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Is Fake Web 3 killing the market for Real Web 3 to enter?

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Monty Python Logic

I heard a very bizarre argument recently, about why a Toyota Camry is bad for the environment. It was in a wider debate about different kinds of vehicles and how best to being able to minimize the impact of vehicle use on the environment. The argument made absolutely no sense at all.

It went like this…

Mining Lithium is bad for the environment. The sponsor of this ‘thesis’ evidenced a Lithium mine in Zimbabwe. He began talking about a Hyundai Crawler Excavator in use on one of the sites.

He diverged for some time, choosing to talk about Hyundai excavator manufacture in India (for no clear reason).

He then summed up that since the use of the Hyundai Crawler Excavator in Lithium mining is bad for the environment, then the Hyundai Crawler Excavator is complicit. Feeling energized by making this broad leap, he felt he would not go a leap further.

Since a Hyundai Crawler Excavator is a vehicle, and a Toyota Camry is also a vehicle, then by association, Toyota Camry must be bad for the environment.

This is an argument of ‘Monty Python Logic’

The ‘witch’ scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail – ‘Monty Python Logic’ at work. We can’t be using Monty Python logic to justify ‘stuff’ as Web 3. Web 3 isn’t a witch hunt. It is not about ducks or pieces of wood or whether things float.

When I think about Web 3, I don’t think about Projects, Products, Companies, or even Blockchain Tokenization. – I think of people.

Real Web 3 is a user state, a journey, it is about the live state of people action.

Web 3 is an end-to-end decentralized UX.

Consider the simple circuit of a battery, two pieces of wire and a bulb.

Imagine it as an ecosystem in which Web 3 may or may not happen.

The magic of Web 3 is when the light is on.

So there are two things that can cause the circuit to not work and for the light to not come on.

  1. Nobody switches the light on. Since Web 3 is a DECENTRALIZED UX end to end, the ecosystem of products waiting to use them is ‘Web 3 ready; but nobody has come to party. The magic isn’t happening. Its in a passive state of readiness.
  1. There is a break in the circuit somewhere, something has become centralized somewhere as part of the UX journey so decentralization hasn’t happened end to end, and the bulb fails to light.

The Wire isn’t Web 3. The Battery isn’t Web 3, the bulb or its holder aren’t Web 3. Web 3 is only the state of the light being on. Meaning. Regardless of how many blockchain products or activities are out there… tokenized digital art markets, cryptocurrency markets, immersive services, blockchain gaming….

Absolutely NONE of it is Web 3 if there is no  end-to-end DECENTRALIZED UX happening. No amount of Web 3 Delight events is going to change this reality.

Can you have Web 3 happening without blockchain?

I was recently asked this question in a 1-2-1 Zoom session and my immediate impulse was to answer no, but then I began to think about it. The development of blockchain can certainly be categorized as a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) evolution. Once upon a time, we had the law of conservation of matter. ’Matter cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change its form’.

We knew of two ways we could get energy from matter.

Firstly, physical change – the three states of matter – solid, liquid and gas. The first being the lowest energy state, with the last being the highest energy state. Kinetic energy is released when a substance changes from gas to liquid, or from liquid to solid.

Secondly, chemical change – there are higher energy and lower energy elements and compounds. Under the conditions that support a chemical reaction, some reactions are endothermic (need an input of kinetic energy to happen), while others are exothermic (give out kinetic energy when they happen).

This held true until in 1916, a dude named Albert Einstein created the equation E=MC2 We then had Rutherford bombard atoms in Manchester in 1917 getting them to release sub atomic energy, and we had Cockcroft and Walton split the atom in 1932.

L-R: Walton, Rutherford and Cockcroft together at some point in the 1920’s.

The original law had to be changed with the word ‘Matter’ being replaced with the word ‘Energy’.

So now, we know we are in a completely new era, the dawn of Nuclear Fission. An air of finality descended on human kind. Nowhere to go next, right? Wrong.

Then came a new branch of atomic energy called Nuclear Fusion. In Nuclear Fusion, unlike splitting atoms, atoms are forced to join together. The energy released by fusion is three to four times greater than the energy released by fission.

At the moment, we have moved the needle into the atomic level of Web. We have not found ‘Web Fusion’ yet.

