Killer App for Web 3

Seeking, for implementation.  As Always Advertising is out to find the money everywhere.  But AI/ML has some points.   Monitize.  Before getting it right?  

What’s the Killer App for Web3?,   By Q McCallum in O'Reilly 

February 21, 2023

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(Dear readers: this is a scaled-down excerpt from a larger project I’m working on. I’ll let you know when that effort is ready for broad distribution.)

Every technology is good for something. But there are use cases, and then there are Use Cases™. The extremely compelling applications of the technology. Those that lead to widespread adoption and increased legitimacy, almost becoming synonymous with the technology itself.

Do people still use the term “killer app?” It’s not my favorite—I (unfairly?) associate it with Dot-Com business-bro culture—but I have to admit that it captures the spirit of that dominant use case. So I’ll hold my nose and use it here.

If you reflect on the emerging-tech landscape, you see the following killer apps:

Early-day internet: E-commerce. Hands-down.

Cloud: The legion of SaaS tool startups, on its first go-round; then AI for its victory lap.

Data science/ML/AI: Advertising. Advertising. Advertising.

And then there’s the new kid, web3. I’ve noticed that people are more inclined to ask me “what’s it good for?” rather than “what is it?” Which is fair. Every technology has to pull its weight, and sometimes What It Enables People To Do counts more than What It Actually Is Under The Hood. (Hence, my usual crack that machine learning is just linear algebra with better marketing. But I’ll save that for a different article.)

While I can walk those people through a few use cases, I still haven’t figured out what web3’s killer app is. That’s not for a lack of trying. I’ve been exploring the topic for a couple of years now, which is what led me to launch the Block & Mortar newsletter so I could share more of my research in public.  ... '