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*Note: this article discusses web 3.0 in the context I originally
understood it, which I now understand was coined by [Gavin
Wood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web3). I have no understanding of,
or interest in Tim Berners-Lee's concept of the
[Semantic Web](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web)*
## We are all Satoshi
Satoshi Nakamoto committed the first block to a blockchain with: "The
Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." A
technology born in global financial crisis, known only among a group of
people who liked to call themselves the "cypherpunks, Bitcoin--and the
blockchain concept on which is was based--was a technology born from
political turmoil and couldn't be anything but a political statement.
What was that statement exactly?
If you read the Bitcoin white paper, and I highly recommend you do since
it's probably one of the best-written research papers in recent memory,
the impression you get is somewhere between utilitarianism and utopia.
Freedom and psuedonymity achieved through the mathematically perfect
organization of cryptography.
Without trying to re-write the white paper, the core concept can be
described very simply. Say you have a network of random schmoes with
computers (some people call this the "Internet," but let's not get hung
up on jargon). You can organize these people into three main camps:
miners, nodes, and buyers. The nodes all keep a record of all
transactions ever made on the Bitcoin network. The miners, using
cryptography (and therefore CPU power), check these nodes to make sure
they're all accurate and up to date. The first miner that checks a full
set of transactions wins the Bitcoin. The people with the Bitcoin serve
kind of like a mint, distributing the currency to user's wallets in
exchange for pizza, illegal drugs, but most usually: cash. The buyers
ultimately provide the value of Bitcoin and make transactions with it
for the nodes to update, the miners to check and so on.
The best part of all this, is that unlike traditional digital payment
like credit cards or Paypal: no corporation needs to do the bookeeping.
Instead, any volunteer with an internet connection can store and serve
their own copy of the book, the record of transactions Satoshi calls a
blockchain. The idea comes directly from torrenting, where anyone with
a link to the torrent can download a file from potentially thousands of
others who are also serving (or seeding) the file.
There is a world that Bitcoin needs for all this to operate in a neat
way. Bitcoin demands a society of volunteers for it's book-keeping, a
gathering of self-starters for it's mining and maintenance (preferably
ones that don't track or scam people), and something like a national
myth--a belief that you have *something*, and that *something* has worth.
But the world that's come out of it, seems far off from that ideal to
me.
## We are the Web 3.0 people
I imagine anyone reading this who happens to be part of crypto start up
is either seething with rage at how little detail I went into or is
completely unaware of any of that history. They also might snipe that
Bitcoin is irrelevant nowadays. Bitcoin is becoming something
of a "boomer" cryptocurrency now that some feel has seen better days in
spite of the booming price. But that's all it is--an imperfect software
hijacked into a get-rich-quick-scheme. Prophetically they hint that
something bigger is coming.
If Web 1.0 was a littering of static content left by bored users and
Web 2.0 made the pictures move with your mouse to lull us all into
surveillance capitalism, Web 3.0, to it's proponents, is the light at
the end of the tunnel that will replace all those tyrannical centralized
software corps with user-owned and user-operated *de*centralized means
of communicating and commerce. To the libertarian: it's the end of the
Fed, the end of big government crony capitalism, and something like the
start of *Wealth of Nations*. To the marxist: it's the working class
owning entirely the means of commerce on the Internet organized
bureaucratically as open-source projects tend to become.
Gavin Wood, the coiner of the term Web 3.0 as I understand it, had this
to say back in 2014:
```
WIRED: What's your handy elevator definition of Web3?
“Less trust, more truth.”
WIRED: What does “less trust” mean?
I have a particular meaning of trust that’s essentially faith. It's the
belief that something will happen, that the world will work in a certain
way, without any real evidence or rational arguments as to why it will
do that. So we want less of that, and we want more truth--which what I
really mean is a greater reason to believe that our expectations will be
met.
WIRED: It sounds like you're saying "less blind faith, more credible
trustworthiness."
Yes and no. I think trust in itself is actually just a bad thing all
around. Trust implies that you are you're placing some sort of authority
in somebody else, or in some organization, and they will be able to use
this authority in some arbitrary way. As soon as it becomes credible
trust, it's not really trust anymore. There is a mechanism, a
rationale, an argument, a logical mechanism--whatever--but in my mind,
it's not trust.
```
On the surface there's no way this doesn't seem wonderful. There are few
people I imagine who would argue that blind-faith in authority is a good
thing. And to our inner anarchist: should *anyone* really rule over us
anyway.
But I don't question the idealism of the Web 3.0 people, or that they
really believe they are making the world a freer more efficient place.
What I question is: does blockchain technology, as described by
Nakamoto and as expanded on by many others, actually achieve these
ends? And will the people at large, who ultimately are left the task to
run this Web 3.0 as volunteers, actually fall in line with the ideal the
software developers see so clearly expressed in code.
## We do not forgive. We do not forget.
### China's Social Credit System
### The digital dollar
### A data mining society
Many of the Web 3.0 people would agree with the often quoted point
against social media companies: "we own our data so they should pay
us." The sentiment fits perfectly into the Web 3.0 agenda. Enter
steemit, a crypto-powered Twitter/Facebook like web front where you can
write articles, make articles, like other's work, and get paid for it
all! ...
Brave is attempting a similar kind of project with their Basic Attention
Token (BAT), which rewards users of the browser for watching sponsored
ads. ...
## We would like you to play
At the core of the ideology of Web 3.0, I can't help but feel a strong
urge--particularly from software-minded people--to gamify society. Write
the article to get your coins. Read the book to gain XP. Gain XP to get
more visibility for your articles, and get even more coins.
## We will all be Satoshi
The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, a name intentionally chosen since it
is parallel to the English "John Doe," is still unknown as of this
writing. But Wikipedia has a surprisingly complete set of references on
what we *do* know.
...
Most interesting to me is the case of Len Sassaman, which I caught in
earlier revisions of the article, but was removed due to lack of a
source.
## Do we want this?
## References
1. https://www.wired.com/story/web3-gavin-wood-interview/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Possible_identities
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