I guess most of them still have some runway left with the VC or ICO money they raised. How is it to work at such a place after the hype and after the sentiment turned negative?
> in August 2021 they were exploited for an (at the time) record-setting $611 million.
> Now, it's happened again, and some reports are throwing around even more massive numbers like $42 billion. In reality, the exploiters were able to mint massive quantities of tokens on multiple networks, with their wallet balances showing numbers in the billions. However, complete lack of liquidity for these tokens meant their "billions" are worth substantially less.
> According to crypto research firm Beosin, the attackers have so far cashed out around 5,196 ETH (~$10.1 million) in liquid assets. Poly Network suspended services shortly after the attack.
Nearly all of these are blockchain/NFT stuff and not decentralised internet infrastructure. There's probably more money stolen from physical highway construction than Web3 infra.
I think scam is perhaps not quite right. I see AI as the evolution beyond social media algorithms. Now it will feel even more human resulting in the manipulation being even more subtle and effective over time. Being more human like may also help people feel like sharing more information with it. Some may even think it is their friend. I think there is a lot more psychology in play with AI whereas Web3 mostly plays on ones greed and facilitates wash trading and faux investments into unregistered unlicensed securities. So for AI I believe a better description could be manipulation framework.
Comparing web3 scams to this new wave of AI is unironically ignorant and delusional.
For one small example I literally get daily value from Copilot and happily pay for it, and there is much more beyond this. I've never once gotten meaningful value from web3.
> The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems.
That happens in the US this month, but it has nothing to do with crypto. The Federal Reserve System is launching FedNow, a 24/7 instant settlement system which obsoletes middlemen such as Zelle, Paypal, and Venmo. This is like Pix in Brazil, SEPA in the EU, WePay in China, etc. - a fast payment system run by banks and settled through central banks.
It's much like FedWire, but faster, cheaper, and for smaller amounts. You buy houses with FedWire; you buy dinner with FedNow. It's an inter-bank system, like Visa; you have to have an account with a bank to use it. Chase and Wells Fargo are on board, but Bank of America is not.
This will bring the US up to date with the other countries that have national payment systems.
Anybody in the US involved in moving money around needs to get up to speed on FedNow. Fast.
> The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems.
1000%. The one place where I think blockchain and crypto can have real utility is from large, legacy financial institutions upgrading their very, very, very antiquated backend settlement technology and processes.
Of course, backend enterprise tech is pretty "boring", and the transition will take many years/decades given that our existing financial system currently depends on these old settlement systems that are based on manual, file based-processes from the first half of the last century. This is not the kind of technology transition likely to attract celebrity endorsements or bubblicious "crypto towns" like Miami and Austin.
> The one place where I think blockchain and crypto can have real utility is from large, legacy financial institutions upgrading their very, very, very antiquated backend settlement technology and processes.
And what is the actual utility beyond just the (usually unnecessary) upgrade?
I work fulltime at a Web3 startup & have been for almost 5 years, and we're building a non-custodial smart contract wallet + everything else you need for web3 SDK & a trading card game using web3 tech.
the b2b stuff is going great, tons and tons and tons of integrators and devs using our SDKs every day.
the sentiment in the gaming world has always been pretty negative towards web3, so nothing feels different now ;)
large multinational brands are dropping nft collabs often right now - adidas, tons of high fashion, etc. & many other other big brands are working on them behind closed doors
i don't think it's going anywhere, and most people are just building out tech and infra
I don't doubt that most of the "NFT Drop" things are worthless money grabs, but my point is that the tech is still darling to tons of corpo execs, and so lots of people in the industry are still getting $$$ to make cool things :)
I joined a blockchain startup late 2021, moments before the crypto winter broke out.
I left 15 months later, but they're still going, just did an alpha release.
Because of my work being present on GitHub, I've been contacted by recruiters over email for similar positions several times this year.
I went to two conferences on blockchain and zero-knowledge. Everyone at these conferences seem like serious people working for funded companies, and everyone seems to be okay with there being no customers. It's a little surreal.
It seems that some of the early profit makers in the space are still sinking money into the hope of a future "after the crypto winter" bubble. There is a lot of zero-knowledge hype. Some of the startups that claim to use zero-knowledge cryptography simply aren't.
