Crypto is a scam. We’re not talking about hackers, VC-dumping, frontrunners and ponzis - although that’s also true. We’re talking about how Web3 and the principles it espouses are simply lies. How what we are told is undermined completely by the current architecture of the ‘new internet’ that is apparently being built - and how no one is saying a word, because it benefits them not to do so. 

Web3 is not trustless, it’s not sovereign, and it’s not verifiable - and it certainly isn’t decentralized. It’s an erected proxy architecture that simply moves centralization and rent-seeking away from the hands of a few and into the hands of the fewer.  

Promises have been broken. Those who claim Web3 delivers the internet and the societal services it renders into the hands of the people are either selling snake oil, or are too busy drinking it themselves - perhaps hopeful that they too may become rich, and they too may rise above a world which has rendered us all dispossessed.

The Promise of Web3

Web3 was built - or should we say marketed - on the premise that blockchain technology could remove the middleman from the interactions that fuel the economy. Banking without bankers, computation without data centers, storage without the cloud, identity without bureaucracy, marketplaces without brokers, money without fiat. It promised that we could own the digital universe as it became more central in our lives, that we could operate these systems through the collective chorus of computers. That no one entity could have control, and thus no one could censor or manipulate the market, the system, or indeed the truth. 

On this wistful dream, countless billions have been invested. Not just by venture capital and corporations, but by millions of retail pundits who believed that the tokens they were buying into and the blockchains they were supporting were the fundamental wiring of this proposed reality. That the token layer of these interactions were the only things that mattered. That having 10,000 validators was proof of the achievement of a decentralized system.

Why Web3’s Promise is a Lie

This is not true. You have been lied to. Web3 may have decentralized the token layer (although some L2s don’t even do that) - but the ‘token layer’ didn’t even exist before Web3 did. It’s just a new stratum built upon the same structure that has powered the internet since ‘Web2’ and the advent of the cloud. It’s just a new layer of rent-seeking added on top of the rent-seeking that already exists. You don’t achieve Web3’s principles through tokens alone To do Web3 properly, you need the right kind of decentralization. You need verifiability at the data layer. You need trustless architecture through which tokens can move.

What exists currently is simply a fake adherence to Web’s core principles. A mirage through which the people can believe they have control, but really where they are simply forced to pay additional rents to power a system already controlled by vested interests. The blockchain is not enough to build a decentralized, trustless, permissionless and verifiable internet and, to quote the Joker, we’re tired of pretending it is. 

Protocols that claim to be decentralized are still completely reliant on cloud architecture for their data storage. They still funnel their computational workloads through a single computer in a far off land. The data and the compute - the actual things that matter - are not decentralized at all. They are not verifiable. You still need to trust third parties, and you still need permission. All tokenization has done is decentralize the receipts for this activity, not the activity itself. Yes, validators do consensus and agree on the ledger, but they don’t participate at all in the activity the ledger actually points to. The assets, the workloads, the enforcement mechanisms. All of that is the same as it's ever been. Thousands of validators (using extra energy, extra compute and extra resources) may rubber stamp activity - but only one server is doing the actual work.

Examples of Failure

Take NFTs as a classic example. Their boom was fuelled by the idea that your artwork, collectible or in-game item was immutably stored ‘onchain’ forever. In reality though, all that lived on the blockchain was a pointer, a receipt - to where the actual file itself is stored. Be that Amazon’s S3 buckets or a centralized database like MongoDB. And should the company running that bucket disappear, be compromised, or cease operations - then that sovereign digital asset supposedly owned by you disappears with it. You have your Tiffany’s receipt in your pocket, but you never owned the jewellery it says you bought. You just bought a piece of paper.

A more important example is “decentralized compute” - a holy grail of Web3 advertising that contains only dirty water. Networks like Akash, io.net or Render may boast larger number of validators, but the workloads they process still only go to a select few. Those select few retain all the powers of censorship and manipulation they always had. There is no verifiability in their architectures. There is no trust. It’s all a fughazi. It’s a parasitical additional structure designed merely to extract additional rents from other people’s infra and, more dangerously,create a layer of insulation that protects this centralized infra from accountability in the first place. 

The new open internet isn’t just about the ledger - it’s about how that ledger is guaranteed and operated upon. A ledger alone isn’t a decentralized internet, it’s just a participatory bookkeeper for a centralized empire. To achieve sovereignty, trustlessness, verifiability and decentralization we must go further. We must imbue data and harness compute through truly decentralized structures, enforcing access and ownership through actual consensus. Otherwise, Web3 is just another toll booth on the internet superhighway - slowing us down at every turn. Instead of banks, now you pay rent to infra providers, indexers and cloud hosts. For trust, you just rely on API feeds, cloud servers and indexers. All are fragile, all will break, and all of them will remove sovereignty at every step. Tokens are just receipts - hollow markers of a world that operates without them.

A New Hope

Despite the depths of this betrayal, there is still a chance to rescue the promise of Web3. To do so, we must extend Open Web tech beyond tokens and into what really matters - data, compute, and enforcement. Data that is verifiable at source, compute that executes where the data lives, ownership that is programmatically enforced - not just reliant on trust or the reporting of a third party. These are the missing layers of Web3. This is what Source Network will deliver - and in doing so make the decade-old promise a true reality - excising infra landlords, indexing bureaucrats and API brokers from our new online body politic. Otherwise - crypto remains, yes, a scam.

Source Network is not just another blockchain (although it uses one), but a data-centric, edge-native architecture that delivers the actual promise of Web3. Rather than a token pointing at an AWS blob, the data itself becomes verifiable, permissioned, and portable at the edge. It’s not just decentralizing the receipt, but the thing itself. Rather than an NFT pointing at a file in the cloud, DefraDB can hold the metadata, rights, and access policies, anchoring them to an auditable, verifiable record. The actual node may live wherever it makes sense. Whether it be on a creator’s device, in IPFS, or even in the cloud, all of which DefraDB can replicate across.Access though is tied to cryptographic keys controlled by the rightful owner. Ownership and access rules are enforced in the data layer itself, not left to trust in a third party.

Likewise, instead of workloads being shipped to a single server and rubber-stamped by validators, DefraDB instances at the edge maintain both the data and the proofs of what was done with it. Computation happens where the data resides - whether that’s a local device or a federated cluster - and every operation and query comes with cryptographic attestations of its origin and integrity to enshrine verifiability as a core principle. It’s all about verification, not blind trust. It’s about embedding sovereignty and accountability into the very structure of the data itself. That’s how we get the right kind of decentralization.

Source Network and its tools - DefraDB, LensVM, Orbis and SourceHub - are the framework for thousands of products which can be built to cut out infra middlemen and truly deliver on the promise of Web3 and end the betrayal. Over the coming months, we will illustrate how RWAs, DePin, Gaming, ReFi, DeSci, NFTs, Compute have all fallen foul of fake decentralization, and how Source Network can ensure these sectors deliver on their potential, and how by focusing on decentralization of data management itself, we can truly make the people a participant in the new internet. And how, through Source Network, we can make the internet truly new again.