Almost everything web3-related is a grift based on getting people to buy crypto.

Is this grift-based?
https://qbix.com/token

You might think it is, after all it says “token” in it. But you’ll find, if you actually read it, that there is no token to buy, and it’s mostly about how to get the Web out from digitalism feudalism and to a free market.

It discusses in detail the mechanisms by which digital content creators like video producers, artists, open source software developers (many of whom disrupted by the web, such as journalists) can monetize their work without using the government to go after copyright infringers.

You think Web 2.0 wasn’t based on grift? It was based on WORSE than grift: VCs bought SHARES in the companies, then sold them to the public (sometimes after propping up bad unit economics and money-losing business models for years). The public (wall street investors) proceeded to demand that company management extract rents forever.

Web 2.0 has led to some of the most centralized sites, we all have our public forums on privately owned sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, while our shopping and transactions are done on privately owned sites too. Actually they’re owned by “the public”, but they can’t vote Zuck out (they try every year) and anyway, Wall Street earnings demand that these sites NEVER give away their back end, NEVER decentralize it.

At least with Web3, the code is open source and everything is decentralized. Compare Vitalik and Zuck. Vitalik doesnt need bodyguards, he isn’t essential to Ethereum’s operation. Is Ethereum dog-slow and expensive because it is built on blockchain? You betcha. Is blockchain a bad backend for most “web scale” things? YES. But crytocurrency and other types distributed systems (involving DHTs) are not. Look at BitTorrent, or FileCoin, or Holochain… but these are just babysteps. MaidSAFE is the next generation for files, and hopefully what we’re building at Intercoin is next-gen for actual transactions.

Now that I have established that selling tokens may be better than shares (because founders only make money on the first sale and then the network should belong to the participants) I am wondering if it’s okay to post this for more information on what is ACTUALLY wrong with Web3:

https://intercoin.org/presentation.pdf

Again, I ask, where is the grift? We spent four years on this project so far. We barely raised any money (certainly compared to Telegram and Kik Messenger or EOS, but even compared to your average Web2 centralized web app startup.)

We worked our butts off because we are passionate about a world where any community, github, website ir other project can release and manage their own cryptocurrency. We not only built the tech and user interfaces, but we met all the top people in the distributed space (including TimBL, Leslie Lamport) and made a forum and youtube channel where we explain smart contracts, interview people like Noam Chomsky, regulators, community currency economists. What more can we do with the tiny budget we have?

So if we were to fund this project adequately, how would you recommend doing it? The VC + Web2 way of closed source backends and extreme centralization? We all see how well that turned out…

Perhaps one day, we can live in a world where people have UBI and contribute to projects because they choose to, not because they are forced to survive and feed their family with no safety net. At Intercoin we are looking to build that world. But the only way UBI can be phased in everywhere, is if the communities pay it in their own currency. Hence the project.