCH MORE
Previously:
Having Conquered Web3, Facebook/Meta Is Moving On To Webs4 and 5 (META)
"Web3, the Metaverse, and the Lack of Useful Innovation" (with a shout-out to Izabella Kaminska)
"Web3 'contains the seeds of a dystopian nightmare' says analyst firm"
Hating On Andreessen Horowitz's Web3 Spiel
"The Dubrovnik Interviews: Marc Andreessen - Interviewed by a Retard"
And many more, use the 'search blog' box upper left if interested: keywords metaverse, Andreessen or pretty much anything else you choose. There are a lot of posts and this is one of the last places in the Google search universe where the first five hits aren't ads.
The first five hits may be total timesucks but they won't be ads.
