I think OP was implying something of real world value.
I can see the hypothetical value in decentralized computing/public database.
Certain types of data could in theory be stored publicly, and anybody could build APIs around them. In particular, it would be cool if there was some common protocol and storage format for something like tweets, such that anybody could build Twitter client. Common protocol would especially benefit social media IMO.
We've long collaborated on open source code, but this would be more akin to open source data.
But all that being said, why has nothing real world value oriented materialized yet?
The decentralized experience is worse, and there are privacy concerns around storing certain data publicly, I would guess. Can those problems be solved?
> But all that being said, why has nothing real world value oriented materialized yet?
Because Ethereum was founded by early Bitcoiners to raise bitcoin for themselves, and the technology always came second to the pursuit of self-enrichment. Software projects can never lose their soul. If the soul was rotten from the very beginning, as the saying goes: “garbage in, garbage out”.
I sincerely doubt if any of the inventors of the marketing phrase “web 3” ever thought it would come to this: where their investors are so desperate for yield that they begin taking the term seriously. Not that it matters to the founders of Ethereum, many of whom have long since become secretive Bitcoin billionaires.
The Ethereum project is best described as a series of cynical courtship displays designed purely to bootstrap the “network effect” for their newly created confidence game called ETH, which in 2014 they sold to — to borrow their own legal terminology — “philanthropists” in exchange for “donations”. A process they swore up and down bore no similarity at all to a securities offering.
People not privy to the way cryptocurrency works are shocked to find the various buzzwords hatched by the Ethereum people for their own self-enrichment in the described legacy era of ICOs turn out to be a whole lot of nothing. They shouldn’t be shocked, they should be embarassed for lowering themselves to investing in such a system, or angry if they did so in ignorance.
Well, I fully expect cryptos to implode akin to 2018 in the near future.
There's no tie to real world value... Everything is self referential and only implies value within world of crypto.
I do think there's potential behind the concept of standard protocols for "open source data", but blockchains have not delivered on the premise very well.
It's just one pyramid/ponzi scheme after the other, designed with self enrichment in mind first, as you say.
I can see the hypothetical value in decentralized computing/public database.
Certain types of data could in theory be stored publicly, and anybody could build APIs around them. In particular, it would be cool if there was some common protocol and storage format for something like tweets, such that anybody could build Twitter client. Common protocol would especially benefit social media IMO.
We've long collaborated on open source code, but this would be more akin to open source data.
But all that being said, why has nothing real world value oriented materialized yet?
The decentralized experience is worse, and there are privacy concerns around storing certain data publicly, I would guess. Can those problems be solved?