Web3. How do we see it in engineering? Much of the community around it leans towards libertarian ideals. For them, the promise of a ‘decentralised’ internet that wrests control from ‘Big Tech’ has an obvious appeal. But it is hard to get beyond the ideas that many in the business see it as the next big chance to make a pile of money (both crypto and real), and that there is a great deal of FOMO – ‘fear of missing out’.
Some big investors are on board, including Andreessen Horowitz, the VC fund part-founded by browser pioneer Marc Andreessen. The crypto sector is the most active, attracting an estimated $30bn from various sources last year. There remains fast-growing traffic in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), primarily used to buy all or part of a digital asset like art. Early-stage Web3 businesses across these and other areas are thought to have raised more than $1bn more this month alone.
The core idea behind Web3 sounds attractive on the surface. Typically...