I also still get seemingly pointless pitches about crypto … businesses(?) looking for engineers. Not one have I read and thought hey that sounds like a real business plan
Web3 makes more sense than cryptocurrency IMO. Instead of applying all the computing power to printing and gatekeeping imaginary money, why not apply it to well, computing? Web hosting and running calculations is something of actual tangible value.
I would imagine most people working for Web3 startups were doing it for the money, and are probably not too surprised that the gravy train hit the buffers eventually.
I was doing a lot of contract work a little over a year ago for about 3-4 different web3 clients. I’m back to working FT at a regular startup. The money isn’t there any more and that’s all that anyone who actually saw what was happening really cared about.
Readit News
She keeps a tally of all the scams. The total is now over $67 billion.
[1] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
> Now, it's happened again, and some reports are throwing around even more massive numbers like $42 billion. In reality, the exploiters were able to mint massive quantities of tokens on multiple networks, with their wallet balances showing numbers in the billions. However, complete lack of liquidity for these tokens meant their "billions" are worth substantially less.
> According to crypto research firm Beosin, the attackers have so far cashed out around 5,196 ETH (~$10.1 million) in liquid assets. Poly Network suspended services shortly after the attack.
Unbelievable hahaha
web3 is 100% blockchain/NFT stuff (aka scams and ponzi schemes) and 0% decentralised internet infrastructure.
Also, internet infra is already decentralised.
Dead Comment
For one small example I literally get daily value from Copilot and happily pay for it, and there is much more beyond this. I've never once gotten meaningful value from web3.
Deleted Comment
Besides investment cash flow, I don't think there have been any revenue generating ventures that cater to customers outside the Web3 ecosystem.
The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems.
I am curious how people will answer your second question.
That happens in the US this month, but it has nothing to do with crypto. The Federal Reserve System is launching FedNow, a 24/7 instant settlement system which obsoletes middlemen such as Zelle, Paypal, and Venmo. This is like Pix in Brazil, SEPA in the EU, WePay in China, etc. - a fast payment system run by banks and settled through central banks.
It's much like FedWire, but faster, cheaper, and for smaller amounts. You buy houses with FedWire; you buy dinner with FedNow. It's an inter-bank system, like Visa; you have to have an account with a bank to use it. Chase and Wells Fargo are on board, but Bank of America is not.
This will bring the US up to date with the other countries that have national payment systems.
Anybody in the US involved in moving money around needs to get up to speed on FedNow. Fast.
[1] https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow
Deleted Comment
So exactly like crypto except US specific.
1000%. The one place where I think blockchain and crypto can have real utility is from large, legacy financial institutions upgrading their very, very, very antiquated backend settlement technology and processes.
Of course, backend enterprise tech is pretty "boring", and the transition will take many years/decades given that our existing financial system currently depends on these old settlement systems that are based on manual, file based-processes from the first half of the last century. This is not the kind of technology transition likely to attract celebrity endorsements or bubblicious "crypto towns" like Miami and Austin.
And what is the actual utility beyond just the (usually unnecessary) upgrade?
https://defillama.com/fees/ethereum
The reason why protocols are able to generate cash flow is precisely because there is demand for blockspace by customers.
large multinational brands are dropping nft collabs often right now - adidas, tons of high fashion, etc. & many other other big brands are working on them behind closed doors
i don't think it's going anywhere, and most people are just building out tech and infra
But how much revenue is this pulling in? Are you profitable after 5 years?
I don't doubt that most of the "NFT Drop" things are worthless money grabs, but my point is that the tech is still darling to tons of corpo execs, and so lots of people in the industry are still getting $$$ to make cool things :)
I left 15 months later, but they're still going, just did an alpha release.
Because of my work being present on GitHub, I've been contacted by recruiters over email for similar positions several times this year.
I went to two conferences on blockchain and zero-knowledge. Everyone at these conferences seem like serious people working for funded companies, and everyone seems to be okay with there being no customers. It's a little surreal.
It seems that some of the early profit makers in the space are still sinking money into the hope of a future "after the crypto winter" bubble. There is a lot of zero-knowledge hype. Some of the startups that claim to use zero-knowledge cryptography simply aren't.
They just seem to be less about what was original called “web3” and more about applying crypto to… stuff.