#general
Thread
I have a really hard time wrapping my head around web3. How is this different from open-source software? How is web3 “open” if people own parts of it? How does the ownership aspect stop big conglomerates from just owning large swaths of web3 like they already do (ie same game, different deck of card)
Solid questions! Switching to text coz of background noise.
> How is this different from open-source software?
Open source software is not necessarily distributed or decentralized. It lives on servers that can trace back to AWS or Azure etc. This isn't to say this is antithetical to the idea of web3, or better, or worse. Indeed, the core code that runs blockchains and smart contracts are open source by necessity. So open source is a foundation on which web3 applications run
> How is web3 “open” if people own parts of it?
With blockchain, people don't own parts of it. Certain people (nodes) host ALL of it, and they all keep an identical copy so that no one of them has control (destroy one node, the rest persist). Keeping the copies the same and unalterable is NOt the blockchain ,that's the job of the consensus mechanisms like proof of work (the enivornment killer, mining) or proof of stake (the newer stuff that doesn't drain ⚡ )
> How does the ownership aspect stop big conglomerates from just owning large swaths of web3 like they already do
This is a continues challenge. Right now, it's not clear. "Whales" as we say can pop into ecosystems as wrest control over micro-markets.
However, there's the idea of the hard fork. Say a community is trucking along happily in their web3 zone and MEGACORP arrives and buys everything. The community leaders could decide to hard fork-- create two copies of the chain, leave MEGACORP with one, and continue on in the other. If the value was in the community, the old chain will theoretically wither.
This scenario has already happened once that i know of! It was a fascinating use case of the hard fork. LMK if you want more info on it!
@John Blust < forgetting to tag people! AMA faux pas!
Cool, thanks for your time. Would love to learn more about that hard fork. What should I be searching for on Google to dig info up on that?
@John Blust This article should be a sufficient entry to the rabbithole!
TL;DR
The STEEM chain started around 2016. Focused on blogging, some gaming maybe. Billionaire buys in around 2020. Community is wary... then new owner starts making moves to corral a community fund worth ~9M USD. Community successfully hard forks into HIVE (STEEM clone).
Today, activity on HIVE far outshines that on STEEM.