Ask HN: Web3 – Worth Learning?

12 points by ihvck 4 years ago | 3 comments

I'm not new, been developing web/mobile/hybrid apps since 2014, I'm very suspicious about web3 I personally think it's a fad, but I possibly can be wrong. I missed the AppStore rush in 2009, so I'm thinking is it worth learning web3 now, anyone of HN users in same boat ? what are your thoughts ?

vegetablepotpie 4 years ago |

I don’t think web3 is a specific technology, like iOS or Android apps. It’s more of a statement of preferences, like the agile manifesto. Unlike agile, I have not seen a consistent definition of web3. Perhaps it is hosting content on a block chain. Perhaps it is a new privacy model to allow users to own their data. Perhaps it’s a way to have content and payments both be integrated into platforms.

I predict that “web3” will be an even more nebulous term than “cloud” and “web 2.0”. Anyone pitching a product will say it’s web3. If you have an idea for blockchain technology or anything that vaguely supports decentralization and also can put money into investor pockets, this is the time to make it.

5cott0 4 years ago |

Line Goes Up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g

cableshaft 4 years ago |

I'd recommend you through the CryptoZombies[1] "Solidity Path: Beginner to Intermediate Solidity Smart Contracts" course, it's similar to something like FreeCodeCamp or Codecademy, and see what you think afterwards.

It's a free course, you can complete it in roughly 6 hours, in very bite-sized chunks that pretty much anyone with prior programming experience can follow, and has some very good information about the unique quirks of smart contracts (although keep in mind it uses an older version of Solidity and I've already discovered a change in syntax since the version it has on there, i.e. array.push returned the new length of the array in older versions of solidity, but doesn't return anything in newer versions[2]).

The tech stack is still evolving and a bit of a moving target, with new tools and tech coming out periodically, but it's pretty interesting, and there's not a ton of people developing in the space so it's not terribly hard to find a project to work on once you get the basics (I stumbled into one by chance myself).

I think at some point most companies will probably want to incorporate this tech into their websites to a certain extent, at least connecting to a wallet as an identification option, if nothing else. And in the meantime there's potentially some easy ETH to collect from all those NFT projects for a relatively small amount of work.

It's definitely wild west, though, and I'd be careful accepting work from random people online asking for work in it, without getting some sort of payment up front, as there's plenty of scams and 'rug pulls' out there (seemingly legit, but then just disappear after taking everyone's money[3]).

It also completely opens the door to remaking all the same software, but this time it's new because it's based on the blockchain, so you can possibly get visibility amongst a sea of other apps because of that. Like I know a guy working on a web3 Patreon, and there's things like Clarity.so that's basically like a Trello board but utilizing some Web3 features.

Pick a site, any site, and you could make a web3 friendly version of it if you wanted to. Doesn't mean it'll be successful necessarily, but you'll probably have a better shot than if you just tried to convince people to stop using Tiktok.

I'm kicking around the idea of making a Web3-enabled web game portal/api myself. I have a few ideas I haven't seen done by anyone else yet that I think players would appreciate.

[1]: https://cryptozombies.io/en/course/

[2]: https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/a/87791

[3]: https://kotaku.com/nft-minecraft-blockchain-scam-blockverse-...