If you’ve spent any time at all on crypto Twitter, you’re familiar with the web3 narrative. It goes like this: in the beginning, the web was “tr

Why Decentralization Isn't as Important as You Think - haseeb qureshi

submited by

Style Pass

2021-05-30 12:00:03

If you’ve spent any time at all on crypto Twitter, you’re familiar with the web3 narrative. It goes like this: in the beginning, the web was “truly decentralized.” Against all odds, the World Wide Web won against the corporatist designs of companies like Microsoft, and cyberspace became the territory of hobbyists and hackers. The Internet was henceforth enshrined as a neutral platform. And any publisher, no matter how small or powerless, was free to set up shop in their own corner of the Web.

Now in Web 2.0, 93% of searches happen through Google, 64% of browsers use Chrome, and 79% of social advertising dollars go to Facebook. A handful of companies now effectively control cyberspace.

Web3 advocates see public blockchains as the catalyst to reverse this trend. They want to put power back into the hands of users and replace Google and Facebook with open platforms—perhaps platforms that are owned collectively by their users, operated as public commons.

I believe this story, this decentralization fairy tale, is predicated on an error. It’s the same error that underlies most utopian projects.