Will the next evolutionary iteration of seeking to achieve an end-to-end DECENTRALIZED UX involve a solution that doesn’t need blockchains? Who knows. But with current technology, it is not possible to achieve Web 3 without leveraging blockchains.

Discussion of a posthumously fabricated Web 2 created to justify the existence of a Fake Web 3 based around blockchain projects, when real Web 3 is only about decentralized UX

The demise of ‘fake’ Web 3 and Cryptocurrency have an infection of Centralization as a common problem.

I won’t go into long tirades about FTX and Luna… I think most everybody else have pretty much flogged those topics to death, but simply quote from the Financial Times:

..Today’s upheaval bears all the hallmarks of precisely the failings that the (blockchain) industry’s early proponents railed against….

…many supposedly decentralised protocols turn out to be highly concentrated in terms of who actually governs and controls things. Often, it is the founder and a small number of venture capital backers that are in charge — as evidenced by the implosion of the Terra stablecoin in May. In most instances, crypto is decentralised in name only.

Second, centralised intermediaries, such as Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, play a pivotal role as the gateway into the crypto world from the conventional financial system. They channel the flow of new investors, which is the oxygen that keeps these speculative dynamics alive. BIS research in this area has highlighted how crypto only really works when this is happening. To the extent that recruiting new investors is key to the survival of crypto, centralised intermediaries are crucial to propping up the edifice.’

Parallel to this, in blockchain assets that are not cryptocurrency, these centralized intermediaries are replaced by things like ICANN type websites, identity mapping, carrier and mobile phone scraping front ends, and off chain data (particularly in the Ethereum ecosystem) saved in L2s, scaling solutions and EVMs.

We do not have an end-to-end decentralized UX, and we do not have Web 3. Irrespective of there being blockchain products and services in the mix or not, we have an infection of CENTRALIZATION.

The tide of ‘fairweather’ support is shifting from fake Web 3 to AI

 

Conclusion: 

‘Fake Web 3’ revolves around Projects, Events, Companies, Pod Casts, Service Categories, Community Management, Products, Graphic Design, Content Writing… etc etc etc… but none of these in of themselves can be considered ‘Web 3’

Some of them can enable Web 3, or be considered Web 3 ready or…

I became aware of the term ‘Blockchain of Things’ from the SM Manager of AFRICA EUROBLOC who claimed they heard it at an investors meeting. Checking the handshake blockchain for it as a Web 3 Domain, I found it was pre-owned since March 2022 but acquired it on the secondary market.

 

But Real Web 3 is an end-to-end DECENTRALIZED UX

Just like the light bulb circuit, any break in decentralization is a point of (Web 3) failure. Therefore no single enabling component on the journey can be considered, in itself ‘Web 3’

We still have time to reposition our consideration of what Web 3 really is. It is not too late. If we continue to allow centralization to masquerade as Web 3 we may end up with projects like this:

 

The way many blockchain projects will end if we insist on tagging them as ‘Web 3’

 

Time to shine the light!

 

9ja Cosmos is here… Get your .9jacom and .9javerse Web 3 domains  for $2 at:

https://www.encirca.com/handshake-9jacom/

https://www.encirca.com/handshake-9javerse/

All references accessed 08-11 Jan 2023. I guarantee this article has been produced 100% Chat GPT free

ft.com/content/76234c49-cb11-4c2a-9a80-49da4f0ad7dd

cerncourier.com/a/cockcrofts-subatomic-legacy-splitting-the-atom

diffen.com/difference/Nuclear_Fission_vs_Nuclear_Fusion

LinkedIn content recognition (in order of appearance): Henry Otali Nduka Jehu Oreri Thanos Tsagkadouras  Tiago Amaral  Peter Holzer Nathan Resnick

FTX Lawyers Said They Have Recovered $5bn in Assets

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Some investors of FTX, the collapsed crypto exchange, that has resulted in federal prosecution of its cofounder and former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, and his associates, now have hope to recover their lost funds.

The company’s officials handling its bankruptcy have recovered over $5 billion worth of liquid assets, including cash and digital assets, FTX’s bankruptcy lawyers said during a hearing on Wednesday.

The news now raises hope that creditors who lost money to the company’s implosion will be repaid. Federal prosecutors had earlier announced plans to seize at least $500 million worth of FTX-connected assets as part of their ongoing prosecution of Bankman-Fried.

There have been arguments over how much of creditors’ fund and FTX’s assets were lost after the exchange filed for bankruptcy in November.

