Former Twitter head Jack Dorsey is making statements around controversies over what the future of the Internet and decentralized technologies will look like.
David Morris at Coindesk reports on comments made by Dorsey around web 3, or the semantic web, which has been tied to the idea of creating metaverse VR worlds.
Specifically, Dorsey believes that VCs have a corrosive effect in this space, and on the cryptocurrency world in general.
Morris points to a recent Twitter conversation between Dorsey and Elon Musk around perceived control by Andreeson Horowitz or “a16z” of the newly emerging semantic web itself.
At bottom, though, Morris suggests that Dorsey’s radicalism is based on a duality between fans of general Ethereum smart contract operations, which can be controlled by centralized “landlord” parties, and Bitcoin purists who feel that 100% decentralization in the form of Satoshi’s vision is important for the future.
To put it another way, lots of entrepreneurs and investors are getting excited about the myriad applications of smart contracts, mainly on Ethereum blockchains and connected to various projects, whether corporate or more open source.
Others remain committed to the idea that Bitcoin can serve as the fundamental store of value, and that it should, because its decentralization was never compromised.
In other words, the threat of a 51% attack, to the purists, is worth it.
It’s a compelling argument to many people who understand hyper-capitalism. If moneyed interests can gain control of quote-unquote “decentralized” systems, then those systems aren’t really decentralized anymore.
Against that, fans of less centralized systems may refer to user benefits – speed and convenience.
As one of the salvos of this ongoing controversy, you have the issue of using layer 2 blockchains to make alternate blockchains more user-friendly. For example, you can put a smart contract on Ethereum, or you can put it on Bitcoin SV, which some innovators are doing.
In any case, it’s worth following this pretty closely if you have any cryptocurrency related holdings, because this debate isn’t going away anytime soon, and it’s going to be fundamental to the emergence of new technologies that are going to move markets in a big way.
