In his new article, Vitalik Buterin said that the idea of Web3 has lost its original vision due to the move away from decentralization. High fees and the financial direction of the industry were the main reasons for the change, he said.
Co-founder of the Ethereum project Vitalik Buterin expressed dissatisfaction with the current vector of development of the Web3 sphere. He believes the industry has moved away from decentralization and the blame lies with high commissions.
According to Buterin, the term "Web3" was originally proposed by his colleague Gavin Wood. It represents a vision of Ethereum as a global ecosystem, and not just an analogue of Bitcoin with smart contracts.
According to Wood, Web3 should become the base layer of the open Internet stack, Buterin emphasized. However, at a certain point this area began to develop in a different direction:
“Since 2017, that [Wood] vision has fallen by the wayside. Few people talk about consumer cryptocurrency payments. The only non-financial application that is used at scale remains ENS. […] a significant portion of non-blockchain decentralization advocates view crypto assets as a distraction rather than a powerful ally.”
Buterin believes that the main reason for this state of affairs is the increase in commissions. When fees are low, developers are interested in the comprehensive development of Web3, while when fees are high, degen traders remain the only active group of counterparties.
Note that here we are talking about investors who are guided by extremely speculative motives. According to Plisio , degen traders try to extract maximum profit without caring about the value of their investment.
At the same time, Buterin sees certain positive developments, namely:
- rapid development of rollups;
- launch of second generation mixers, such as Nocturne ;
- integration of the account abstraction concept. More details about it in a separate article ;
- popularization of light Ethereum clients;
- the emergence and gradual spread of solutions with zero-knowledge evidence.
Buterin emphasized that excessive “financialization” and centralization are two factors that contribute to the loss of the original vision of crypto assets.
At the same time, the co-founder of Ethereum identified a number of values characteristic of the Web3 sphere as a whole:
- open global participation;
- decentralization;
- resistance to censorship;
- auditability;
- reliable neutrality;
- creating useful tools rather than “empires”;
- cooperative thinking.
According to Buterin, the only way for cryptography to improve cybersecurity is through open development.
At the same time, the co-founder of Ethereum believes that it is wrong to blame individual counterparties for the current situation. In his opinion, balance and effective integration contribute to the creation of the necessary social layer, which, in turn, produces an incentive for the development of the ecosystem as a whole.