That disclosure significantly raises the estimated amount of funds FTX claims to hold. Last month, FTX lawyers submitted filings that showed the company and its affiliates had a total of $1.2 billion in cash, per CNN.

FTX went down with about $10 billion investors’ fund. The company’s new CEO, John J. Ray, said earlier that at least $8 billion of customer assets were unaccounted for in the “worst” case of corporate control he’d ever seen.

Before it filed for bankruptcy, Bankman-Fried had approached Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, seeking a bailout fund. He said FTX needed about $9 billion to enable enough withdrawal liquidity for the exchange’s traders.

The company’s lawyers also said they had identified more than 9 million creditors, toppling the 1 million earlier estimate.

According to FTX attorney Adam Landis, the $5 billion figure doesn’t include any illiquid cryptocurrency assets. He told the court that the company’s holdings are so large that selling them would substantially affect the market, driving down their value.

FTX’s implosion threw the crypto industry into disarray late last year, driving the market value further down.

Bankman-Fried and his former associates Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, and Gary Wang, are facing several criminal and civil charges by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the federal government.

Both Wang and Ellison have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors, while Bankman-Fried, last week, pleaded not guilty. He had, from the beginning, blamed FTX’s collapse on ignorance and oversight, an excuse that has been largely discarded.

FTX’s collapse has been attributed mainly to fraud and reckless spending of creditors’ funds, but it is also related to, among other things, a failure to correctly mark illiquid assets to market.

FTX executives, including Bankman-Fried and Ellison, borrowed against the value of the FTX-issued token FTT, per CNBC. Alameda controlled the vast majority of FTT coins circulating, similar to a publicly traded companies float, and could not have liquidated their position at full book value, CNBC noted.

Explore the Ways Blockchain is Revolutionizing Gambling Industry

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From cryptocurrency to tokenization; blockchain technology is revolutionizing the gambling industry in many ways. And it’s not just limited to making payments and withdrawals – with the potential for greater security and transparency, blockchain can hugely impact how we play our favorite games. In this blog post, we’ll explore how blockchain is changing the online gambling landscape, from enabling faster fund transfers to increasing the fairness of game outcomes. With revolutionary tech such as smart contracts streamlining traditionally difficult processes and delivering innovative solutions, this is one area of gaming that definitely shouldn’t be overlooked.

Blockchain technology and how it is revolutionizing the gambling industry

Blockchain technology is revolutionizing the gambling industry by providing a secure platform for people to play games, invest in cryptocurrency and manage finances. The technology is decentralized, meaning all transactions are recorded across a network of computers, making it virtually impossible for any one person or entity to interfere with or manipulate the data. This provides unprecedented security and trust for players and investors, who can be sure that when they play at online casinos for real money, their funds are safe from being tampered with or stolen.

The blockchain also allows players to access game results that are completely transparent and verifiable. Players can receive instant notifications when new games become available, as well as real-time updates on the progress of each game they’re playing.

Additionally, providers such as Ethereum enable smart contracts that allow players to lock in a bet before the game’s outcome is known, ensuring fairness and eliminating any possibility of fraud.

The blockchain also gives developers flexibility when creating new online gaming experiences; they can build custom platforms based on certain rules and parameters set out by users. This flexibility opens up the exciting potential for developers looking to create unique gaming experiences tailored towards different types of players. For instance, gamers could set up automated tournaments with predetermined rules so that anyone in the world could join and compete against each other at any time – anywhere in the world.

Blockchain technology provides incredible benefits to players and developers alike within the gambling industry by increasing security levels while encouraging innovation through its flexibility. The potential applications of this revolutionary technology stretch far beyond just gaming – but it’s certainly having a transformative effect on how we gamble today.

Benefits of Blockchain for Gambling

Blockchain technology offers many benefits to the online gambling industry. It enables faster fund transfers, improved security, and increased fairness of game outcomes. With the help of blockchain, payments can be made in near real-time, allowing players to access their winnings or deposits quickly and securely. This reduces transaction costs associated with traditional payment methods and improves overall customer experience.

From a security standpoint, blockchain provides a much more secure framework for online transactions as all records are stored on distributed ledgers that cannot be altered without authorization from multiple parties. As such, blockchain helps deter fraud and unwanted interference from malicious actors. In addition to greater security, blockchain also increases fairness regarding game outcomes. Through its decentralized nature, all bets are recorded on the blockchain so that no single user can manipulate results or tamper with the data. This ensures that the games are fair and impartial for everyone involved.

