Member-only story
The crypto-web’s fatal flaw
and why we mustn’t let it succeed
“The form of law which I propose would be as follows: In a state
which is desirous of being saved from the greatest of all plagues — not
faction, but rather distraction — there should exist among the citizens
neither extreme poverty nor, again, excessive wealth, for both are
productive of great evil . . . Now the legislator should determine what
is to be the limit of poverty or of wealth.”
I have long held that as compared to the outsized influence it enjoys in our lives, most of Wall Street actually plays a minimally important role in the world. It is the place from where the ultra-rich set the engine of the world to turn for their ideological and financial benefit. This is hardly a unique opinion and does not merit further repetition.
Web3 started with the promise of breaking the control of the few by decentralization. But by now it is well acknowledged that blockchain technology has the fatal flaw of not being scalable by design. So for all practical purposes, try as it might, it cannot build the decentralized world for everyone that it promises. Coupled with the problem that complex-tech-at-scale fundamentally gravitates towards centralization, what I get is the sinking feeling that the internet may never be truly decentralized.
