Hype Vs Reality in Web 3
A take on a 1997 IBM commercial
Hello everyone. Summer has begun and it makes the bear market a little more tolerable.
The bear market in crypto right now is being compared to the dot com crash of the early 2000’s, so I went back and tried to find relevant ads from that time, and oh boy this was fun for me.
Any comments or suggestions, shoot me a DM on twitter!
I am also searching for a full-time gig in crypto/web 3 in a product, finance, or strategy role. If you know anyone hiring, email me at thomas@genzvoice.com.
I will be at NFT NYC as well!
Enjoy today’s piece!
I love this commercial by IBM. Even though I wasn’t born for 3 years after this commercial came out, this is eerily similar to how I feel about web 3 right now. Hype Vs reality. As a community, web 3 is making a lot of promises but have had trouble delivering on these use cases so far.
Many tech-savvy kids my age are not involved yet, web 3 seems like a fad. I think the problem started back in the summer of 2021 when the entire media was covering NFTs, viewers were astonished at how much people were spending on digital images of apes. It wasn’t a good look and it looked stupid and childish to the outside eye. People weren’t able to see the true potential of the technology.
Then we started to make promises. Tickets as NFTs, buying a house through the blockchain, and much more. We made these promises knowing they are just hype and not reality yet, but we are trying to build them into a reality. As we build, it is important to reflect on what IBM said, are these things that will be or might be?
Is buying a house through the blockchain actually something that makes sense?
Should concert tickets be NFTs?
Why does a user-owned social media make sense?
Are all these things about hype or reality? Will they be the future or might they be the future?
Anything that might be the future, isn’t worth building right now, but anything that will be the future, we need to build. Web 3 has some amazing technology and some amazing use cases that smart people around the US are building right now. In my mind, there is no way web 3 doesn’t make it, but we should start prioritizing things that are reality vs just hype.
The Hype
More than 50% of startups and NFT projects in web 3 will fail. Some startups are just public goods, and some NFT projects are just an adjective followed by a primate-based animal (silly apes, cool monkeys, humorous lemurs, and yes I just made these up) that claims to have a great community and an innovative roadmap when in reality there is no actual use for this project. These projects leverage the hype around NFTs to turn the project into a money grab. Don’t get me wrong, I have made some great NFT flips, but a cartoon frog with glasses isn’t worth $1600 and I’m sorry for the person who bought it from me.
The Reality
On the bright side, we can see some communities and use cases that blockchain and web 3 have brought to life and are taking incredible leaps forward.
LinksDAO, where I am a member, brought together members of the golf community throughout the world with a goal to buy and renovate a golf course as well as build one of the greatest golf communities in the world. Not to add they are killing it.
Proof XYZ has brought together entrepreneurs and product builders throughout the internet and they are heads down building to make web 3 a better place.
Gm.xyz is building a decentralized, user-owned, social media that is 10x better than discord for community management.
I personally know a few startups who are trying to build a ticketing platform on the blockchain, a way to list a house on the blockchain, or mortgages that are backed by crypto.
The use cases and communities that are being built by web 3 will redefine the internet. People will be skeptical at first, as they always are, but as these use cases and the UI/UX gets better, more people will start to join the new internet. These projects and startups are the reality of what web 3 can do.
Will be
I believe the next 1-3 years will be tough sledding, projects and startups will fail, but during that time people will be building the reality. So from my end, I would say dismiss the hype and focus on the reality.
There are a lot of promises that might be the future.
Let’s focus on what will be the future.
Cheers, and have a great weekend.
Tom