Potential developments that could arise from blockchain technology

The use of blockchain technology in the gambling industry could enable a range of further potential developments.

  1. Blockchain could facilitate improved traceability, allowing casinos to monitor customers’ betting activities more closely and accurately. This enhanced tracking capability would help them to spot any signs of problem gambling, enabling them to take the necessary steps to protect the customer and facilitate responsible gaming practices. A greater level of transparency could also be achieved thanks to blockchain’s immutable ledger system, allowing operators and regulators to keep track of transactions more easily.
  1. Furthermore, a decentralized ledger could improve payouts and commissions between operators. Removing traditional intermediaries from the equation would enable faster payments that are more secure and harder for bad actors to interfere with. Blockchain-based transfers can be conducted instantly and at much lower costs than current systems. This is especially beneficial for smaller businesses that could now enter into agreements with larger companies without requiring an extensive legal framework or expensive middlemen services.
  1. Another benefit provided by distributed ledgers is that they can be used as a platform for creating new forms of digital currency specific to online casinos or sportsbooks. This digital money would offer players more freedom when making deposits and withdrawals while providing the casino or operator with additional control over their funds and transaction costs. Moreover, it might provide users with alternative ways to receive rewards, such as bonus points or exclusive promotions, depending on how they spend their virtual currency within the gaming platform environment.
  1. Finally, blockchains can also improve data management capabilities, providing helpful insights into customers’ gambling habits and preferences that operators otherwise wouldn’t have access to. This data collection process will help businesses better tailor their offerings towards their target audience and optimize marketing campaigns to gain maximum returns on investment from each client.

Final thoughts

Ultimately, this blockchain technology has tremendous potential for revolutionizing many aspects of the online gambling industry if utilized correctly, resulting in more efficient processes for business owners and players.

What Nigerian Banks Can Learn from US Banks On Perception Customer Service

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Something amazes me with U.S. banking institutions: they are extremely interested in the success of their clients, and they demonstrate those interests via many ways. Run a decent company and show a little promise. Within weeks, the account executives will dedicate efforts to see how their bank will help you. As they do that, they even tell you how you can save money using their products!

Goldman Sachs is funding 10,000 small businesses as it wants to seed and fertilize the next generation companies to support its mission. PayPal does something amazing: depending on your transaction volume, it offers working capital. If you see that sign in your dashboard, the chance of getting the money is 99% because they have used your data to qualify you. Hit the button, within 24 hours, you can get $50,000 in your account as working capital.

We do a lot of business with Intel Corp as its only Africa partner on programmable microprocessors. Our US bank did everything to streamline our exports; I did not spend a single cent – yes, they paid for everything and did all the filings to enable my company to export technologies. I have learnt how to even outsource “tasks” to them: this client came from Angola and we had a language issue. Within days, they provided, funded and paid for a Portuguese expert.

In Nigeria, our company banks have NEVER extended any favour despite transactions we have done for years with them. The banks do not even know that we exist: the account officers are just focused on inflows, and have NEVER made contributions on how we can get to the next level. 

That is why I do not even acknowledge their usual Thanks because you cannot thank me because I am sending your inflows when you have not committed your strategy-hours to accelerate our growth.

Contrast with their American counterparts, the US bankers deepened many things, removing the bottleneck on exports in our electronics business. They also want you to access a line of credit, etc. Largely, as you grow, you feel like you have a bank on your side.

Paypal loan application

I hope one day, Nigeria will grow to that level in our banking sector. Today, Nigerian banks are serving the needs of customers, providing you a fairly decent safer place to keep your money. They are missing at the expectation level. The banking giants of emerging Nigeria will deliver services at the level of customer perception where a bank becomes an ally that does well above the imaginations of customers. Yes, they make you to become a FAN, not just a customer.

While expectation can help you stay in the game, what firms really need to do is to meet the perception of customers. Perception is the king of all marketing. Unfortunately, few firms get to that level. Excellent innovative technology is required to play at this level. It is risky because if you get it wrong, you can harm your organization. Perception is providing to customers what they never expected or imagined they needed. But the day they see the product (or rarely service), they will embrace it en mass.

