At least this critic in [0] knows that it is too early to get excited and he is not ignoring the technologies that are still useful that came out of many cryptocurrencies like Stellar, XRP and others.

> For example, are Ripple and Stellar more successful platforms for cross-border remittances than bank transfers, credit cards, or PayPal, in the same way that Google Maps was better than Rand McNally or first-generation GPS pioneers like Garmin? There’s some evidence that crypto is becoming a meaningful player in this market, though regulatory hurdles are slowing adoption.

That use case is still alive and valid here.

[0] https://www.oreilly.com/radar/why-its-too-early-to-get-excit...

This article is realy lazy. If you want an actually valid argument against web3, here is Tim O'Reilly's take. He is the creator of the term web2.0 and created much of what we know as open source: https://www.oreilly.com/radar/why-its-too-early-to-get-excit...

I don't understand how these types of articles can reach the front page of hackernews. A hadoop system could provide a replacement? That's like arguing a multi-threaded pc will be a replacement.

Blockchain does have a lot of hype, we can all agree there. But there's decent technology being built too. He is right in that many things are centralized, and many tools have to still be decentralized (like infura).

The thing is, things are being built to solve certain issues and we are at early stages. Wwhat serious teams want to achieve is not "decentralization", but "sufficient-decentralization". As in, you can expect for a protocol to enforce solving conflicts of interest accounting for what the majority in the protocol want. Governance is important here, and it's being dealt with. DiD will potentially allow more democracy (instead of capitalisti) decision of the rules. You have energy sector investing heavily on energy conflict resolution. There's many topics that are solved by certain features.

That's basically also Tim O'reilly's take.

> Keep in mind that it was still early when the dot-com bubble popped. Google Maps hadn’t been invented yet, nor had the iPhone and Android. Online payments were in their infancy. No Twitter or Facebook. No AWS and cloud computing. Most of what we rely on today didn’t yet exist.

> I suspect it will be the same for crypto. So much is yet to be created. Let’s focus on the parts of the Web3 vision that aren’t about easy riches, on solving hard problems in trust, identity, and decentralized finance. And above all, let’s focus on the interface between crypto and the real world that people live in, where, as Matthew Yglesias put it when talking about housing inequality, “a society becomes wealthy over time by accumulating a stock of long-lasting capital goods.” If, as Sal Delle Palme argues, Web3 heralds the birth of a new economic system, let’s make it one that increases true wealth—not just paper wealth for those lucky enough to get in early but actual life-changing goods and services that make life better for everyone.” https://www.oreilly.com/radar/why-its-too-early-to-get-excit...

And I tend to agree.