Why are we even doing this? — The Web3 Raison D'être

Because the internet wasn’t supposed to turn into this.

We’ve somehow gone from an open, creative, peer-to-peer network to a landscape dominated by closed platforms that decide what you see, what you can build, and even what you can own.

You can’t view a public Instagram post without logging in and sharing your personal data. Facebook walls off public content just to squeeze more leverage in business negotiations.

These platforms actively kill interoperability, undermine open standards, and make sure nothing escapes their ecosystem unless they profit from it. Sure, some of it is network effects, but a huge part is simply strategy.

Meanwhile, the user experience is getting worse.

• You search something on Google and get five ads before a real result.

• You go to watch a 30-second clip on YouTube and get slammed with five minutes of unskippable ads.

• Twitter shows you ads with crypto scams or OnlyFans girls you never asked for. Even useful content is buried under monetization garbage.

Closed platforms prioritize shareholder value over user experience. They rent you access to content, limit how you use it, and have the power to deplatform creators or communities overnight.

They don’t let you truly own anything.

• Amazon has remotely deleted books from Kindles.

• AWS has shut down services for political reasons. And yet developers everywhere are building the next internet on top of it.

• Twitter ended its free API after Elon took over.

• Apple won’t let you sideload apps or modify your device.

  The irony? Steve Jobs and Wozniak famously built a blue box that let them hack phone lines — and now Apple does everything it can to prevent users from tinkering with the devices they own.

• Netflix began enforcing stricter limits on account sharing, requiring users to verify devices on their “home network” and pay extra fees for anyone watching outside that location.

  It also began limiting how many devices can stream or download, even if you’re the one paying. You pay for content, but you don’t own it. Netflix can change the terms anytime, restrict who you can watch with, where, and how — and if you break the rules, you lose access.

  You can own a DVD and lend it to 10 people — but in the digital world, you pay a subscription and still get treated like a liability.

  Make no mistake — yes, Netflix owns (or licenses) the IP rights, so naturally you expect to pay to access the content.

  But here’s the strange part:

  • You pay for those rights through your subscription.
  • They collect recurring revenue
  • You get no ownership, no control, and not even a share in the value you’re helping sustain.

  You’re funding the entire system — but you don’t own any part of it. You’re just renting access, and even that comes with restrictions.

Even though these platforms offer immense value — no denying that — their incentives are fundamentally misaligned with yours. And that misalignment is slowly turning the internet into a darker, more exploitative place. And given how much of our lives now depend on the internet, it’s making the world worse too.

That’s why I believe in open source. Because open source wins on merit.

It produces better code, exposes vulnerabilities early, and empowers users to fix what doesn’t serve them instead of waiting for a megacorp’s product roadmap.

Open source is more secure, more stable, more transparent. You can audit the code, run it yourself, and actually control the tools you depend on.

But does it actually work at scale? Short answer is YES.

• Linux now powers 100% of the top 500 supercomputers, 90% of cloud infrastructure, and most of the internet. Windows, by contrast, is largely confined to consumer desktops.

• Android, based on Linux, dominates global mobile usage.

• Git, Docker, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL — the best dev tools are all open source.

• Open source web servers like Nginx and Apache still power huge portions of the web.

We’re building Web3 because we want a better foundation.

Web3 is a vision — not a finished product. And yes, right now it’s full of problems. Some of the same actors it sought freedom from have found ways to exploit it. Greed still exists. Power still concentrates. Economic incentives are hard to get right.

But that doesn’t mean we give up.

This is a technology born out of necessity. And despite the speculation and noise, we can still build and deploy apps freely. That’s a huge deal.

We can still build a better internet.

The economics aren’t solved. Governance is messy. But the foundational properties — censorship resistance, permissionless access, verifiability — still hold.

We don’t solve hard problems by giving up. We solve them by building.

So, instead of being midwits who beg institutions to buy our bags, maybe it’s time we return to the grassroots — and remember why we’re here in the first place.

We want open protocols. Transparent rules. Systems where code is forkable, state is portable, and ownership actually means something.

We want:

• A web where you own what you paid for — not rent it with terms that change without notice
• A space where anonymous users can still be trusted — because verification doesn’t require surveillance
• Infrastructure where you can build freely, without the fear of AWS shutting you down, or app stores taking a 30% cut just to exist
• A way to coordinate and share value without trusting banks, big tech, or middlemen

Is Web3 perfect? No. Not even close.

But it’s the only technology stack we have today that’s censorship-resistant by default, open by design, and aligned with a freer, more user-respecting internet.

• AWS can’t shut down your dApp.
• Banks can’t freeze your crypto wallet.
• Politicians can’t tamper with on-chain voting.
• Elon Musk can’t rewrite the rules of Web3 social.
• Facebook can’t hold public information hostage, demanding your privacy as ransom.
• Apple can’t extort your app for a 30% cut just because you dared to build something useful.

Web3 doesn’t solve everything, but it gives us a chance to build without begging and own without renting.

That’s why we’re here.