 

Comment on Feed

Comment 1: Thank you for the piece Ndubuisi Ekekwe . The only thing that comes to my mind is the quote from one of the greatest that ever lived;

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. ….” Adam Smith.

They understand that they are in business because there are viable businesses.
They would rather incur cost in supporting clients’ businesses to succeed than chase after foreclosures and recovery. It is an integrated Risk management strategy. When you win, they win and the other way round.

It is not rocket science, but unfortunately “common sense” is not democratized.

My Response: I admire Nigerian banks and not throwing jabs. I am hoping someone begins to be challenged to do things different and better. I worked in the Nigerian banking sector and respect it. But that does not mean we cannot do better. If you run a business in the US and have consistent transactions. Within weeks, you will see a button on your dashboard, apply or accept this offer.

Check, that is a working capital loan which is tied to your volume of transactions. Some peg it at 10% of average  monthly balance over 3 months. If you do $100k, you get a working capital of $10k. Do $1m, you get $100k.

Contrast that with Lagos banks. You can do that $100k and you need $10k, they will still ask you to send paperworks even though they know you have the transactions which have been sustained over 3 years. I see limited risks on working capital loans because you are financing growth.

(I have NEVER applied for any loan in  a Nigerian bank. But I feel frustrated when our startups need some funds and cannot get help even though they’re doing great volume in the same bank. In US, those startups would have been treated in special ways)

Comment 2: Delighting the customer is foundational to success for every level of business. The truly outstanding corporate entities completely embrace this way of doing business and it reflects in repeat customers, lower customer acquisition costs, and fat profit margins. Additionally, banks with a bias for excellence become great partners to promising small companies in hopes to grow their business with those companies as they grow and expand. Symbiosis is a great thing for those with the long game in mind. Hopefully, the applicable entities and politicians are paying attention to your sage advice, Dr. Ekekwe.

Beyond Customer Need and Expectation, Perception is King of Market

ChatGPT Wrote An Article on the $10 billion Microsoft Investment in OpenAI; Right on the Money!

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Microsoft is considering investing as much as $10 billion in OpenAI — the creator of viral artificial intelligence tools ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 — according to numerous news outlets. Microsoft (parent company of LinkedIn) will reportedly get 75% of OpenAI’s profits until it recoups its investment, Semafor reports; it would then take a 49% stake in the startup. OpenAI’s ChatGPT generative language technology could be used to help power Microsoft’s search engine Bing, and also be incorporated into Office applications such as Word and Outlook, according to The Information. Microsoft was an early backer of OpenAI, investing $1 billion in the startup in 2019. (LinkedIn News)

This was how ChatGPT itself explained this deal when journalists put the question to it, from the point of view of a Wall Street analyst.

It was a typical weekday morning on Wall Street. Traders and analysts bustled about, checking their screens and huddling in conference rooms. Suddenly, the news broke: Microsoft was investing $10 billion in OpenAI, the leading artificial intelligence research lab.

As a top analyst at a major investment firm, I was immediately intrigued. I had been following OpenAI’s progress for years, and knew that they were at the forefront of AI research. Their work on natural language processing, machine learning, and robotics had the potential to revolutionize industries ranging from healthcare to transportation.

But $10 billion was a huge sum, even for a company like Microsoft. Why were they making such a massive investment?

I quickly did some research and dug deeper into the details of the deal. It turned out that Microsoft and OpenAI had been working together for some time, collaborating on various projects and sharing resources. This investment was essentially a formalization of that partnership, allowing the two companies to join forces and accelerate their research.

But there was more to it than that. As I delved further into the news, I realized that this investment was about much more than just research. It was about positioning.

Microsoft, like many other tech giants, was laser-focused on the future of AI. They knew that the companies that controlled the technology would have a significant advantage in the years to come. By investing in OpenAI, they were positioning themselves at the forefront of this revolution.

As I shared my analysis with my colleagues and clients, the excitement was palpable. This was a game-changing move, one that would have ripple effects throughout the tech industry and beyond.

In the weeks and months that followed, the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI yielded incredible results. Their joint research led to breakthroughs in natural language processing and machine learning, and they developed new technologies that were quickly adopted by companies around the world.

As a Wall Street analyst, it was gratifying to see my predictions come true. And as the world continued to be transformed by AI, I knew that this was just the beginning. The future was bright, and Microsoft and OpenAI were leading the way.

  • Source: ChatGPT